Tag: the mads

Update 2024. Hahahahahahaha. I am laughing at myself with this post. I wrote it so long ago, that the whole online landscape has done a backflip, forwardflip and backflip again. Bloggers aren’t young adults to middle age people any more and youngsters think they invented the world. I think I’ll be chuckling to myself the rest of the day. Scottish bloggers shy – bwahaha. They’d think I’m a dinosaur nowadays… They’d be right.

This is the question that has bothered me for a while now.  Are Scottish bloggers just shy?  Could it be how we are brought up?  I think it has something to do with the lack of regular female bloggers living and working here in the cold frozen wastes of Scottish Heathen Hinterlands, hiding under their family tartan, mud huts and cave dwellings.

Look at England, Wales and the US.  Bloggers are confidently marketing, self-promoting and selling their blogs to the world.

They display little in the way of embarrassment at any sign of success for their blogs and proudly hold their heads up and announce their success to the outside world.

Head to Scotland, and at times, I also think Ireland, we sit in our pooky wee holes and pretend that we don’t really exist to the outside world.  Yes, there are times when we have to stand up and be counted, and there is absolutely NO denying the work it takes to get to the point where Google sends you a few hundred or more visitors daily,  so why do we play down the amount of work it takes to get there?

In London, I saw the English and US bloggers sit proudly with their heads held high when they talked about their blogs.  I sat and wondered why there are so few of us in Scotland.  Perhaps the Scots are just late to the party and lots more will catch up with the blogging machine, but we’re not anywhere near matching our English compatriots yet.  It could also be a population numbers things, so bear with me.

It does have to be said, that for a group of supposedly loner bloggers who spend their isolated lives living at keyboards interacting with each other, we all have plenty to say when we meet.

I’ve gone off track, so back to the bloggers in Scotland.

In my blogging community, the majority who promote themselves in our neck of the woods are almost all either former US or English citizens with a smattering of us Scots in-between.

Is it how we’re brought up in this neck of the woods?

Are we taught to celebrate the success of others, but be eternally damned handicapped when it comes to our own?

Who knows why our humility can send us packing into the wild white yonder of icy mush while others accept their praise graciously.

Up to now, I’ve always been one of those who couldn’t accept the popularity contest thing for blogging, especially since I sometimes blog about issues that regular parenting circles just don’t want to have to listen to, but it is actually quite nice to have been nominated for something.  Instead of barring the hashtag and pretending it doesn’t matter at all, I’m going to be gracious.

The Mads is now run yearly by Sally from the Tots, in conjunction with Parentdish and a couple of people have contacted me to say they have nominated me in the food blogger category.  There are some bloggers in there who are serious foodies, unlike me, but I’d like to thank those who voted for me.

For this time round, I am going to wear my badge with pride on the blog.

I’m never one that is going to be able to put out loads of tweets, posts or messages asking people to vote for me, and neither will many other Scottish born bloggers I suspect.  I wouldn’t say no to any other nominations either, so if you’d like to give me a boost, there are still a couple more weeks to go on this round, just click on the picture.  I don’t know what happens after this, so I guess it’s a wait and see.

Thank you to all who read my blog.  I really appreciate you all.