If you can’t beat them, join them

Because I’m sure you are all wondering how I’m doing, let me put your minds at ease by saying my canker sore has gone away—for now. Thank you for your kind words, as they helped me through a very rough two days. I’ll assume your cash donation is in the mail.

Then again, I might not need your money.

You see, I’m thinking of becoming a “Mommy Blogger.”

Even though I don’t have children by choice, I sometimes get the feeling that people think I am a card-carrying mom and kid hater. This largely comes from other women’s reactions to my decision to keep my uterus empty, mind you, but I can tell you that I’m not. I just have no interest in reading about children and pregnancy and everything that goes along with it.

To each their own.

But I’m beginning to think that I’m missing out on something in the blog world—the opportunities afforded to those moms who blog, and moms in general.

According to eMarketer, there were 3.9 million moms who were blogging in 2010. Now I have to think there’s a big difference between moms who blog solely about their children and daily potty training attempts and those women who simply have “mom” as one of their roles, and as writers, aim to contribute more to a greater cultural dialogue.

But the term “mommy blog” is as prevalent as the nation’s current obsession with bacon and Target’s Missoni collection, and let me tell you, it looks like moms are getting some perks.

If you write about your children, you are automatically inducted into a club of sorts, as motherhood binds women together via a common experience and therefore represents “womanhood” to a lot of people. So they can talk about anything that happens in a typical day—nursing, discipline, juggling duties, etc.— and have an instant audience and steady material, not to mention advertisers looking to place all their ads.

Don’t get me wrong in that I think it’s great that there’s a support system out there (and sponsors and such.)

But lost in the shuffle is the fact that other women (and men) — without children — do their own juggling act by working to support themselves and dealing with stressful issues of their own—finances, security, dying relatives, health issues, family drama — and they don’t get a special parking space or a Sarah Jessica Parker movie incredulously saying, “I Don’t Know How She Does It!” 

That last one’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Anyway, with just about everyone spitting spawn out left and right and getting some perks with the deal, I feel a bit left out. But I have no interest in anything maternal, and even if it provided me daily fodder to write about, I don’t care enough about popularity to even interact with a child on a daily basis.

So I thought about using the “Mommy Blogger” template to create a “Gnome Blogger” format that might just sweep the country.

Uncle June could totally pimp out “Just For Men” or Keebler cookies.

I could talk about his daily adventures and whether or not I should use organic cleaners to wipe off his face, how I feel he’s exponentially smarter than every other gnome on the planet and update you on his bowel movements.

Since I already take him on airplanes and trips, maybe he would like to go to the store or the gym with me some days? Perhaps some play dates?

But again, I feel like he’s a bit too needy for daily interaction. Plus, I want to share more of my identity as a writer outside of my role as a gnome mother, so I guess that we’re back to square one.

I’m stuck aiming to contribute to a greater cultural dialogue about important things that need to be discussed—you know, things like punctuation marks, senior citizen Bingo games and banana clips.

But for the record, Uncle June is exponentially smarter than every other gnome on the planet.