I feel like I should preface this by admitting that back in 2006, I was part of a BlogHer panel called “Mommyblogging is a Radical Act.” As much as I’ve never been a fan of this particular term, way back then—seven years ago, which is like, what, maybe 49 years ago in Blogging Years, right?—I thought it was important that the blogging community have an honest discussion about what it means to share about our experiences as parents. I have no regrets about being part of that. At the time, that sort of blogging was still sort of new and different and we were all figuring out what it meant.

But that was seven years ago, and a lot of things have changed since then… including that many of us who were simply sharing our day-to-day for the sake of finding an outlet and community are now paid to write. Many of us are freelance writers running our own small businesses, working full-time (or more), and the fact that we write about our children from time to time is either incidental or just a fraction of the work we get paid to do.

And yet, good lord, the world is just so reluctant to let go of that term “mommyblogger.” Most of the time I don’t care; what’s in a name? I’m just doing my thing, getting my work done, living my life, whatever. But then there always comes someone wanting to take that dismissive term and use it as the cornerstone of painting every woman with a blog as a silly little moron.
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I have this coffee mug that says “I’m famous on the Internet.” My daughter gave it to me for Christmas, as a joke. I love it because it’s really big (all the better to hold lots of coffee…) and also because I think it’s hilarious.

Because I am not famous, on the Internet or otherwise. I have no desire to be famous.

A lot of people look at personal blogging as a way to “build a brand” and “become a celebrity” and I think those people are delusional. First of all, the number of people who are successful at becoming some sort of celeb through blogging compared to the number of people who wish they were is… not encouraging. And second of all, I cannot imagine wanting to be scrutinized the way so-called famous people are.

The joke in blogging is that you know you’ve arrived once you get a hateful, trollish comment on a post. Once someone cares enough to tell you how very wrong you are, that’s it! You’ve made it. Can you imagine the amount of vitriol famous bloggers are subjected to on a regular basis? No thanks. But more importantly, I think once a writer attains some level of attention for their personality, it becomes hard to avoid becoming a caricature of oneself.
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So this week has been interesting for me, to say the least. I started a new gig, and I wrote my first post, hoping that things would go well. You never really know, when you start at a new venue. But I was (am) excited about it. I shared it with my readers on my personal blog and hoped I’d get at least a few comments.

The post in question is here, and at the time of this writing, it has over 20,000 Facebook likes, about a hundred “shares” (which I’m able to see; who knows how many I can’t), 80 comments, a whole mess of tweets, etc., etc., yeeha, woohoo, and all of that. I even had a local friend call me this morning to say that she’d seen my piece “all over” her Facebook feed this morning and was delighted to be able to say, “Hey! I know her!”

I don’t know; maybe this sounds like a regular day, to you. But to me, even as someone who’s been writing online for nine years—making a living for most of that time, mind you—this is more attention than any single piece of my writing has ever gotten before.

It’s completely wild. And weird.
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One of the most important lessons to learn when working for yourself, I think, is that there’s no shame in outsourcing. I am a writer because I’m good at writing; some of the business-minutiae that comes along with being a freelancer I’m not so good at, and so I am deliberate about what I handle myself and what I don’t. To wit: I have an accountant. I love my accountant. Could I handle my taxes myself? Probably. But it would take me a lot longer than it takes him and it would make me nutty and if—God forbid—I ever end up getting audited, it’s peace of mind for me to know that I have someone who can essentially handle it for me. I consider my accountant money well spent.

On the other hand, I don’t have an administrative assistant or virtual assistant, and I know a lot of freelancers who do. For me, dealing with mail and paperwork isn’t a big deal—it doesn’t bother me, it doesn’t take all that much time—so I do it myself. These sorts of decisions are really all about what makes you feel most comfortable.

New freelancers often ask me if they need to have a lawyer around to review their contracts. This question is not so very different from considering your taxes and your mail. Do you feel comfortable handling it yourself? If the answer is “absolutely not,” it may be worth having a lawyer look things over for you. But the average freelancer is going to be signing a lot of contracts, and most of them won’t be terribly complex, and so most can learn to handle this process themselves with a bit of coaching and experience.
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When I asked for reader questions a couple of weeks ago, a loyal lurker emailed a query rather than leaving it as a comment on the post, but that’s okay, because she’s one of my favorites. In fact, she apparently remembers a post from a couple of years ago when I triumphantly announced my acquisition of a standing desk, because here’s the question:

I am curious to know about your experience with your stand-up desk. Still using it? What percentage of your day do you suppose you use it? Is it a block of time or interspersed? Some activities but not others? Do you feel better? Do you have to force yourself to use it because it’s good for you?

This is where I’m supposed to assure everyone that I use it all the time and I’ve lost weight, lowered my cholesterol, and my hair is inexplicably shinier. Right? I mean, I suppose that would be a better answer than what I’m about to say.

And really the short version of the truth is, “Hi, my name is Mir, and I am a terrible, unhealthy person.”
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Every now and then my day-to-day life as a freelancer settles down somewhat and I can’t think of any interesting way to spin what I’ve been doing that week. (“I got up in the morning, got my guys off to school and work, sat down at my computer, and worked for the rest of the day. And then the next day I did it again. And then again.” Not terribly informative or illuminating to read, right?) It’s a pretty good way to live—I’ll take boring in the grand scheme of things over a crisis anytime—but it doesn’t make for really excellent blogging.

I suspect y’all prefer it when I do things like underestimate my taxes or double-book myself on projects. Being stupid is funny! Yayyyyyy!

Okay, kidding aside, given that I’ve been writing here for a looooong time, I often reject a possible topic because I feel like “I already covered that” when, in fact, readers come and go, and things change, and everything has a season, turn, turn, turn…. Wait. That last bit is a song. Ignore that.

Anyway. It’s time to find out what burning questions you have.
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I made a giant mistake today. Actually, it was a tiny mistake, but it felt like a giant one to me. It felt bad.

But let me back up a minute, first.

I mostly talk, in this space, about deliberate business decisions related to my career as a freelance writer. I don’t talk about my personal blog all that much because, honestly, while the personal blog certainly opened the doors that allowed me to make a career out of writing, my personal blog isn’t “work.” I make very little money from it, and other than a handy sort of living portfolio, it doesn’t figure into my professional life nearly the way almost everything else does. When I’m talking about “making my living as a writer,” that’s not what I’m talking about.

On the other hand, the personal blog is how it all started, and it’s where I’ve been writing the longest, and it’s (arguably) what I’m most “known” for, so it’s not unimportant. And I’ve been writing there coming up on nine years, so it’s all old hat for a pro like me, right?
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When I first started blogging—you know, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (haha)—marketing and PR professionals were seen as visionaries if they bothered pitching to bloggers or approaching them at all. I’m rounding the corner to my ninth year of a public online existence; that’s, like, a century in Internet years, or something. Back in the beginning, no one noticed me. And then, for a while, I would get maybe one weird email a month, then one a week, and I remember thinking it was becoming A Thing when I started getting one or two a day.

If you’re doubled over with laughter, reading that, it’s okay. I understand. Nowadays—between the couple of email addresses I use most frequently—it’s not unusual for me to receive upwards of 200-300 emails per day which I consider spam, and that’s just the ones that aren’t caught by the spam filter. There’s probably 50-100 emails each day which I truly care about, too. And then blog comments (all of which arrive as emails from WordPress). My point is, I get a lot of email.

And? My mother raised me to be polite. So ever-increasingly, I find myself in somewhat of a conundrum, stuck between what I consider acceptable behavior and the constraints of time, reality, and trying to have a life.
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For years I have taken for granted having a career in which I can work from anywhere, at any time. Have laptop, will write! I have worked through the flu, through childcare crises, when my car was broken down, during blizzards, and through various and sundry physical ailments (at various degrees of misery, but I could still work). What a blessing, I have always thought, to have a job that did not depends on too many external factors. My husband has a recurrent foot ailment which often makes his long days of teaching (on his feet at the front of the classroom) extremely difficult. If there was something wrong with my foot, I would simply prop it up on the couch and keep typing.

But this month I have finally learned what it would take to make my job very, very difficult: Last week, I broke my hand. On the plus side, I broke my left hand, and I am right-handed. On the minus side, I broke my hand. I had to have surgery, and I am not expected to be back to full mobility for another six weeks at least. Even overlooking the pain and discomfort associated with my injury, I spend my days typing. I spend my days touch typing, with two hands. One of my hands is currently in a splint. Things have changed.
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I am blogger, hear me… pimp myself?

In my experience, there are two kinds of bloggers out there: Those who write because they love writing, and those who write because they love attention. (Occasionally you find a third type: those who love writing and love attention, but overwhelmingly I would argue most bloggers are one or the other.) Now, you could make the argument that someone who only loves writing would never put their words “out there” for others to see, but to me having an audience reading what you write is part of the overall process. I love to write, but I also love to share that writing with others.

I don’t love attention so much, but of course to some extent it’s part and parcel of the blogging life. Put a website online and people are going to see it, comment on it, want to interact with you—that’s kind of the point. But as an introvert writing online suits me because I an interact with others in a way that’s limited; responding to comments and emails is easier for me that lots of face-to-face interaction.

Every now and then, I find myself receiving some sort of nomination or award and then I’m… deeply conflicted.
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