This week we’re spending five minutes with Tracey who writes Love of Living. Tracey is new to the Irish Parenting Bloggers group, and about to be new to parenting, as her first baby is due next month. Check out her profile here.
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Well hello there! My name is Tracey Quinn and I am a twenty four year old extravert to say the least. I have always been a ‘talker’ and I’m naturally someone who likes to communicate and get involved in things. From a young age I have always loved reading and writing, in school and on a personal level. I carried that passion with me passed school and pursued a degree in English Studies in UCD. I then went on to do an MA in Drama And Performance Studies in UCD also, and wrote a play as my final thesis. Drama is my real passion! While I love drama, I am also someone who loves a good routine and this is how I now find myself in a Monday-Friday 9-5 job. I have been working for the same company for almost two years in a sales, marketing and admin role. Before that I worked in a completely different field, as personal relations officer for The Olympia Theatre. I absolutely loved this exciting job but unfortunately it just didn’t have the hours or the routine that I needed to move on with my personal life. Working full-time allowed me to move in with my boyfriend (we’re together almost five years) and enter the ‘real world’ as such. It’s an interesting place, the real world. Full of ups and downs, but mostly ups and I am very grateful for that. Speaking of ups, I am pregnant and due to have my first baby in eight weeks. I couldn’t be more delighted or excited. Both of us couldn’t be. When I fell pregnant I immediately wanted to document it and I found that online blogs were fast becoming my go-to place for advice and information. The world of blogging is just so wonderfully full of non-biased, really helpful, and honest information that a pamphlet or doctor might not be able to provide. It has been invaluable for me. So I thought, why not contribute myself? I had toyed with a few blog ideas before but they never really took off. Mainly weight-loss types (the joys) and they never really went anywhere. Pregnancy was something new to me, full of new experiences, and I immediately felt that it was the right time for me to take it seriously. It has been a wonderful experience so far and I plan to expand and devote more and more time to it – particularly when I become a mother and a whole new world is opened up for me. It feeds me so much. I get to write, I get to talk, I get to entertain and I get to be really honest about things that I would read about myself. It’s a Lifestyle blog so not completely restricted to pregnancy but naturally that theme dominates at the moment. It includes recipes, reviews, advice, travel, and the general goings-on of a normal working-class twenty-something girl finding her way through the real world in this lovely Emerald Isle. It’s about happiness and finding as much of it each day as possible and I am really really enjoying the process!
Has your blog changed from your original vision?
Yes it really has actually. In the beginning I asked a couple of different people their thoughts regarding the idea of me blogging. Everybody knows I have always been a fan of writing, and my cousin always refers to me as a ‘blogger’ as even on Facebook I am always a chatter, love sharing different articles and I just like putting myself out there I suppose. A bit of it is probably the drama queen in me! I noticed that when I was ‘pitching’ it to these people (who I would be very close to – close friends, family, colleagues…) I always mentioned that I wouldn’t have it too ‘personal’. Funnily enough, that has not happened at all. I’ve noticed that I actually find it quite difficult to not be personal. I also noticed that the kinds of blogs that I enjoy reading are the really honest, personal types of blogs. I realised that being personal doesn’t mean exposing myself too much, or mentioning people’s names. For it to be the type of blog that I had imagined then it would involve me going in with an open heart, an open mind, and not ‘caring’ too much about exposing myself. At some point I realised that it didn’t really matter as I am not ashamed of anything that I blog about, or the person that I am, and it seems to help people a lot which is a lovely thing really. In general I feel quite happy about the tone of my blog, and the voice that I have found. It is something that I am constantly trying to develop though.
Share your three favourite posts with us and tell us why you picked them.
Juggling it all
I enjoyed writing this because it is at a time where pregnancy and life in general can feel quite overwhelming. I found a sense of calm and relief when I wrote it and I hoped it would have the same effect on the people who might read it. I also liked that it included a mix of things – domestic, personal, fashion, emotional etc and it was a really honest account of how I was feeling at the time. I try to make my blog posts a bit colourful with the use of photographs etc and I felt this one had a nice balance and tone in general. Hopefully other people agree. I do feel it is a bit long though, something I am trying to work on and something I believe a lot of bloggers struggle with. I’ll get there!
Finding your groove and not theirs
I got quite a nice response to this post, and Mothercare used it on their own blog also (I am a guest blogger with them too). It was a post that I would have read myself. Basically about all of the information that comes soaring at you when you are pregnant, the ‘know it alls’, the ‘helpful’ advice, the medical staff, the people who have ‘been there’ and in the midst of all of this trying to make sense of it all and make it work for you. Pregnancy is not a ‘general’ thing. It is different for us all and I felt I wanted to write a post to describe how I was navigating my way through pregnancy and taking in all the advice while at the same time finding my own voice. This is not always an easy thing to do when you are essentially the novice in the situation.
Breast is best
My most popular post to date. It’s about breastfeeding and my determination to make it work when I have my little bundle. It’s not a subject that I could discuss with many friends. Few friends have even attempted breastfeeding. In general I am of a minority to be a young lady in Ireland wanting to breast feed and thus once again the world of blogs has been an excellent source of information for me. I enjoyed writing this blog entry and I felt quite empowered by it actually. Hopefully breast feeding works out for me as well as I hope. I am determined it will though!
How do you promote your blog? Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest? Which method do you prefer?
At the moment I promote my page mainly on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. I also created a Facebook ‘group’ for my blog and it is slowly building. It is great to have an audience who have ‘liked’ the page because they chose to follow your blog. It makes me feel a bit more confident about posting there because I know that I am not boring people. I also occasionally promote posts on my own personal Facebook page. In general though, Twitter seems to be the most useful and effective way to communicate my blogs message and my new posts! I am also trying to make the likes of ‘networkedblogs’ and ‘bloglovin’’ work for me also. I enjoy using those to find and follow new blogs!
What do you love the most about blogging? What do you hate?
I love the feeling of communicating my thoughts and ideas with people who I may have never met before. The internet is really an amazing place. I love writing, and blogging provides me with the perfect platform and ‘place’ to do the kind of writing that I have always wanted to do. I love that is it ‘my’ project and I can essentially write about whatever I chose to write about (and hope that others will want to read…) and I just really enjoy the feeling of contributing something, a little piece of myself, to the medium that has taken over the world that we live in today – the internet. I have gotten so much support, advice and entertainment from different blogs and I love the excitement of knowing and hoping that some people ‘out there’ get the same from my own blog.
Hate is a strong word, but as I am at the beginning stage of my blog it can be a bit disheartening when I compare myself to other blogs or bloggers. Some bloggers have been at this for years and have a huge following and readership. Sometimes it is difficult to not compare myself to those successful bloggers and I can find it difficult to ever imagine mine being that successful. Having said that, I know I have only just started this journey and sometimes I just have to remind myself that even if only a handful of people are ‘listening’ now I need to just stick with it and have a bit of confidence in myself and what I am doing. Everything takes time to grow and we all have to start somewhere.
