food blogging – why do it?
This morning, I read food writer Phil Lees’ blog post on the nature of food blogging and I have to say, it’s really inspired me to consider the question seriously.
I should actually get around to explaining this on eat, drink, stagger sometime, but for the time being, my ruminations will be housed here.
I really like to write, and as of a year ago, I didn’t think I was writing enough. I read heaps (yea insomnia!) but for health reasons (I later found out), writing wasn’t coming easily.
I feel like shit when I don’t write.
I started a dream blog which helped with writing and output immensely.
Then, a few months ago, I decided to start a food blog. I love dining out, and wanted a record of my experiences. It seemed a natural progression to start blogging about it as another way to practise writing. To take away from the stress that is writing poetry, I wanted my food blogging to be casual, but to still try and write well.
I don’t know if I am successful in that regard, but I’m really enjoying it. Am no food expert by any means, so it was liberating to just write and not pain over every single word (like I do in poetry. Don’t get me wrong – I adore that about the poetic creative process, but it does get draining).
Embarrassingly, before reading Lees’ post, I now come to realise that food blogging became a slightly competitive, obsessive pursuit. Instead of just documenting my dining experiences, I now started to care about where I wrote about, if it meant I might have more readers. If you will permit me the confession, I wanted to start blogging about the same places all the ‘cool kids’ were blogging about. Go to the same events. Wonder why Tom, Dick and Harriet were going to the inaugural Australian Eat Drink Blog conference and I wasn’t. Pretty lame, eh? I purposely didn’t register my interest in the conference because I thought that more experienced bloggers should go, but then got annoyed. There’s always next year, Gem, sheesh.
So, for me, I pretty much nearly jumped the shark. Got ridiculous.
I need to be honest with myself. I have a chronic illness so I can’t afford to dine out as often as I like (because I work part-time), or at the more top end places that some of my (fantastic, I might add) food blogging colleagues do. I need to accept that. So, in the next two or so months, I’m going to focus on eating out less, and cooking more. Get back to my roots and remind myself, this is not a competition. I intend to review more places local to me (living in the north of Melbourne, I am nowhere near the city). More oh-fucking-god-will-this-work kitchen experimentation. I’m so scared of failure in the kitchen. Why? As long as it’s edible, who cares? Better to try and make and fail.
I’m really grateful for Lees’ blog post. It’s been an excellent reminder that this fun hobby/chronicle was starting to exist for different reasons to why I began.
This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop caring about readership. So many people have given me fantastic, inspiring feedback about eat, drink, stagger. I will always do my best to put out content I am happy with, and happy to have read and critiqued. I will continue to review places I have eaten at at my own expense. I will continue to learn. I will continue to read food blogs and let them inspire me.
On that note, it’s time to consider dinner options. I have an Entertainment voucher for Crust Pizza and by golly, I’m not afraid to use it.
