How Can I Be a Good Blogger When All The Good Farmers Are Taken?

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No blog would be complete without the painful, public self-analysis by the blogger asking him or herself, ‘WHY DO I BLOG?”  Of course you as the reader then must assess, “Why do I care?”  And based on your answer you’ll either come back or you won’t.  If you go then know this: I’ll miss you.

In an attempt to answer my part of the question equation, and figuring that others have the answers I’m looking for, I’ve been researching other women’s blogs.  I’ve been keeping myself mostly to the big, fancy, popular ones because if I’m going to spend my dwindling moments left on earth researching other blogs then I’d like to visit the ones that might be the best.  And right away I have a major life regret: I didn’t marry a farmer or a rancher.  That appears to have been a big blogging mistake.

The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, married herself a sexy Rancher.  How smart was that?  I didn’t even know ranchers were sexy until Ree showed me just how much.  She’s managed to parlay that one savvy decision into an enviable life of a published author and “The Most Influential Female Voice on the Web (Category: Mommy).”

And then there’s Penelope Trunk, someone you might not know, but who is a very popular blogger/tweeter who married a farmer.  It appears that she went and had to divorce her first husband to get the blog-requisite agrarian male mate.  But still.  She married a farmer and she gets to call him The Farmer on her blog.  How sexy is that?  Suddenly, despite being happily married and very content, I want a man in agriculture.  And you know what advertisers say?  Create a need and the customer will come flocking to your door.  Now I have this sudden unquenchable need for a man riding a big tractor with his face obscured by his wide-brimmed hat; a need I didn’t even know I had two hours ago.

This brings me to the next problem.  After looking at the two above blogs for awhile I realize another huge mistake I’ve made: I’ve shown full frontal shots of my husband’s face so now you already know what he looks like.  I’ve ruined the mystery for you and destroyed the allure necessary to keep you coming back in the hopes that one day you’ll catch a glimpse of him.  I’ve even thought about taking those pictures of my husband off and buying him a cowboy hat and retaking his pictures with his face in serious shadow just to see if people would like that.

Since I’m about as far from married to a Farmer or a Rancher as you can get, this has made me very worried about the future of my blog.   Lacking the right type of husband and disinclined to exchange the one I do have for a different model, I started looking at something called a “niche”.

But what’s left?

Not much.  It seems every good and desirable niche is already taken.  There are already plenty of fashionistas, and homeschool moms, and moms, and women and women going through The Change.  No matter how vehement my declarations that I’m still a devout Christian, I’m too sardonic to tackle the faith angle, and there isn’t anything on this planet that I hate worse than politics.  I don’t have any tech knowledge whatsoever.  I’m most definitely not a geek.  You are reading this blog through no skill on my part.  Total luck.  

The bichon thing seems good.  I’m getting a ton of hits about my little bichon, Doo.  Of course dogs are always a big draw.  But then I read one blog advice page that said that you can’t talk about deep philosophical things AND your dog on the same blog because that’s confusing to your readers.  I guess readers can either feel warm and fuzzy towards you or intellectually challenged, but never both.

I’ve thought about splitting my blog up.

But I’m not sure I have enough material to have a bichon-only blog and I’m not deep enough to have a sufficient amount of deep philosophical thoughts for a deeply thoughtful blog either.  Maybe a pamphlet.  I probably think enough deep thoughts to fill a tri-fold pamphlet.  If I add artwork.  Maybe I could charge a dollar and get a million people to read my deep-thoughts pamphlet and that would take care of my real problem: job stress.

The job stress thing seems like a perfect topic, plenty of bloggers blog about that.  But I can’t talk about my job stress here on my blog.  First of all, I’m a healthcare professional and I can’t risk patient confidentiality.  And let’s face it, you patients are a pain in the ass and you’d all think I’m talking about you.  And then I’d get sued and lose my license and have to eat government cheese.  And I don’t want the “Old Lady Eating Government Cheese” niche.

Besides, once I let my worlds collide that cookie was crumbled.  I’d have to start an entirely different blog, an anonymous one, maybe with a foreign IP address, so I could secretly talk about where all my real job stress comes from, where no one would read and know it was me.  Maybe I will.  I could call it something like “Work on the Deathstar Continues: An Insider’s Perspective”.  This title would be very appropriate since my job is very stressful for lots of reasons that really aren’t anybody else’s fault but my own, stemming mostly from the fact that I’d make a really bad Storm Trooper.  I have very little respect for authority, and I don’t like being told what to do, and those are sort of the whole point of having Storm Troopers, isn’t it?

They say you should write what you are passionate about.  I’m passionate about sex.  Actually I’m very passionate about sex.  Maybe too much.  Pretty much every major life decision I’ve made has been based on whether I liked the sex or not.  I’m smart enough to know that good sex is hardly the basis for a life, but I haven’t found anything else better, or more reliable.  And besides my feelings about sex are probably genetic and therefore not my fault.  The last words my mother wrote before her death were something like, “Oh Glorious Sex, I’m Glad I Found You.”  Some daughters would be upset that their mom’s dying words weren’t, “Thank you, honey, for taking such good care of me.”  or “Gee, I’m sorry your childhood sucked so bad.”  But I couldn’t really hold this one against her.

Mom, if you’re up there, you were sure right on that one.

Dang, I’m going to miss it when it’s gone.

I could keep writing about my mother and my enmeshed love/hate relationship with her.  She’d love the symmetry of that.  From her perspective we were actually just one person so my blogging about her makes it like she never really died.

So my question is, what is my niche?  I’m trying to figure it out because at this point it doesn’t seem like I have one.  If you feel like helping me, I’d appreciate it. Comment.  Email me.  Throw an anonymous rock through my window with a note attached.  Help me!

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