Authentic.

We hear this word a lot with blogging, don’t we?

At BlogHer’12 this word came up a lot. It was in almost every panelist’s list of what makes a great blogger. I’ve read two inauthentic blogs lately and it really stood out to me. One was about a “stripper” and one was about an nyc “actress” and both were so fake sounding it was so obvi just a phony blog set up to hopefully earn some money. And hey, I hope they do earn money…the blogs were fake, but they were kinda entertaining!

Anyway, I did a little soul searching, and okdani archive reading, and realized I wasn’t being truly authentic here. That’s not saying that I wasn’t being completely honest with you all, or not being real or not using my voice, but I realized that I keep a lot of things off of my blog. Some things, like politics, or my feelings on controversial news items I keep off the blog consciously and reserve for twitter or FB. Other items I realize I don’t speak about much here, or just mention peripherally in passing like:

• spiritual life/practices
• business pursuits
• joys and pains of married life

These are huge parts of my life…and while I’m a mommy, and a blogger, I don’t feel like I’m solely a mommy blogger. Maybe I am in denial but I feel I’m a “lifestyle blogger” (if I had to choose a pigeon hole) and want to represent my whole self better here. Sometimes I’ll have a business issue weighing heavily on my mind while I’m sitting down to write a post, but instead of posting about that, I’ll write about Sharkie or review something. That’s not 100% authentic, in my interpretation of the word.

I know I won’t be discussing politics here anytime soon and you’ll likely never seen an “outfit of the day” type post from me. I also won’t be switching up my voice or changing too much around here. Example: I wanted to incorporate coupons on the blog because I’m starting to turn into a bit of a couponer but that didn’t seem to fit my posting vibe, so I made a separate coupon page in case people want to check them out and hopefully save some dough.

That actually leads me to another thought…what do you girls want to see more or less of on the blog? Do tell! If I had made a post with a listing of coupons, would it really have been so odd? The blog is a bit of a random hodgepodge even if it’s been pregnancy/mommyhood skewed these days…(and likely will be from now on.)

I like posting about what hits me, what’s going on with us and I love getting your input on things in the comments. I’ll always “do me” on this blog, but I’d love to know what you guys would like to see, or hate seeing here.

I know being an authentic blogger means different things to different bloggers. To me it entails showing a 360 degree view of myself to you. I’ll try to remember to do this more.

What is authentic blogging to you? What do you want to see more or less of here? You can tell me in the comments or email me at okaydani@gmail.com