Hesitant, Hopeful

I'm crazy tired tonight, thanks to my evil pooches barking their heads off last night. I got about 3 hours of intermittent sleep, which isn't nearly enough, and it's got me a little bit grumpy. Add to that one horrible week and you've got a recipe for disaster. . . or bitching. . . or both. What the hell. I'm in that kind of mood. And let me just start by saying, before the ranty, ranty rant to follow, that there are two kinds of blogs I enjoy, personal blogs and cooking blogs. That's how it has always been with me, I don't care if a blog is famous or gets a lot of hits, I just like to peek into the lives of others and/or catch up with friends.

So, I was looking at Pioneer Woman a few minutes ago. It's not a blog I read often, because, well, she and I have pretty much nothing in common and her blog being pretty isn't enough to hold my interest for long. Her humor is, however, so I was peeking at some of her recipes--I got there tonight following a pin from Pintrest for Pumpkin Pie Smoothie. Yes please. Anyway, while I was there I got to reading her "confessions" section where she actually blogs--her site is a lot of things, a personal(ish) blog, a cooking blog, home & garden, home schooling, photography etc. You may or may not know that she started as a blogger who wrote a book and now has a TV show on Food Network.

What strikes me, though, is that she's a really, really genuine type person who seems to really enjoy her life. The point here being that she came from blogging and has really made something of her passions. Good for her. She seems very genuine and I even quite like her despite the fact that she spends a lot of time talking about things that happened while her show was taping, which I don't find terribly interesting. She also manages to squeeze being a real person in there--and her husband is gorgeous! She talks about her family life, her horses, things other than being a "star."

Why am I rambling on and on about Pioneer Woman? Because seeing her blog and how likable she still is, despite her success, got me thinking about another quite popular blogger I read on occasion  I won't say who, because who it is isn't the point, and because I don't feel like it would serve any purpose. Anyway it was someone I started reading because a friend (Mayren) posted a link to a cupcake recipe she thought I'd like--cupcakes I made and didn't actually like, by the way. While that cupcake recipe wasn't wonderful, and was in fact the only cupcake I've ever met that I didn't like, some of her other recipes were really good. She also posted pictures of her sweet little dogs, gave away fonts (she's quite creative), and posted about her life some. All in all, it's a blog I liked... until the last few months.

And this is what gets me. This blog I've really liked and read pretty diligently, has gotten a little bit of notoriety and it seems to have completely gone to the woman's head! Her blog is popular enough that she gets free trips all over the place if she's willing to endorse products and places. Fine, I get that, and sometimes it's nice to see that stuff. Sometimes. But, this girl spends every single entry now talking about how she went here or went there. During a time when a whole lot of people are struggling, this girl spends her blog space bragging about all her traveling and the deserts she ate.

All of the recipe posts have dried up, except that she sometimes re-posts old recipes. Everything interesting about her blog has dried up in favor or endorsing all these places she's going and things she's seeing. It's annoying and I'm sitting here thinking, not for the first time, that if Ree Drummond (Pioneer Woman) can stay genuine and lovely, when she has a freaking TV show, can't this other woman manage to come back down to earth with all the peasants and actually post, oh, I don't know, content that isn't fluff. She's clearly bought and paid for and bragging about it has me--and judging by her dwindling comment counts--others, too, mildly annoyed. She hosts giveaways occasionally which get like 2,000 comments, while her bragging "I-went-here-and-had-such-a-good-time" posts get 25 or less.

I hate it when a good blog goes bad. Bragging about your eternal vacation is a serious turn off.  I mean, is it really so hard to be genuine? I've been blogging for about 9 years and the one thing I've never aspired to is a big readership. More than anything I blog for me, for my family and friends, and for the few people I meet along the way who're interested in building genuine relationships. Not so a bunch of strangers can be jealous of. . . whatever. It pisses me off and tonight, when I'm running on little or no sleep, it does so enough to make me rant about it.