I’m attending the Mommyblogging: “Balance” is a Bit, Fat, Lying, Mcliar LIE for Moms who Blog (and the rest of us too).  I am so excited for this session, because, um, YEAH.

1pm: So far, so good. The Strawberry Shortcake SWAG is awesome — they are sponsoring this session – and I’ve only managed to offend one person so far ( a nice older Asian lady sitting near me) when I adjusted my “feminine napkin” because I think I’m getting my period and NOT FAIR because it’s not yet TIME for my period WTF?.

Oh well. She probably doesn’t want to read this blog anyway. She doesn’t look like the swearing type. Or the p0rn type!

We interrupt your normal programming for the following announcement:
SQUEE! Marinka just came up and said hi to me!!!!
Thank you for your attention. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

1:15pm: The session is about to start, and the room is definitely filling up.  Not sure yet if it’s going to be a full house.  If you’re at BlogHer and reading this, there’s still room and SWAG! Come on by!

1:17pm: This session features Lisa Belkin writer of Motherlode for NYTimes, Angela Tseng of MommyBytes, OHMommy (Pauline) and Rita Arens of Surrender, Dorothy.

2:23pm: Holy crap, Lisa Belkin writes 2-3 posts a day. There is no way that balance can happen that way! Yikes! (PS, the session has started)  Mostly moms in the room, though definitely some non-moms. We’re about half & half SAHMs and WAHMs. Good mix!  And now the big question…. How many came to get advice on balance (a few)  and how many are here to get confirmation that balance is a really big fat liar McLiar lie? (most of us!)

2:27pm: Rita speaking now.  “I think balance is more about being on a balance beam, trying not to fall off.”  She is going on to say that you can only focus on one thing at a time, because “if you don’t pay attention to the area of your life that needs it when it needs it, you’re going to fall off.” Her final words? “You can have what you want, but you’ll have less.”

Lisa asks Angela, “What is the equation?” referring to balance. Angela says that for her, “you have to give things up. I don’t watch TV anymore. I don’t have time.”  She says that she blogs mostly in the evenings, but sometimes when her kids are awake.  She says the one thing she doesn’t have balance in? How much sleep she is getting. (Angela, you are not alone.)

2:34pm: Lisa wants to know how we decided how much of our lives to devote to blogging. Is it a conscious thing or do you just go? Rita says that she blogs a lot (5 times a day at her personal blog, twice at BlogHer, and more) but that she doesn’t see it as “carving out time” – she is just being herself.

Revelation: The way to attain balance is to get a husband who takes care of everything else so you can blog. I get it now. ::wink wink::

2:36pm: OHMommy says that she just gets sucked in! “Before you know it, it’s midnight…I find myself going to bed later and later.”  Rita responds, saying that she needs to “compartmentalize” in order to avoid getting sucked in.

2:38pm:  Lisa wants to know why our panelists aren’t angsty. She’s going for the jugular! Rita says “My daughter’s Barbie’s all blog. They all have laptops…. She’s totally into it!” She goes on to say that as long as you are not trying to avoid your children while indulging your habit, it’s “totally fine” for your children to see you.  She suggests that you can use it as a teaching experience — “Hey, it’s fine to have hobbies that aren’t you, kid”  (I agree!).

Angel says that she tries to involve her kids in her blog – they’re asking if there are comments about them, or if she’s posting about them. (They aren’t teenagers yet)

2:45pm: Lisa goes on to say that these kids are growing up with this as the norm — perhaps they’ll feel differently about this. Maybe they’ll feel like celebrities!

Question from the audience — I didn’t catch her name, crap.  She asks if there is no relaxation or serenity in our lives anymore, because we’re always doing something that is, in a sense, “work” — self development (blogging), etc. Rita says that she doesn’t find TV relaxing – but that “you have to have the laptop shut at certain times…. It’s Ok for them (the kids) to see you doing your thing, but it’s also important that they see you shut the laptop.”

2:48pm: Lisa says of professions/hobbies that include staring at screen…. “It’s a ball you need to keep your eye on” – because we are possibly increasing the chance that no one will ever speak to each other anymore.

2:51pm: Another question from the audience…. Jennifer,  Confessions of an It Girl.  She says that she wants to know how the panelists express what is important to them to other people…. how do they express that “Yes, this is a priority for me….you need to suck it up”.  Angela says that her husband knows that if she’s cranky, she needs to blog.  OHMommy says her husband also knows that she just needs to blog, she needs her “me” time.   Rita says that she has one child, and she respects big families but for her, one child is all that they need, because there are other things in their lives that need attention and adding more children means taking attention away from other things. She says she has faced criticism from friends and family about that decision, that it has been called selfish, but that’s what they’ve decided is right for their family.

2:54pm: Angela’s mom is speaking! She says she is very proud of her daughter.  She says she’d like to communicate with her daughter but she’s too heavily scheduled, but she can’t call her because she’s too busy! However, Angela’s blog gave her a lot of comfort because she enjoys reading it and keeping up with her daughter this way. She also says that she’s not a blogger, but she’s here and having a great time!

2:57pm: Does your mother read your blog? We often receive criticism because we’re doing things wrong, or doing too many times.  Lisa says sometimes she wonders if her mother is right – she’s not having enough fun. Sometimes, she thinks she’s having a lot of fun.  She finds blogging as an outlet. OHMommy is joining in, saying that last year was a tough year for her because she had three kids who were napping throughout the day so that at least one kid was napping at any time between 10 and 4.  At that time, she started getting really into blogging because she was home all the time, stuck.  She says, “Wow, what a community.”

Rita says, “I think a lot of us started blogging when we felt isolated.” Lisa says that her mother read books rather than blogging – and says she thinks it’s “lopsided” because it’s not interactive. “There is a community that fills a space in so many people’s lives… it’s not just what you’re putting in, it’s what you’re getting out of it.”

3:00pm: Lisa asks “Are women the only people talking about this” referring to balance.  Our audience says yes, we think they are having trouble with it… but not necessarily talking about it.  An audience member (I didn’t catch her name) says that many men are not staying home with their families. She believes it’s more of a generational thing.  Another audience member (didn’t introduce herself) says that she also thinks the roles are reversing because her husband is staying home with a sick child but her father never would have done something like that.

3:06pm: Jodi from Jodifur jumps in on the male/female balance issue – are they talking about it.  She says that her husband has worked it out with his employer to ensure he’s home to be with her family, and that at times he works from home after bedtime.  She says it was a condition of him taking the new job – and that she believes that people will talk about work-life balance if you bring it up.  Angela rebuts to say that it definitely depends on the corporate culture at the place that you work. (Me? I believe that smaller companies are more likely to work with you.)

3:09pm: Another clever, well-spoken audience member points out that technology has affected our lives in many ways, and our parents lived in an “easier” time – it was easier to shut down because the world shut down.  She says that she believes our country is getting cranky – and that we need a nap.

3:11pm: Audience member Kristin from Manic Mommies says she wants to give props to the Dads in the blogging world — she’s seeing more father being willing to speak up and talk about their struggles.  Lisa disagrees a bit, saying that she doesn’t hear from Dads very often.  However, she, and Rita, believe that there is a change starting. Author of Toast on the Ceiling says that her husband would never do it – because it would be “setting himself up for ridicule” but that for her husband – it’s not even a possibility.   Angela responds and says her husband doesn’t want to blog or reach out into the community but that he does understand the difficulty in balancing.

3:15pm: Michelle from CafeMom says their founder is a man — and that people always ask him why there isn’t a CafeDad, and that his response is “Well, it’s called ESPN.”  She says that she thinks as time goes on, we’ll see more dad bloggers. “More and more men will come blogging….The more accepting that we are of DadBloggers the more we’ll see.”

I’m not sure why we are talking about whether Dad bloggers are up and coming. Oh, good, Lisa is bringing it back around. Although this is a great change to plug my husband’s new blog! Check out Evil Emu of Doom. (he’s silly)

3:22pm: Rita and OHMommy are saying that it’s hard to respect the privacy of the people in our lives. For bloggers, she says, “it’s especially hard” because people know that, usually, we’re writing nonfiction.  Rita says that when she and her husband were both blogging, there were things that they learned about each other: “Oh, that made you mad?”  She goes on to say that you need to  make sure you present the full perspective – a “complex person, especially someone you love” in order to ensure that you aren’t hurting the feelings of the person that you are writing about.  Don’t always just “bitch that he didn’t take out the trash.”

3:24pm: Lisa says that she is writing about parenting while raising two teenage kids – and she asks him whether it’s OK to post something.  This past year her son was applying to college – and she had to ride the balance beam of talking about it without giving too much detail. “No blog post is worth a relationship… but you can’t do this without exploring certain territory.”  Rita agrees and says that she thinks it’s important to have a conversation with friends and family and say “You know I write stories, where are your boundaries?” She says “It depends on their comfort level, too” – and not just ours.

Last question of the day. Carrie says that she loves to take pictures, but that sometimes it made her feel as though she wasn’t “in” the moment. “I purposely set aside my camera and try to be in the moment.” She says she has tried to make the same commitment with her blog.  She also says that at times, if she really wants to write about something, she is lucky enough to have friends who allow her to guest-post on their blogs anonymously.

And we’re done.

So what do you think?