Why do I share so much stuff online?

This was something Peter and I were discussing this weekend. It's simple really. I can go days without speaking to another human being, other than a phone call twice a day with Peter when he is travelling or a shop assistant when I purchase a coffee.

I have no one to share things with.

I 'speak' to my mum several times most days and to at least one of the kids daily, but this speaking is in the form of the written word since Skype was blocked the beginning of this month.

Peter said it was the same for him, he only has me out here in Dubai and he doesn't feel the need to share what he does on a daily basis online. I reminded him he goes to work everyday, he's in an office where people will ask about his plans for the weekend or what he did this weekend, they will ask after me, the kids, the animals, how we've settled into the new house. Me? I don't have that.

I have a couple of friends who I occasionally spend time with, but not on a regular basis. Yes I could make more of an effort, but one works and the other is always busy with various activities and I sort of feel that I get slotted into their lives, rather than them choosing to spend time with me. It's not the kind of friendships where you just pop in or pick up the phone and say 'hi, you coming round for coffee?'

I have several social media accounts, 2 face book pages. One Daily Positive where I post a photo a day and link up with a weekly post with Project 365. I've just started my 4th year doing this. I started it to make sure I got out of the house every day and initially used photo prompts that encouraged me to explore Dubai after a recent move there. Chickenruby is linked to my Instagram account and I basically post photos on there which link to twitter also of anything and everything that catch my attention, make me smile, wind me up, tell a short story or just because. I tend not to use twitter too much these days, but pop over there from time to time and catch up with a few people. I also use facebook for connecting with family and friends back in the UK and around the world, but more for commenting, messaging and I post on there maybe only once a week.

However I blog 3-4 times a week and like everything else, I go by the name of Chickenruby, so called as I used to have a chicken called Ruby.

A long time ago I made the decision to only put on my blog what I get up to, hence my blog is all about me.
From time to time this has caused some discussion amongst family members ‘what about me? Are we not important in your life?
Well of course they all are. I’m a daughter, sister, mother, aunt, friend amongst many other things. A lot of what I do in life involves being one or many of the above. It also means a lot of what happens to me and what I do involves other people. Mostly my husband, my children and my mother.

I have a lot going on in my life right now and I'm not coping very well with it, physically and mentally. I had pneumonia all through the summer, autumn and now into the winter. My dad died last summer and I'm still struggling with this. My health is holding me back, I'm still doing stuff, getting stuff done, dealing with day to day life, even going to the pub in the evenings, but I'm slow, breathless and struggling physically.

There's an awful lot going on in my life and as usual I blog about it. I blog about parenting and my travels and adventures with my dog Bob. But I blog about what I get up to, how the above affects me, what I'm doing to support the teen with finding a job, helping my mum with selling her home and buying a new flat, about dealing with my health, about how my kids moving abroad has affected my life,

I try not to blog about what other people are doing that causes me grief, about their actions or lack of actions affects me, how their crisiticisms of what I'm doing or not doing hurt me. How they feel I waltz in and take over, how they will tell me how I make them feel, how I upset them, how I don't take their feelings into account, how I could just buy the teen a car, how the teen in their opinion isn't making anough of an effort, but if I tell them how their actions and words are in my opinion making things worse, how their solutions are easy to say but not actually practiable, they get hurt and upset and it just makes all the above worse and harder for me to cope with.

I know I choose to live abroad, but others choose to live where they do also, and whilst I dont critise their choice of where to live, I feel they critise my choice of where I choose to live my life. Whilst I've had a whole world of opportunities opened up for me, I also feel that when they say as 'one door closes another one opens' that for me it feels like 'as one door opens and I go through it, it then closes firmly behind me and I have no choice to go back, only to move on and I'm not always comfortable with going forward into to the unknown.

So basically I share stuff online to interact, to get a response, for feedback that I'm actually doing ok, for contact with the outside world. I can't just pop in to see people, but I can spam their timelines with what I'm up to.

Why do you share what you do online?