Blogging had never really been on Brandy Reid’s mind until an epiphany came while she was getting ready for bed one night.
“I had seen other blogs before, but I never really thought of blogging myself,” she says. “Then this crazy idea came to me to have this anonymous blog and it would be called Insane Mamacita’s Musings.”
Reid, a married Flin Flon mother of two, went with it. Now, four years later, blogging remains an important part of her life.
She initially kept the blog anonymous and off of her own Facebook page, though she used other social media outlets like Twitter to advertise it.
Lighthearted
In the early stages, Reid kept the content fairly lighthearted.
“At first it was just funny stories about what the kids were doing and what my life was like as a chaotic stay-at-home mom,” she says. “But then Bell Let’s Talk Day came up and I started [blogging] about [my own] mental illness, which is anxiety. I started to promote more serious topics.”
Reid went on to write posts on topics ranging from growing up with a mother with alcoholism to her brother’s transition from female to male.
“It was evolving,” Reid says.
By 2013, Reid felt that the title Insane Mamacita’s Musings was no longer a good fit, so she changed it to My Unwritten Life.
“I was writing more personal [posts] and writing about my anxiety and mental illness,” she says.
Reid came to see that including the word “insane” in the title was offensive to some.
“It wasn’t meant to offend anyone,” she says. “It was just supposed to be funny.”
Now as the blogger behind My Unwritten Life, Reid doesn’t stray from topics that suit her chosen title.
On the cheery side of things, Reid started a Project Happy blog trend in which she posted joyous moments throughout her week.
Some of those moments involved her two sons, Big Boy and Little Man, as she refers to them in her blog. Her posts details glowing reports from parent-teacher meetings and Big Boy scoring a goal in hockey.
Reid says Project Happy helped her appreciate life’s blessings.
“Every time I wrote one of these posts, I thought, ‘Wow, I really did have a lot of good things going on throughout the week that I would have never thought about,’” she says.
Getting personal
On another personal note, Reid has blogged about her transgendered brother, who was born her sister.
Reid’s first post about her brother was called “My Brother Used To Be My Sister.” It told the story of her sister transitioning into her brother and the struggles he faces.
That post brought Reid positive feedback and encouragement from friends and strangers alike.
A more recent post, called “Ignorance Is NOT Bliss,” spoke of Reid’s brother and the struggle he faces in public washrooms.
Reid’s brother had taken to his Facebook page in support of Bill C-279, which would allow for public, gender-neutral bathrooms. The federal bill passed Parliament in 2013 but hasn’t cleared the Senate.
“My brother was having trouble with public washrooms and which one he should go in,” says Reid. “He made a status about [it on Facebook] that if the bill doesn’t go through, it was going to be difficult. A mutual friend posted a rude comment and it upset myself and my brother.”
Even though “Ignorance Is NOT Bliss” was one of her more controversial posts, Reid says it got a positive response.
“I got such great reactions from people saying, ‘Thank you for bringing this to light,’” she says. “So many people loved it.”
In time the post made its way to the original rude commenter, unfortunately resulting in the loss of a friendship.
“Everybody else was really supportive,” says Reid, who is still disappointed by the loss of a friend.
In late 2012, Reid was nominated for the Canadian Blog Awards for a post called “Our Dirty Little Secret.” It told the story of her mother’s alcoholism and her death.
Anonymous
Though Reid wrote about personal struggles, she continued to operate her blog anonymously.
Then she joined a blogging group that started a month-long challenge in which the first topic was to write about each member’s hometown.
Reid had never revealed she was from Cranberry Portage. She had stuck to generic geographical descriptions, such as “northern Canada” or simply “Manitoba.”
Reid says her post about Cranberry Portage was well received.
“Once it hit Cranberry Portage folk, it was being shared through multiple places,” she recalls. “They loved it. And I was proud of that one. Saying where I was originally from was a big deal for me. That was my biggest views yet.”
Reid’s Cranberry Portage post got her more than 1,500 views. She had gone viral – or so she felt.
She says other bloggers can receive upwards of 15,000 views in a single day, but being a small-time, at-home blogger, she was quite pleased.
Reid’s blogging experiences have allowed her to reach out to different groups and people all over the world.
Through a tracking website, she is able to see where her blog visitors are located.
“It’s tricky when you’re looking at stats because you don’t know if they are true visitors [or just spam],” she says.
It’s hard to know for sure, but Reid says the tracking website has shown visitors from as far away as Japan, Singapore and China.
Most of Reid’s followers are from Canada, with a few from the US.
While her posts have gone worldwide, Reid has kept her blogging career within Canada.
She has attended BlissDom Canada – a social media conference for bloggers and brands – two years in a row.
Reid’s first trip to BlissDom Canada was in 2013 in Mississauga, Ontario. The conference held workshops and sessions on various ways to grow as a blogger, and included an ethics class.
No plans
Reid had no plans to become a writer of any kind. Instead she had hoped to become a teacher.
After graduating from high school, she went to university with the goal of teaching. She completed her first year but got homesick in her second year and was unable to finish.
Reid later went back to school with the aim of becoming a web designer. After her mother passed away, she was unable to continue school.
Over the years, Reid has worked in her father’s sawmill as well as in the school system. She was an educational assistant before a librarian posting became available at Cranberry Portage’s Frontier Collegiate Institute.
“I found out that was really my passion,” she says.
But as mother with a young family, Reid found it difficult to live in Flin Flon and keep working in Cranberry Portage.
She gave up her position and became a stay-at-home mom, though she recently accepted a position with the Northern Health Region.
Just as blogging was never in her plans, Reid once had no designs on writing a novel. Now that she has caught the writing bug, she hopes to someday do just that.
“I want to at least try to do one,” she says. “About what? I don’t know yet. I’m hoping it comes to me one night like Twilight came to Stephenie Meyer. I’m hoping that happens for me. Not that I want to be the next best-selling author, but just to have something out there with my name on it.”
Along with writing a novel and a children’s book, Reid hopes to travel more and see continued success for her blog.
For Reid, key to that success is ensuring a continued balance between family, work and writing.
“I want to still enjoy it,” she says. “I don’t want it to turn into a job.”
Reid’s blog can be found at www.myunwrittenlife.com.
