Yesterday’s daily prompt asked us to think of our blogs as mirrors:

“What does it reveal? Consider your blog name, theme choice, design, bio, posts… what does every element tell you about yourself?”

“Photographers, artists, poets: show us REFLECTIONS”

I have been thinking about my blog name, design, layout & posts recently since the theme I had chosen became a ‘responsive theme’ and I didn’t like how my blog looked on my iPad. When I changed theme I needed to decide on a header, background image and colour scheme again, and I eventually settled on a look that was very similar to my old theme, but shows up how I want it to on my iPad 🙂

Then I got nominated for an award at Blog Awards Ireland in the category ‘Best Blog of the Diaspora‘ so I started thinking about how my blog would look to the judges, and how ‘Irish’ my blog is? How does my blog look to people judging it?  What elements might make it interesting to others?  What does my blog say about me?

I moved to London when I was 18, and after a few years back in Dublin I moved over here permanently when I was 21.  I have now lived here longer than I lived in Dublin, have two almost grown up children, who consider themselves English (it’s easier than half Irish half Serbian) and I am now married to an Englishman.

I still have an Irish passport and until a few years ago would never have felt comfortable considering a British one, flying a Union Jack or cheering a UK team, but the recent improved relations between Britain and Ireland capped off by the Queen’s visit to Dublin in May 2011 have really changed how I feel about being a citizen of the country within which I have spent all my adult life.

I qualify for a British Passport since I have lived here so long, have British children and now a British husband, and when we travel it would be nice to face the same visa processing requirements and border controls, rather than both of us being subjected to different criteria and having to complete different visa applications so I am considering applying  for a UK passport.  This is a huge admission for an Irish Girl abroad, especially living in the UK 🙂

Since being nominated for the award, I have looked at my blog with new eyes, wondering how Irish it looks.  My picture in my sidebar of Neil Condron’s painting ‘Upon Small Shoulders is both a display of the Irish flag, and below it is a link to my post about the meaning behind the painting.

My header photo is a slice from a photo I took in the Botanical Gardens in Dublin, and having visited Ireland twice this year I have posted several posts about my visits, and my impressions of Ireland post the Celtic Tiger having lived there “when Ireland was a poor country”.

So my Blog is more Irish than I thought, although when I searched Ireland as a category some posts did not appear, such as my post expressing my heartfelt sympathy to the family of Savita Halappanavar and my support for the vigils that were held in her memory.

What does my blog say about me? I have read my ‘About Me‘ page again, and am happy that it is relatively up to date, and it does link to other posts that display my personality, as do a lot of the ‘Widgets’ in my sidebar.  I post photographs with short commentaries, rather than long posts like this most of the time, probably to a great extent because as someone who suffers from Dyslexia, I struggle to compose my posts in a flowing way, as my head naturally jumps all over the place.  That is why, despite the title, I decided to leave my post about my Dyslexia as what is called a ‘Sticky Post’ on the front page of my blog, for now.  I hope I don’t offend too many judges!

This post, (like my Blog which is just over a year old), has turned out very differently than I expected.  Seeing the Photographer’s Get-out Clause in the brief for this prompt I planned on writing a reflective post about some historical photographs I found about Weybridge.  That post will have to wait for another day 🙂

For those of you expecting a photographic reflection, here’s one of the photos I planned to use in that post:

A lovely conversion of Whittet’s Mill into apartments, which was erected in 1691 as a paper mill, at Thames Lock on the River Wey (opened in 1653)

I will complete the historic reflection another day