New Year, New WAHM-BAM!

If I had the time, I’d do a redesign to go with the rethink, but…

As I mentioned in my Christmas post, 2010 is going to be a very busy year for work. As you may also have noticed, I had a baby a few months ago, which oddly (who’d a thunk it, heh?) also decreases my free time. And I have a 3-going-on-13-year-old who needs lots of my attention, not to mention a husband and dog, who would probably both appreciate the occasional rub down.

So… I have decided that I will not be doing any more reviews. I’ll keep doing them for The Great Toy Guide, because they have a pattern and don’t require me to try to cleverly incorporate a product into an interesting and informative or funny post. But I’ll not be doing any here. I have a couple left that I still haven’t written up, which I will do, but after that, no more. (Unless someone wants to send me to the Caribbean for a fortnight; I might relax the rules for that!)

This is in no way down to feeling that doing reviews is wrong. I loved doing reviews, and not just because it meant I got a few freebies. I enjoyed the feeling of importance being courted by PR bods gave me. I enjoyed the different style of writing required. I enjoyed the challenge of trying (often unsuccessfully, let’s admit it) to make a sponsored post seem readable and commentable on. And I have absolutely no problem with other people writing reviews or not writing reviews as they see fit.

But since a couple months before Eleanor was born I’ve been feeling review guilt. I’ve felt guilty about writing an ‘ordinary’ post, when I’ve had a backlog of reviews to write. And I don’t want to feel like that. I want to return to just writing posts as they come to me. Writing about whatever strikes me as strange, funny, interesting, odd, or just plain writable on any given day. Not writing out of obligation to PR people or companies.

I’m also going to start writing on Mummy and Daddy Clark again, too. That will be the place for putting photos and videos of the girls and for the weekly or monthly updates that say fascinating (cough) things about pooping and sleeping habits and first words and the like. It will probably also be the place for reporting cute things the girls do or say, though I can’t promise to leave that off here entirely! Feel free to follow it too, but bear in mind that it’s target audience is doting grandparents – and not just any doting grandparents, either, but two particular ones who don’t get to see their granddaughters as much as they’d like.

WAHM-BAM! will go back to being mostly about general parenting issues, thoughts and stories, with occasional moans or celebrations about the challenges and rewards of working from home. That’s not to say I won’t mention the girls or use their pictures to illustrate posts. It would probably be very difficult not to, really.

We also have plans for the ‘corporate blog’, too, which I may or may not link to when it’s ready. But, as you can see, there’s going to be enough writing to be done without including reviews, too.

So, on the penultimate day of the first decade of the 21st century (I think – or is next year the last year of the decade?), I wish you all a happy and fulfilled New Decade and hope you will keep reading the rather back to basics new WAHM-BAM!