It’s very easy when you begin to do reviews on your blog to get sucked into the sheer fun of marveling at how companies send you free stuff just for trying a product out and blogging your opinion on it. I never could understand why so many more seasoned bloggers weren’t doing reviews on their blogs, because I know it wasn’t for lack of them getting daily pitches in their inbox. Honestly? I figured these bloggers felt it was beneath them to do reviews (unless it was maybe for a huge brand name and a huge appliance or new car was in it for them). I understand that review blogging just isn’t what some people want to do with their blogs, because if you’ve ever done a review or headed up a blog carnival then you already know the massive amount of work involved in getting that off the ground. Unless your blog is specifically for the purpose of reviewing products, it’s very hard to balance the personal with the reviews. Sooner or later one will take more precedence over the other and your readers will figure it out. It can cause you to look greedy, cause your content to tank in quality, and even cause you to lose readers. It can be a tough call because you know that a particular giveaway or review will bring in huge amounts of blog traffic, but at the same time you can also compromise everything I just mentioned.

I would roll my eyes as big-name blogger after big-name blogger warned us little bloggers that we were ruining it for everyone…that everytime we agreed to review something as lowly as a chip clip we were making all bloggers look bad. We should be getting compensated for ads and reviews because our blogs were worth it. We shouldn’t accept every little pitch that came along. We should be discriminating about these companies we chose to work with. I never could wrap my mind around the fact of why these big name bloggers cared so much.

Perhaps because they really do know what they speak of.

A few weeks or so ago I was pitched with a review idea that was sponsored by a major oil company. I declined because I just didn’t have the time to do this review and I don’t have that particular gas station in our town anymore so it wasn’t even relative. Guess what happened right after I turned down this pitch? There is now a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico courtesy of…you guessed it, the company involved in the pitch I received. My heart is very heavy for the lost lives, the lost livelihoods, and the environmental havoc this has caused so far.

Had I blogged this particular review, would I have been proud to have that on my blog right now? Would I have been professional enough to address it after the fact or just hope it got buried beneath other blog posts and nobody called me out on it and made me uncomfortable?

Another blogger recently had her blog that she works very hard on and her good name used for the purposes of illegally acquiring baby products…expensive baby products at that, with the promise she would review them and post about them. She never pitched the particular company and now has the headache of clearing her name (which she has) and possible legal actions against the person who did it to deal with. I never would have imagined someone could possibly use my own blog to get “freebies”. I was simply stunned reading about the details of how it all happened while she was none the wiser.

The point of this rambling post it to simply say that I now see the importance of knowing your worth as a blogger. I see why forming relationships with companies might have ramifications you never even think about while innocently accepting a product to review. I now see how easy it is to have your online blogging identity used in ways never imagined. It has made me take a long, hard look at how I will conduct myself from here on out. I absolutely will continue to work with PR and advertising here on my blog, but I do feel wiser and more confident in approaching those decisions and how they will be made from here on out.

I’d be willing to bet that almost any blogger has ever wondered if he or she was spending too much time on the computer. While blogging can be time consuming when you are really putting a whole lot of time into posts, reviews, and other blogging obligations, there is also Facebook and other social media sites vying for attention. I’ve never been much of a multi-tasker when it comes to my time online and about mid-March I felt it coming. I suddenly experienced blogger’s burnout. I can’t blame blogging entirely, though. Our life at home suddenly got busier with E.B. starting t-ball. Spring fever also set in. The kitchen calender suddenly had important things on almost everyday. Life happened and I needed to regroup.

Blogging is a maddening thing to me. I’m pretty sure I started out with good intentions as far as keeping it simple. Then it spiraled into reviews and giveaways. Then it felt competitive and like a chore, constantly trying to keep your blog on the radar in the mom blogosphere and beyond. It was never enough and I didn’t have the luxury of so much extra time to build this blog into what I wanted and steer it into the direction I wanted it to go. Looking back, I feel like it’s a huge hodge-podge of stuff, some posts with actual merit and some with nothing but fluff and filler. Trying to stay on that hamster wheel was literally getting me nowhere.

So I stepped off.

The time off has felt good. I felt guilty at first, but the business of life took over and filled my time that used to be spent blogging. I’ve thrown myself into keeping house, being a “ball mom”, working, and o.k., even goofing off by watching terrible reality shows and playing Facebook games. School and ball are slowly winding down and it suddenly occurred to me last night that I miss this. I miss blogging. Not the crazy review deadlines and enormous amounts of email to answer, not the angst over missed opportunities and keeping up with the blogging Jones’….just the blogging and the reading other blogs and commenting. Just the bare bones basics.

Blogging is my time, it’s what excites me, and it’s my creative outlet. Completely stopping isn’t an option, but neither is overload.