blog business

I gave up on work/life balance.

I gave up on work/life balance.

Hi there!  Long time no see!

Two years ago I was offered an amazing position at my kids’ school.  “Oh,” I thought naively, “nineteen hours a week?  To spend with my precious little snowflakes? And I get paid?  Well, for 19 hours a week, surely I can still manage a home and run my blog! I’ll take it!”.

Original Photo by Michael Jastremski.  Modified and used under Creative Commons License. 

The job was choice.  Sure, the hours were long and it was stressful, but it wasn’t hard.   I developed amazing relationships with the teachers, with school administration, and with parents I probably wouldn’t have interacted with otherwise. I was in the know! I got to see my kids every day. I had a shabby little office where I could keep extra gloves, hoodies, school supplies and snacks for them.  Nate would sometimes grab an extra chocolate milk and stick it on my desk if he knew I would be working through my lunch, that’s adorable!  It was an amazing two years.

I suck at saying no. I was working almost double the 19 hours the job required; my laundry was never done, there were always dishes in the sink.  I stopped updating the blog, something I considered a passion.  I needed to find balance. Balance for me meant walking away from my job. I am really fortunate in that we were not dependent on my (small) paycheck, and so I decided to refocus on household management and Parenting Geekly.

I will be posting here almost daily once again.  I will once again bring you news, reviews, opinions and commentary on all topics Parenting Geekly.

Thank you to everyone who has continued to read the blog, who has nagged me about posting more or who has shared part of your geekly life with me!  If you want to get in touch you can email me at sharon@parentinggeekly, you can follow me on facebook here, and on Twitter here.

Excelsior!

Greetings from Philadelphia!

Greetings from Philadelphia!

Greetings from beautiful Philadelphia!  I am on vacation for most of this month, and posting will be down to once (maybe twice if I have a guest post) a week.  Regular daily-ish posting will resume August 1.

 If you need a geeky parenting fix follow me on Twitter (@ParentingGeekly) or like PG on Facebook.   I’ll be updating those more frequently with vacation pics, tips and my random musings.  You can also get in touch with me via email at sharon(at)ParentingGeekly(dot)com

Facebook now charging to show you posts.

Facebook now charging to show you posts.

If you “like” Parenting Geekly on Facebook  you may have noticed that you aren’t seeing as many posts from me lately.  Facebook has recently changed the way that posts from your “liked” pages show up.  They only show the posts to those of you that recently (or often) interact with the page by “liking” the posts, posting on the wall, etc. For Parenting Geekly that is 13 of you right now.  That’s understandable, I don’t interact with most of the Facebook pages I like, but I sure do enjoy seeing them in my feed.  It’s why I “liked” them in the first place. They have recently given me the option of paying per post so that you can all see the stuff you already thought you were seeing, but paying for each post isn’t really an option for me, most small businesses, other blogs, non-profits and grassroots organizations.

I believe that Facebook should make money, and I understand that as a publicly traded company they have investors to keep happy.  I have paid money to advertise the blog, but paying per post is just cost prohibitive.  Unfortunately it’s also going to make Facebook pointless for many small organizations.

In my day job I am PR/social media consultant (plug: you can learn more/hire me here).  I specialize in helping small businesses and non-profits learn how to utilize social media.  Facebook was such a great tool for them because it was a free, easy way for them to interact with their supporters and customers.  My two-person dog walker client can’t afford to pay $15 each time they want their customers to see a post.  I do all the social media for the Skagit Valley Festival of Family Farms, a non-profit dedicated to preserving family farms and farmland.  It’s a worthy cause, and Facebook was our cost-effective way of letting people know about our event and how they can help throughout the year.  We operate on a teeny-tiny budget, there’s no way we can afford to promote our posts, not even once.

I don’t usually go into a ton of “behind the scenes” stuff, but I wanted you to know why Parenting Geekly’s Facebook feed may seem a bit more quiet.  I also wanted to share this article with you that explains how you can fix this in your feed.  It’s a bit of a pain in the butt, but I encourage you to go through the pages you like and at least make sure you are seeing posts from non-profits/causes you support.  Alternatively you can interact more with the pages you like by finding them and “liking” their most recent post or otherwise interacting with them.

Thanks to super-cool Geeky Songstress Marian Call for sharing the article on Twitter.

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