If you’ve been reading me for more than a few weeks, you’ll know that I was very kindly offered a free facial by Patrick Mahue of Stillness Manor after I mentioned my visit to the hotel and spa a short while ago.

That really took me surprise! What a fabulous offer, hey?

Anyway, after that, Patrick offered me a second free facial so that I could take somebody else along with me. In his offer, he stated: “It will cost you another entry.” When I read that, my initial reaction was to get quite excited about receiving another freebie.

And then I thought about it some more …

Hmmmmmmm

Some of the things I kinda-almost-sorta told myself when I started this blog was that it would

a) be 100% personal – I would only write about things that I experience directly and
b) never generate an income – I never want to turn this into “work”, which means I should avoid any and all types of financial incentive to blog.

That means I NEVER want to write anything for someone other than myself. Knowing in advance that I’m being rewarded or paid to write anything here would totally go against why I do this. I do this for me, for fun. I never ever want to make money from this site, that’s not why I started blogging and I know that the minute I get “paid” to write, it’s going to create pressure and stress that I don’t need. I make my money elsewhere on the Internet and this is the one space on the web that I don’t have to worry about doing that. As soon as I start writing for someone else, it’s not going to be mine anymore and it won’t be personal. I really don’t want to risk that. And I definitely don’t want to jeopardize the one thing that I look forward to doing every day.

So, with all that in mind, I’m going to thank Patrick for his kind offer of a second free facial if I write another post about Stillness Manor, but decline to do so. I am more than happy to write about my own free facial after I experience it tomorrow but I am not going to write for a dangling carrot 🙂

You may think I’m being foolish, that I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth. That’s ok – I can understand if you do. I just feel differently …