I’m sure no one else has been as devastated by the slow decline and decay of this blog as I am personally. I began blogging here with the best of intentions. I teach people every day that the key to a positive presence in social media is consistency in content and a commitment to building relationships over time. And yet I’ve been a bad, bad blogger here in the very online space which bears my name.

My negligence and neglect here at larakretler.com are by no means an indication that my interest in PR and social media is waning – on the contrary, I remain as passionate about my chosen field as ever. I continue to spend my working life embroiled in learning about, using and advocating for the latest new media applications for business communications. However, it’s become nearly impossible for me to spend as much of my off-work time focused on those topics because, well, I’ve become completely obsessed with something else since July 2009.

Some of you may be wondering if my new focus is my dog – especially since I’ve blogged about Jack and his time-intensive special needs here before – but that’s not it. Sure, Jack is still a high maintenance dog (God love him!), but he’s actually doing really well these days. Both he and his Facebook fan page are thriving.

In fact, what has been keeping me so busy/occupied/locked in a daydream since July is the happy news that my better half and I are expecting our first child at the ripe old ages of nearly 40. Not a puppy or kitten this time but a real live, honest to goodness human infant. Since learning this news, I’ve been absolutely single-minded of purpose and trying to learn anything and everything I can about pregnancy, childbirth, babies, motherhood, parenting philosophies, kids and family management. I’ve been using social media to do all this, of course, but still – it’s sidelined me from writing about social media.

And so, I’ve finally come to the decision (with the help of a social media poll, of course - thanks again, Twitter friends!) that I’ve had this poor blog on hold long enough. It’s time to embrace my change of focus instead of trying to fight or work around it. I don’t see my obsession about this new little life fading anytime in the next…oh, 21 or so years.

This doesn’t mean that I’ll never blog about PR or social media anymore, but rather that I’m opening my scope to include lots of other things – some of which I’ve mentioned above. I’m not going “full on mommyblogger” (at least, I don’t think I am) but this blog may certainly start to skew in that direction, and may also include a bit more personal content than it has in the past.

I love blogging too much to end this forum completely. Although I maintain a personal/private blog outside of the public eye, I find that I’m learning enough in my new mommyquest that it may be worthwhile to share it here. I also think I have a rather interesting, even unique, perspective on this motherhood thing that I haven’t seen addressed in other blogs – that of someone who has avoided, procrastinated and even debated never having kids at all until this relatively late date. (If you know of bloggers who come at motherhood from that view, will you let me know?)

If you choose to unsubscribe and go your own way due to this change in my content and blog direction, I respect and understand your decision. If, on the other hand, you choose to stick around to see how I’m able to weave some PR and social media content in amidst blogging about late-in-life pregnancy and the quest for cool mommyhood, I can promise that it will be far from boring. I’ll continue to try to keep a good balance between stuff that interests me personally vs. news and information you can truly use and benefit from.

And, as always, I’ll continue to look to you for feedback about what’s working and what’s not. Thanks so much for being part of this journey with me.