Today's Review: Five Years Of A Review A Day

It's been five years since I started A Review A Day. On February 15th, 2011, I signed up to Blogger, and decided to give my blog a name that tied me into the ridiculous goal of writing a review every day. I figured it would be pretty easy, at the time. I had a job at Blockbuster and enough free rentals to watch movies every day, but despite some misguided aspiration to become the next Roger Ebert, I started off the whole thing by reviewing part of the Pizza Hut order I had that night. Here, I dusted off the link.

I'm sure I've looked back at a lot of things five years after the fact and been somewhat embarrassed or disappointed, but reading that first review, even my self-deprecating self still thinks it was pretty good. I must admit I started this blog as I was pretty unsure what I wanted to do with my life, and figured I'd give this writing malarkey a go and see how it panned out. Well, I'm still here, and definitely not adorning the reviews section of any magazines or newspapers, but I'm not sure if writing is a career choice for me anyway. There have been times in these past five years it's gotten to 11:30pm and I still haven't quite come up with something to review for the day, and that can be pretty stressful. A Review A Day started out as a gimmick, and one that I capitalised on pretty early, with reviews of my wallet and chicken dippers. But creativity can be a finite resource, and many nights I would look around the room for an inanimate object to review, only to come up with nothing entertaining to say about it.

But hey, the movies were still there, and I was starting to get some attention for the odd snacks I would pick up and write a quick review for (shout outs to Kev's Snack Reviews and Grocery Gems for commenting on my stuff and exposing me to the wonderful collective of UK based snack food bloggers). But then I packed in the job at Blockbuster, and pretty much stopped watching movies, and then I went on a diet and stopped eating anything of interest. That was a tough time, and resulted in a number of reviews that weren't particularly fun to write, and were probably not that fun to read. There have been several times in these past five years that I've just wanted to give it all up, I wasn't feeling that creative spark, and it didn't seem interesting anymore.

But I kept reviewing, and most importantly I started eating snacks again. and I believe I've found my niche now. Food is one of my passions, especially the weird and wonderful kind, and it's a lot of fun to track down new products and write down my thoughts for the internet to read about (and sometimes vehemently reject and call me an idiot). Does that make me a food blogger? Possibly, but I still delve into the odd movie I watch, or get a flash of inspiration from looking at an inanimate object, and those are the kind of things I'd like to cover more here. Sure, I'll carry on with the food reviews, they're my bread and butter (sometimes literally, har har), but I started A Review A Day with a view to make it a little bit different, somewhat off the wall, and I'd like to go back to those roots. Whether or not I can do that remains to be seen, but I would like to say that despite what I perceive to be a few uninspired dips in quality, these past five years have been a blast, and I want to thank anyone and everyone who's read my reviews, all the followers I've amassed on Blogger, Facebook and Twitter (there's literally tens of you!) Here's to the next five years.

My rating: 4/5