As of today, I've been a book blogger for the last three years. My blog is officially three years old today. Three Whole Years! My blog is growing up so fast and I have no idea where the time has gone. I'm shocked, to say the least, that my blog has gotten to this point. I never imagined what my blog would look like when I first started three year ago today. Never in a million years did I think I would be blogging and talking about the books that I love. For this anniversary post, I want to reflect on what I've learned over the last year in my blogging journey. I feel like I'm repeating what I did last year, but I'm narrowing it down to five points to make sure I don't repeat myself from last year because I feel like as a book blogger I've grown so much and have changed how I've done things, so let's begin.
1. Reading Outside My Comfort Zone
This one has been something that I've just recently started to change in my reading habits. I had been in a terrible reading slump from August of 2017 to December of 2018. That's almost a year and a half worth of reading slumps that just kept coming back worse and worse every time I picked a new book, even if I did liked the book. I ended up getting to the point where I almost didn't enjoy reading like I used to because I kept trying to read books in the same genre. After a while, I ended up getting sick of them. It's not that the author who wrote the book didn't do a good job, but when you read a story with the same concept over and over again, it can and will get dull.
So this year (2019) I tried to read books outside the normal for me. To be honest, it's probably the best thing that I've done. I haven't read as many books this year (curse you college homework), but I realize that trying new books to read is great! Two of the books that I've read this year so far are my favorites, one of them being in a series that I've been reading one after the other (I'm talking about the A Court of Thorns and Roses series which I've been addicted to reading), and it's actually gotten me interesting in reading again.
2. Book Review's Aren't Everything
After writing a ton of book reviews, I want to step away from doing them as often as I had in the past. For a while, that was literally all that I would post. I've come to the conclusion that I need to write about different things and expand the bookish topics that I write about to keep everything I talk about new and fresh. I know it gets boring reading the same type of posts over and over again. Also, when you've been in a reading slump as bad as mine, you kind of have to get creative on what you're going to post. Tags become repetitive if you mention the same few books over and over again, which is why I'm stepping away from them too. I currently have a list of blog posts that I want to write and talk about, but they're also out of my comfort zone based on the topics. I'm nervous about the idea of writing them, but I'm ready to take that next step in my blogging journey and explore new things to write about.
3. Be Creative When Writing Bookish Blog Posts
This one is tied in with my second point, but I'm going to go into a little bit more detail. I've always wanted to write different kind of bookish blog posts here, but I never really knew how. I've seen other's write them, and if you're one of those people you make it seem easy and please teach me you're ways! But, I'll be honest and say I'm hesitant to write about certain bookish topics. The reason why I hesitate on writing them is actually very simple: I don't know how anyone would respond. However, this year I'm going to try to write new kinds of bookish posts that I'm comfortable writing. I currently have one in the works about Balancing College and Reading, so if anyone is a current college student and trying to balance reading time and college (more like homework time), I hope I can write a post that is helpful. Other than that, I'm looking forward to writing new and improved bookish posts!
(Also, if anyone has suggestions on what I could write about, leave the idea's below and I'll add them to the list and possibly write about them!)
4. Blogging Burnout is Real
We've all hit that point where we don't want to touch or work on our blog when we know we should. I'm extremely guilty of this because I lost that spark for a little bit. I wasn't going to quit or anything, but I didn't know what to do anymore. I kind of ran out of ideas, my reading was slow, and I wanted to spend my spare time playing games (which if you're a gamer like me, games are addicting and an easy way to distract yourself). With college being important, blogging got put on the back burner and I rarely posted and when I did, it was sporadic. I was on the receiving end of college homework burnout, reading slumps, and blogging burnout because of the previous two problems. Even when college wasn't crazy, I still opted to do something else with my time instead of work on my blog. After three years of blogging, I've come to realize that there are times when it's okay to step away from blogging because I definitely needed a break. Even though it didn't seem like I took a break, I did and it was well needed.
5. The Only Person You're Trying to Impress is Yourself
For a while, I wasn't happy with my blog. I went through phases of wanting to change everything about my blog, but I couldn't. I realized that I was holding my blog to such a high standard, it was actually making me dislike what I loved doing. During my "blogging break," I realized that everyone has their own blog that is unique, mine included, that makes each and every blog special in their own way. I love the what I've been able to do with my blog and I hope that it'll stay that way for a long time.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you all so much for reading. I hope to have many more wonderful years of blogging, to meet many more amazing book bloggers/readers as I continue in my blogging journey, and to remember why I started this blog in the first place: to talk about and share books that I love and want to support.
Until next time...
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