The Little Book Spy: Happy 4-Year Blogiversary to The Little Book Spy

Four years... It's crazy to think that for four years ago today, on February 25, 2016, The Little Book Spy was born. I created this book blog when I was in my third year of high school and now I'm halfway into my third year of my college degree. Four years strong! Even though I've done this for my last three anniversary blog posts, I'm going to be looking back at my year of blogging again. I like seeing how much I've changed over the years from when I originally created my blog. So, let’s get started.

Before I begin, I just want to say thank you to everyone! Honestly, when I first started blogging, I never knew how encouraging/supportive the book community would be and I love being a part of it. I might be kind of quiet because I'm terribly shy, but I'm so glad to be a part of this big, amazing, and friendliest community. You all are honestly the best!

First, I'll start with the good. Over the last year, I was able to improve my blog with some minor upgrades. They may not seem like much to some, but I love being able to improve my blog in any way possible. In early November, I changed my comment system! After getting frustrated for the last time with the Google/Blogger comment system, since it refused to recognize that I was logged in when replying to comments, I finally changed over to have a functioning comment system using Disqus. It's honestly been such a relief to know that I don't have to fuss over my comments not working properly. My second improvement was adding the email subscription feature. Originally, I hadn't added it because I thought that the process to set this up was going to be challenging, however it was simple and super easy. Honestly, I wish that I had added it a long time ago when I first started adding the follow buttons, but you learn new things every day.

I've also been able to improve my writing. This will always be a constant struggle for me, but writing book reviews or any kind of post is HARD! I feel like I've gotten a little bit better at writing them, even though I still struggle writing them every now and then. Thankfully, with the help of some lovely blogger's posts about how to write book review (shout out to CW over at The Quiet Pond, your post is a tremendous help for me to contain my lost thoughts!) I feel like writing reviews has become easier.

Next, I need to conquer how to write different kinds of posts, which is definitely something I'm going to work on when I have more than a few hours of free time without homework getting in the way.

Now... for some of the bad. This little mess had to happen just before my blog's blogiversary... At the start of the new year, a brand new decade, and continuing into February, I ended up getting stuck in a blogger writer's block! It honestly couldn't have come at a worse time. I've been very quiet recently, not only when it comes to writing blog posts, but social media as well. I wish that I didn't have that happen, but sadly it was out of my control and there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

With school starting in the mid-January, my classes got really busy. Then I got sick the last week of January, which ruined my blogging and reading mojo. Afterwards, I had to drop my nightmare of an English class in early February and replace it with a class that could be completed during the second half of the semester. This teacher was a nightmare and her grading was very sketchy.

After everything started to calm down, I just wanted to take some time for myself and just relax because of all of that craziness. It was the best thing that I could have done. Now, I'm getting back into writing and I have a very long list of book reviews to write, search for some new bookish posts to write, and start reading again!

Overall, this last year might have had it's up and downs, but moving forward, I thought it would be good to create some new blogging goals that I hope to accomplish in my fourth year. I'm going to try to make sure they aren't similar to my New Year's goals, but I think these are a few ideas that I want to make sure I prioritize as I continue forward though my fourth year of blogging!