On 8 Years of Blogging

Hello everyone!

This past week WordPress was kind enough to inform me that I have been blogging here for eight years now.

I thought it would be fun to do a recap since the blog has changed so much in that time.

The Beginning

I vaguely remember starting this blog in 2015. I didn’t have any specific goal in mind in doing so and at first, I didn’t post too much. I think it was about once a month for a long time. It was always a book review, too. I was reading a lot of science fiction back then, as well as literary fiction and memoirs.

About a year in, I began mixing in personal pieces and the blog became a real smorgasbord. If I recall correctly, I was even posting about podcasts which were starting to become a thing I was (and still am) really interested in.

Everything at Once

In 2017 I delved into lifestyle blogging. I even began making my own graphics on Canva to use here and on Pinterest. I had too much time on my hands and again, was posting a bit of everything. But that fire burned out pretty quickly once I began working in libraries. I soon realized what I really wanted to showcase here was my passion for books and reading.

I would say 2018-2019 were my most active years blogging. I posted multiple times a week, which I can’t imagine doing now. At the time I was really making an effort to read across genres and age groups. This goal stemmed from both the fact that being knowledgeable about books would aid my career and also from the fact that I wanted to immerse myself in all types of literature.

Then I began reading mysteries and everything changed. I credit Mary Higgins Clark, Laura Griffin, and Robert Galbraith for unlocking this new passion. Suddenly that was all I wanted to read, and that desire has only grown with time.

I stopped using my own graphics around 2020 when I decided to redesign my blog. It took weeks to go back and cull through my old posts to pick and choose what should stay and what should go. I also decided to change graphics and wordings and pretty much everything on my website.

I really like a simple, clean look and letting the book covers speak for themselves. Whenever I post something that doesn’t require a book cover, I use the WordPress free photo library to find an image that speaks to me but is still understated.

Here and Now

Now I post at least once a week and while I dabble in Top Ten Tuesday and Let’s Talk Bookish, my posts are usually a simple book review. I still read across genres, my most frequent remain books that fall into the mystery category. In my own writing, that’s where I lean to as well. I would say that after eight years, blogging is more comfortable now that I have a better idea of what I want to read and write and post about.

My advice to new bloggers would be to find a small handful of things you’re passionate about and focus only on that, rather than trying to cover many topics and be many different things at once. As soon as I managed to do that, blogging became more enjoyable rather than something I had to figure out.

Thank you to those who have followed along whether it’s been since 2015 or more recently, I love chatting with you all about books and life and everything in between.

Next month is my birthday, I have some fun things planned, and personally I am just very excited about some creative projects I have in the works.

Here’s to another eight years!