{Aside} 100 Followers – A Retrospective On Starting This Journey

So this morning I woke up to a little notification that I’d hit 100 followers on my blog! It’s a small number compared to the people who have been blogging any length of time, but for a newbie to the community like myself it gave me a little bit of a lift for the rest of the day.

It also made me want to kind of go back and discuss my reasoning behind starting this journey in the first place; how I think it’s been going so far and where I hope to see it go in the future.

Why Blogging? 

I’ve talked a little bit before about my schedule outside of blogging and how it’s jam packed on a daily basis. I often felt like I hardly had time to think, let alone to read. Yet when I sat back and really examined how I was spending what free time I managed to scrape up – there was an awful lot of time spent mindlessly browsing social media, or trapped within a Netflix binge session.

So I made a choice in January of this year: give up the silly and superficial stuff. Using social media is okay in moderation, but no more spending hours on it. I can watch an episode or two of something with Mr. Bastion, or a movie in the evening, but otherwise my free time goes to reading. When I finish an assignment for school, I read. When I do cardio at the gym, I read on my kindle. Suddenly I’m a reading machine!

The decision to blog has been on my mind for years really, but I’m using it now as a motivation to continue with this hobby and I’m so glad I took the leap!

Expectation Vs. Reality

My expectations going into this process were really simple: read a LOT of books during 2017, and share my thoughts with lots of new friends! 

I read 30 books over the course of 2016. When it was time to set my 2017 goal – which was before I’d fully committed to this blogging venture – I set my goal to 50 books for the year, just to give myself something new to shoot for. That being said, I’m already at 28 books read so far this year, so I’ll probably be upping my year-long goal to 100 very soon.

The main driving factor behind all of this though is the fact that I basically have one person in my real life that I can regularly talk to about my love for books, and that’s one of my older sisters. She lives close by, and we’re best friends. I love reading slightly more than she does though, so what usually happens is I find a book I love, lend it to her and wait for her to read it, and then we gush over our thoughts on it together. I’ve found that making friends in the blogging community really satisfies that part of myself that I’ve never been able to really talk about before. You people get me, and that’s what I love about this community. 

One thing that has exceeded my expectations is just how welcoming the blogging community is! I feel like I’ve made so many friends since January! It’s truly amazing and inspiring. You guys inspire me to read more, and to continue growing as a reader and a reviewer.

Also, I had no idea just how quickly review requests for ARCs from publishers and authors would start rolling in. That’s been amazing to me!

So, What’s Next? 

Hopefully I’ll be writing another one of these updates when I hit 500 followers! I plan on continuing this journey with as few expectations as possible outside of making more friends and growing within the community. I hope you’ll continue on this journey with me!

xoxo

How do you think I’m doing so far? What would you like to see more of on this blog? Less of? How has blogging exceeded your expectations?