So uh – hey, everybody – it’s been a minute. And when I say a minute, I mean two months. And within those two months I forgot to renew my site domain and this blog wasn’t even accessible for the time being.Is

Buuuuuut…I’m back now? 

If this year has taught me anything, it’s that it’s a little bit tricky to balance everything that I do. It’s also taught me that the reasons why I choose to do certain things in my life can change. 

I shared this recently on my Bookstagram, but essentially, my relationship with reading has changed quite a bit since I started working at Barnes & Noble. And as much as I love the book community, I was influenced by it more than I realized, and was putting unneeded pressure on myself to produce book-related content, including reading a combination of new releases, ARCs, and backlist books on a set schedule. But since I started bookselling I started to pick more books up by my own volition, as well as getting recommendations from other booksellers and customers. And the desire to keep moving at my original blogging pace dwindled so much. 

I don’t think that most of the books I picked up in the past year were ones I wouldn’t have picked up without social media – in fact, I think I was much more intentional about not buying into hyped books this past year than I was any other year. But what I will say is, my reasons for blogging have changed (again), and I just can’t keep up at the pace I used to anymore. I loved my time doing so many ARC reviews, and scheduling out content, and everything that came with it. And I’ll be doing just that going forward, but at a more casual pace. I don’t plan on requesting ARCs for the time being, I don’t want to worry about review deadlines, and I don’t want to worry about content schedules. Essentially, I want to keep my blog more casual this year. I love reading, I love content creation, and I love spending time with the book community. So this year, I’m taking a more relaxed approach. 

This introduction is a novel in itself, but I’ll be doing a quick wrap-up of 2022, sharing my intentions for 2023, and sharing any other reflections that I have. I hope that 2022 treated you well and that 2023 will be even better! 💛

In 2022, I didn’t hit my reading goals.

And I’m fine with that.

Last year I set my reading goal to 100, as I usually do. But this year, I read 80. That’s still obviously a lot. Working has been a big contributor to that drop, as well as reducing pressure on myself to read as much. 

Truthfully, I still think I could read just as much this year if I wanted to. But I’d also really like to spread some of my free time among other hobbies as well, so I’m cutting back just a little bit in the new year, and if I read just as much, cool! If not, that’s okay too. 

Admittedly, my reading tracking was a bit all over the place this year. Goodreads is the most up-to-date log I have, but every year I try to make a spreadsheet so I have cool stats at the end of the year, and I realize – digital planning is just not for me. I was doing a digital declutter earlier this week and realized just how many reading spreadsheets I tried to use only to lose consistency a third into the year. And while there were still be some digital aspects to tracking my reading this year, I’m going to mostly keep that information with me in my planner. The only downside to that is no cool charts unless I import it all later – but we’ll see how I do! 

Something I returned to, however, after so, so many years – is manga. Most of the booksellers I work with enjoy manga, and after a while I started to ask for recommendations. Let’s just say that JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has consumed my life for the last six months as the hype spreads around the bookstore (and beyond), but I’m excited for the loooooooong list that I’ve been given by my friends to start next.

Other than that, it’s been my typical switching between genres. Literary fiction, fantasy, nonfiction, etc – since it seems I can’t seem to stick to one! I think that eill be more or less the same in the coming year. 

Speaking of the coming year, here are just a couple of my goals and intentions: 

2023 is Here, and I’m looking forward to a fresh start.

I set my 2023 reading goal to 52 books. I’m sure I could end up reading well above this. But either way, that is a lot of books. My hope by doing this is setting the intention of not planning out my reading so rigidly or the sake of producing content. 

On that note, I don’t necessarily want to consistently post either – just when I have something to say, such as when I finish a book and want to share my thoughts, or if there’s a topic I really want to write about (blogger burnout eventually being one of them). I enjoy content creation and marketing – I do them at both of my jobs – so I’d like to take a more relaxed stance on it when it comes to my job. 

And lastly, because there are so many things I’d like to work on, I’ll just say what I can sum up easily – I want the things I say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to be clear to me. I think that prevents the overwhelm that produces inconsistency for me as often as it did last year. It also works up my confidence, which has been a steadily improving thing. 

This post has been a bit all over the place, but I just wanted to give a thank you for those read my blog, talk to me, and have stuck around through all of my ‘I’m on my hiatus but I’m back now for real’ times. I think I’m on 5-ish years of blogging now? And I can easily say that starting this blog has brought on so much confidence for me and led me to where I am now. So for that, I say – thank you for reading! And hope you have a happy new year. 

I hope you have a happy and healthy 2023! Have you set any goals for 2023, or are there any books you’re looking forward to reading this year? Let me know! 

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