As of today I’ve been blogging for exactly two years.
By Joey Gannon from Pittsburgh, PA (Candles) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons.
If I were to play the bibliotherapist and prescribe myself just one book from my Kindle backlog for today, it would be this one:
I am terrible about comparing myself to others on social media: number of likes, number of followers, level of engagement, etc. I so often think that other bloggers are involved in interesting projects or leading the way on various initiatives, whereas I’m just plodding along. It’s hard to ignore the quantitative indicators and just be content doing what I do.
Still, ideas keep coming, so I’ll roll with it.
Thank you to everyone who takes time out for my blog.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
Lovely post!! Happy birthday! Love the bibliotherapist idea, what a brilliant touch. I think this is a great blog!
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I appreciate your enthusiasm 🙂
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Your blog is fabulous. Extremely high quality. I love it! Please don’t stop.
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I don’t intend to.
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Well done happy blog birthday.
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Thanks, Ali.
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Happy blog birthday, Rebecca. Years ago I remember reading something by Oliver James in which he counseled against comparing yourself to other – we always compare up not down. Wise words, and that was before social media really took off!
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I’ve thought about unfollowing/unfriending some of the most popular bloggers and Goodreads users for that reason — they make me feel bad about myself — but then worry I’d be getting a blinkered view. Plus, it’s not their fault; it’s my problem.
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That would be a shame if you enjoy them but it’s worse to feel bad about yourself. Always worth remembering that everyone puts their best face on for social media, and for what it’s worth I enjoy your posts!
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Happy Anniversary! I wouldn’t worry too much about comparing yourself to others; it’s rarely productive and usually not fun. 🙂
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You’re quite right.
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As everyone else is saying, yours is a great blog. I only read two book blogs and yours is one of them. What higher accolade can you have 😉 ?
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I will certainly take that as a compliment! Yours is the only travel blog I follow / one of only a few nature-y ones besides my husband’s.
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Oh thanks. You’re a great blogging team!
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Its hard to resist the temptation to compare but unless you are blogging to generate an income all those stats dont matter too much – the thing that does matter is whether you are enjoying what you’re doing
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That’s a good point. Thank you for reminding me. Any deadlines and obligations I associate with my blog (apart from maybe blog tours) are self-imposed; this is something I do for myself, as a way of synthesizing all my reading and other happenings in my life.
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Congratulations! And you know what? You’re the only person I know who reads more books per annum than I do. (Well, the only person whom I know FOR SURE does. Because I’ve done the math, because obviously I’m not at all competitive either.) So there you go!
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The year I was your age I only read 88 books. My reading really took off, ironically, when I got a full-time (but extremely undemanding) job at a library in London and started commuting. We lived in various places, so my commute ranged from 30 mins each way to 1 hr 15 each way. In that period of my life I would regularly read 180-200 books per year, and it’s just grown from there, mostly as a function of how much time I put into reading rather than getting any faster at it. In fact, I realized today that I still literally hear every word in my head, so I’m sort of limited by the pace of fast-ish human speech. If I tried to just look at the words and not hear them, I think I’d be in danger of skimming and not seeing every one. Do you have an opinion thereon?
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Commuting has been great for my reading. I’ve always been fast, but now I have great chunks of time to get through pages. Also, I always have options for what to read next, which wasn’t always the case in the past—looking at my reading journal from my high school years is fascinating because of how obvious it is that I had no set plan; I was just wandering around the landscape of literature picking up things that looked cool. It turned out well, but there was very little structure to it. These days I generally have a pretty good sense of what my reading month is going to involve.
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What amazes me is that you work full-time, read all that you do AND are writing a novel. I feel like if I were in your shoes I’d just spend all my free time reading because the writing would just seem too much like hard work.
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Honestly, sometimes it does and it is, and on those days I don’t write much of anything. I’ve found this is actually okay; to begin with I was afraid to stop because I thought I’d never start again, but it turns out that stopping for a few days is how I sort out plot points (in the absence of planning ahead, which I don’t do because…I just don’t. Not my style!)
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It’s so interesting how different writers have different routines and rituals. I’ve always wondered how to keep one’s reading from influencing one’s personal style.
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Happy Blirthday!! Don’t we all feel that way about other people’s blogs?
I love the number of books you read, and you have fun creative content! Thank you for being around. 🙂
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Thanks, Naomi. I appreciate the vote of confidence. You’ve been one of my most loyal followers!
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Thanks, everyone, for your encouraging comments. I had wanted to end this blog on a positive note, but just wasn’t feeling it yesterday. After an evening of productive writing over a G&T, though, I felt much better 😉
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I’m a bit late (because I follow too many blogs!) but happy anniversary and ditto to all that’s been said. Yours is a recent addition to my overlong blogroll. I know I’m going to have cut it down – or stop reading every post from every blog – but when that time comes, yours won’t be one of those dropped. I really enjoy your posts 🙂
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Thanks, Sandra, that’s kind of you. It’s hard to strike a balance. I felt overwhelmed by the number of book blogs I followed, so switched most to a weekly digest. Now I’m just overwhelmed on Mondays! I know I post a lot, and so I understand that people will probably pick and choose which of my posts to read and respond to. Luckily, there’s a lot of variety in what I post, so there *should* be something here for everyone 😉
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Glad to hear that the productive writing and G&T boosted your spririts (along with the many encouraging message you’ve received): that can certainly help things along!
Best with your writing – here and elsewhere – in the years ahead: may there be many more celebrations!
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Belatedly – happy blogbirthday! I’ve been very lax in posting on my own blog lately – and could despair at how my stats plummet – but I’m not worried. I’d encourage you not to worry either for your blog is super.
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Congrats!
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