2nd Blogiversary + What to Expect for 2017

Let me be perfectly honest with you - I have absolutely no idea how I managed to make it to my 2nd blogiversary. When I started this, I had absolutely no idea that I would be able to keep up with this for so long, and when I started college, things changed again.

So, let's take a quick look at what 2016 had in store and what 2017 is going to look like.

1. I read 31 books and did reviews for 30 of them. The only reason why I didn't review that 30th book is because I don't think I could do it properly, considering I DNF-ed it AND it was a book for school. Yeah, please don't tell my professor I did that.

2. I started the Around the World in 52 Books Challenge and didn't manage to complete it because I didn't read enough books for it, but I'm gonna touch on that a little more later.

3. I hit my 1 year BookTube anniversary and did absolutely nothing about it.

4. I read and posted far less than I wanted to.

5. I realized in December that I somehow went into a reading slump the moment college started and therefore didn't read at all for leisure.

6. I received my first ARC from the author herself, which she very nicely sent to me and signed.

7. I was contacted by an author to read the first book in his series, which now has been contracted to continue, with the sequel being released some time this year.

Conclusion: 2016 didn't go the way I wanted it to in terms of my reading life. I definitely could have made more of an effort, but I allowed myself to slack a lot because I started college. But there were also plenty of good things that happened and I'm glad that I got the chance to experience it and have that opportunity.

So, here's what I'm gonna lay down for 2017. I'm going to set very realistic goals for myself for this year and give myself a lot of room for slacking off, which will very likely happen.

As I continue adjusting to college life and start my second semester of freshman year, I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen to my reading life. Thankfully, I have two friends who are gonna help keep me accountable and on track with my reading, but that really means I'm gonna have to be more conscious with setting aside more time for my reading life.

I also really want to start back up with my BookTube channel again, which I have also neglected since starting college. I have all my camera stuff with me, so I can actually film, edit, and upload, but honestly, I never did it. I just let college be my excuse for not filming anything in 5 months and completely missing my 1 year anniversary with that channel.

What this all means is that I'm going to really start working toward reading more and posting more on all my platforms. I have yet to decide whether or not to put myself on a schedule so that I'm reading and updating you guys with more content on a more regular basis, but what I do know is that I've tried that before and it hasn't really worked out for me. It works for a couple of months, but then I burn out really quickly and I start losing motivation to keep up with the schedule. However, that doesn't mean that I'm gonna allow myself to slack off on reading and posting content, I just can't say for sure how regular it will be.

I think that a more manageable goal for this year will be to read 30 books as opposed to 50, like I usually try to read. In the past two years, I've been able to hit that goal, but 2016 was not the year for that. Too much was changing in my life for me to be able to keep up with a reading goal like that, and while I enjoyed a good number of the books I read last year, I definitely wanted to have read more and enjoyed more of the books I was reading.

I don't think anything is really going to change here in terms of what content I post. What I've realized is that I'm a lot better at writing my reviews and getting them up than I am at any other kind of written content, so I'm going to stick to that. There aren't going to be any changes in the name of the blog or how things work, so really, everything stays the same as it was last year, hopefully with more posts.

If you want to see other stuff that I talk about, you can take a look at my BookTube channel, which isn't restricted solely to books, though that might change this year. I'm not sure how I want to changes things as of right now, but I'm gonna be making changes there too. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly my content will be on that channel, so bear with me as I do my best to sort things out.

As usual, all of my social media can be found in the About Me section of the blog, including my email address for business inquiries. I will definitely try to update more this year, but I make no concrete promises to anything.

That wraps things up here, at least for now. I'm looking forward to what this new year is going to bring in terms of opportunities and experiences, and I'm excited to see what's going to happen 🙂