Thank you so much Eram for nominating me for the Blogger Recognition Award!

Eram has an awesome blog, Musings of a Confuzzled Reader. If you haven’t visited there you need to do so immediately! I love reading her posts!!

Rules

Thank the blogger that nominated you
Write a post to show your award
Give a brief story of how your blog started
Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers
Select 15 other bloggers you want to give this award to
Comment on each blog and let them know you’ve nominated them, and provide the link to the post you’ve created.

How this Blog Started…

I actually started blogging in 2015, but it didn’t last very long. At the time, my posting varied and there was no real focus. I wrote about my love of writing, reading, knitting, running, my kids, and pretty much whatever popped into my head.

But I burned out really fast! I was posting almost every day for months straight. I’m sure there are lots of people that can do that, but I hadn’t figured out that I could schedule posts in advance yet. So posting everyday meant I had to actually sit down and write a post every. single. day. The biggest problem was that, since I had started out posting daily, I put all kinds of pressure on myself to continue to do so. When I started not being able to keep up with it, I got really down on myself and just couldn’t seem to get back into the blogging groove.

This past summer (2018), I started my blog back up again. I came across some book blogs when I was looking for something fantastic to read and discovered what felt like a whole new world!!!

AN ENTIRE COMMUNITY FULL OF PEOPLE WHO LOVE BOOKS AS MUCH AS I DO???? Umm…. yeah, sign me up!!!!

I now have a very definite focus (BOOKS!!!!), although I still post occasionally about all the other stuff I love (and the stuff I don’t). I’ve ditched all the self-imposed guilt about not posting and actually embraced my procrastination a little bit thanks to the awesome book blogging community. (Turns out, almost every book blogger out there is a procrastinator. I think it’s because we’re easily distracted by books… and pictures of books… and Twitter… and, well, pretty much anything, really.)

Two Pieces of Advice to New Bloggers:

Don’t over do it! Blogging is something that you learn to do over time and if you try to jump in too far too fast, you won’t just be overwhelmed, but you’ll end up hating something you really should love. When I was working on my blog everyday, I eventually felt like it was a chore instead of something fun.
USE THE SCHEDULER!!!! This is something I only recently learned to do! I’m still not great at it, but when you schedule posts ahead of time, it makes life SO much simpler! You can spend one day and schedule posts for the next week or two! Trust me, that Schedule button is your friend!!!

I nominate….

YOU!!! I’m honestly not sure who all’s been tagged before (or whose been tagged too often) so if you haven’t been nominated then consider yourself CHOSEN!!! I’d love to hear how you’re blog started and what advice you give to the rest of us!!