From Hobby to Snobby

Bookish Musings is a feature here at Beautiful Bookish Butterflies that allows one of us to share our thoughts and opinions, talk and discuss things happening in the book and blogging community or share a personal book related issue we have. Today, Amanda is talking about admiting to wanting to change things she's been on her blog. The post that inspired this one was on Cuddlebuggery by Steph, and she talked about how blogging has become less of a hobby and more like an unpaid job, catered to entertaining other bloggers, which reminded me of my blogging journey, which reminded me of something I did as a child and it's heartbreaking to see the resemblance between the two..

6 year old Amanda makes a promise to herself that she will reach one hundred skips with her skipping rope, without stopping. She practiced everyday of summer for two years until she could switch up between forward skipping, backwards skipping and cross skipping, but still, no one hundred skips. One morning, she decides to give up on the dream, it's impossible to achieve it, and she just decides to skip because she can. Low and behold, she completes one hundred skips, without even trying. She's happy now. She completed her dream by letting it come to her, rather than force herself to go to it.

That may seem like quite an odd story, but it's all true, that's genuinely what happened to me, (I was an easy kid to please, don't judge me) and I can see it happening with Book Badger already. I wake up in the morning and think 'I need to write this post', 'I read to review that book', 'I need to answer that email', and the truth is, I don't. I could pack all this blogging in today and I probably wouldn't be missed; I'm a very small blog in a world of other bigger and better blogs and that has previously gotten me down. Blogging is like the skipping for me; I want so badly to be noticed, to achieve something great and be proud of myself, and I haven't even noticed the things I have already achieved, like the different types of skipping. Just in the last 3 months, I have created a new Book Badger Twitter page and gained faithful followers, interested in the content I put out. I have been able to contact numerous authors and discuss opportunities and in one case, even make a good friend in a favourite author of mine. I've been able to redesign Book Badger to something I really am pleased with. I'm even in the middle of creating a new feature for the blog which I'm really excited and happy about. So why am I so bothered about the next big achievement when I've already achieved so much?

Pressure. It's as simple as that. I see so many other blogs doing so many great things, and I think to myself: 'I want to do that, I want a piece of that', when realistically, I can't. This blog, Book Badger, was partially created so I had my own platform to discuss books and enjoy them on, without the fear that a website will close, or that I'll lose all my work, but it's become a lot more demanding. I do two memes a week and sometimes even that is too much, and it's because I'm constantly wanting to do everything other than read. Reading is why I started this blog, and I'm forgetting that. So, although I have already decided on some New Year Resolutions, I have a bigger one in store for 2014:

Just Enjoy Blogging

Don't get stressed. If I can't get a meme out one week, then oh well, there's always next time. If I'm not enjoying a book, then I'll put it down; I don't have to justify myself to anyone if I didn't enjoy it. If I vanish for a week, that's because I've been doing something else, or something has cropped up; I wouldn't stress out about missing an episode of my favourite TV show if an important matter came up, so why the blog? I'm already miserable because of college, and my emotional state of mind isn't much better, so why add the stress of becoming a blog butterfly when I haven't even found a comfy leaf to lay my sweet caterpillar head on.

This blog is for me, for my love of books, and for my enjoyment. It's meant to make me happy, and that's exactly what it's going to do. 2014: The Year Book Badger Was Happy.