Sunday 25 February 2018

Why I Stopped Reading and Book Blogging & Feeling Excluded

Well...


This is awkward.

It has been quite a while.

And here is my explanation.

Book Blogging used to be my hobby. I would enjoy reading books and reviewing them, interacting with other book bloggers and sharing my love for literature.

Then it changed.

For some reason I cared about the numbers too much and reading as many books as possible. I became envious of people who had more books than me. Even if I had bought books or had access to books in the library, I would continue to buy more and more not because I wanted the book but because everybody else had that book on their shelf. It became a toxic cycle and it reached a point where I stopped reading completely.

Yes. Me who used to read every single day of their life went to reading a book once every 3 months. I would pick up books read a bit of them and then chuck them somewhere. I was in a slump in a way. With exams and wanting to have a great social life it meant that I felt the need to drop my love for reading.

It has taken me a while to have a 'positive' relationship with reading. I would associate reading with pressure and it reached a point where it became lackluster. It has definitely taken a long time for me to pick up a book and read because I want to read and when I picked up one special book it made me realise how exciting reading was for me. I missed that thrill and I am so glad to have it back.

Nothing makes my heart pump harder than a thrilling part of the book. Nothing makes my imagination run wilder and nothing makes me feel more relaxed than reading. I spent a good 2 years glued to my phone and watching movies and tv shows but they just aren't as exciting to me. As much as I do love the shows and movies, my attention span cannot last for more than 30 minutes when it comes to watching shows.

Also one weird reason I left book blogging was because in a way I felt excluded from the community. Everybody else had their cute online friendships, interacted with eachother on twitter and being friends with book publishers. To be completely honest I was intimidated. I was a teen (still am) blogging in an adult world in a sense. Adults read and reviewed YA majorly and I felt kind of left out as I didn't know how to communicate with them very well. Feeling like a little bug in the corner is hard especially if you want to put out a young adult perspective on young adult literature.

I feel like I'm going off on a tangent but I just wanted to explain to the few who cared why book blogging became less of a hobby and more of a burden and I hope whoever decides to read this post understands.

This year I promise to blog again even if it just one more post.

Lots of  Love,
Naomi


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