5 YEARS OF ZBESTBOOKS || update

Hi Everyone!

Welcome back to this little corner of the internet and thank you so much for joining me once more (or maybe this is your first time here, in which case HI). Today I wanted to share some thoughts after five years of blogging. Let's jump straight in!

I think we can all see the progression of my blog, from that first tentative book review, posted on 13th May 2018, to now, where I am capable of writing far more readable, fluent reviews, with graphics and much more structure. If you were with me last year when I celebrated my four year blogoverary with a reaction to my first ever post, you will have read this first post I ever wrote and will probably be able to compare it to what I write now!

I have seen such changes in my feelings towards my blog over the last five years. In the first year, my blog was just there. I started it, wrote a post, didn't write for months and then wrote another post, and repeat. No-one read my blog, and I barely cared about it myself. Then in 2020 I started posting more regularly and through 2020, 2021 and most of 2022, I loved my blog and was absolutely obsessed with this space. At one point, I was even writing minimum 3 posts a week! I now have absolutely no idea how I kept that up!

A combination of having more and more schoolwork to do, not reading quite as much and just feeling more unmotivated to write, has resulted in me barely getting one post out a week, and my views are actually going down, as I am not investing in the blogging community. It's like a vicious cycle. 

I've also felt a shift in what I want to write. I want to write more lifestyle and travel content, more study content and move away from posting mainly book content, although I am sure this will always feature! Bearing this in mind the name of my blog, and the fact I started it when I was only about to turn 10, I will be making a new blog at some point, but when this is I absolutely don't know. Right now, there is a lot going on and I would want to do a new blog properly and be able to invest the time in it that it deserves, so it won't be for a while, but it will definitely be in the works over the next months (or even year).

In the meantime, I want to say that I'm not sure what my posting schedule will be in the next few weeks, or months, so please don't worry if I miss a week, or if I end up posting on a day that isn't 9am on a Saturday like it has been for the last 6 months or so! There will also be a change in content, so stay tuned for that.

I feel so proud of this community and it makes me sad that I'm not as present in it as I once was. I can only just manage to get a post out each week, so reading a million other blogs and commenting on them on top of that is just not possible for me right now. I'm about to go into my GCSE year at school, and I seem to have ended up with so many other things that I've had to do (like a public speaking competition and the school musical of Grease), meaning that the last few months have just not been blogging months! I'm also travelling a lot this year, so that impacts my blog too, although I want to include more travel content.

Lastly, thank you so much for being here, for reading and commenting and being part of this community and supporting me. I know I haven't been very present on here, and I definitely haven't commented back to all of you, so thank you for sticking with me. 

Around The Blogosphere: 

- I haven't read any blogs in ages - so please leave your latest post below and I'll check it out and add it here <33

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post, and for being here over the last 5 years. I wish you all very happy reading!

How are you? What do you think about my updates? Any thoughts about more travel content?

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p.s. casual magic of the day:

(If you are new here and have no idea what I'm on about, click here to find out more)

Realising that I have a big circle of friends at school now. And not only that but they are amazing! When we're not running left and right to band and DofE meetings, on (sort of) calmer lunchtimes, we get a glorious 45 minutes to talk and joke around and go for walks when it gets too much (to my "let's go for a walk to escape the chaos" clan - you're the best!). And for the first three years of secondary school, my friends (relatively) stayed the same. And I'm still friends with those people now, but we have more friends and people we can talk to and joke with and it's just so nice to have a circle of people I can rely on. <33