Dusting Off the Shelves

It’s been a long time since I’ve been back to this blog but over the past few months I’ve been thinking about coming back more and more.

When I think about my reasons for leaving (or “quitting being a book blogger”) I still agree with those reasons and think it was the best course of action. Looking back I got so caught up in a lot of unhealthy behaviours and thoughts around blogging that it turned something I loved into something that was a constant source of stress and insecurity. I felt like I had to constantly be producing content in order to stay relevant and “grow”, kept comparing myself to other, more “popular” blogs and feeling upset that I wasn’t receiving the same attention, and developed a horrendous fixation on monitoring my stats.

I did also find myself becoming increasingly frustrated with how exploitative the whole “book blogger”/book influencer scene is and do still strongly disagree with the way that book reviewers are exploited by published, but in the end it was my unhealthy relationship that ultimately drove me away. There were certain things that I did miss about blogging, mainly the wonderful friends that I made (who I’m still friends with) and the opportunities that book blogging gave me, though for the most part I happily moved on with my life. It’s only been in the last few months that I’ve really begun to think more seriously about “returning” to blogging.

Although I now have Tumblr and was posting, quite prolifically at one point, on Ao3, I do miss having a little corner of the internet for my blog. It was a place where I could come to develop my thoughts on various media, practice my non-fiction writing, forge networks with other diverse creators, and a really useful place for me to dump my lists.

To be honest, it’s this latter reason that is a major pull factor in me coming back here. Looking back, I think having this blog and being a reviewer was the main reason that I was engaging with so much media. The Avery of 2023/2024 who can scarcely read 2 or 3 books a year looks back at Book Blogger Avery in awe. Whilst there are various factors at play for how I managed to read so many books (not working or studying full-time being a major one) I think that a major reason is that blogging not only gave me an incentive to engage with so much media but also a schedule. Preparing monthly and yearly lists of what I wanted to read/play/watch and then holding myself to a consistent posting schedule helped me stay on track.

I deliberated over whether to return to this exact blog on WordPress or not, but when I stopped to examine my motives for and against I realised that I was still falling into the trap of an audience. Is anyone still here anymore? Would anyone see my posts, let alone engage with them? In the end, I decided not to even do any research into whether WordPress is “dead” because, ultimately, it doesn’t matter. If anything not having an audience of any kind might be good for me. It’ll be good practice to produce things that are solely for me without any consideration of an audience.

So for now let’s say I’m back.

It might be that this becomes a dumping ground of lists to help keep me organised (the world may have changed since I was a book blogger but my TBR stack sure hasn’t!) or it might be that I dip my toes back in to reviewing or posting other related content. I’m leaving it up to future Avery to decide what they want to post.