My friends and I started to read young-adult books when we were sophomore high school students three and a half years ago. Before we graduated last year, we decided to put up a book blog like what we’ve always wanted to do since getting involved in the YA community. In my opinion it’s one of the best decisions we’ve made. We not only succeeded to stay in touch, we also made some new friends, discover amazing books, and enjoyed the reading experience even more. All of these made possible by our readers and fellow bibliophiles. There’s nothing more exciting for bookworms (other than reading that is) than spreading the love for books which gave them more than a few hours of comfort and escape from the real world.
Today’s a special day because we launched Teen Readers’ Diary exactly a year from now. It’s been big achievement that we are very proud of. There were times when blogging came as easy. But mostly we learned that maintaining a blog is no piece of cake. We went through more bumps than we could anticipate along the way. There was the issue of numbers and as newbies, we felt pressured to increase our number of readers via followers and page counts and the like. Time has also been a concern for the three of us. We were college freshmen and just getting used to having loads of school works, not enough sleep, and more active social life. We had three months of blogging break, not including a lot of weeks being inactive on the blog in between and less frequent time to read for leisure. College is tough on us while at the same time it gave us some real-life adventures that we feel most thankful for. The downside of it was the neglected blog.
There were a lot of times when I was sure I’m about to give up on posting, but the last six months gave me more room to learn about many things. I shouldn’t have let follower counts intimidate me. If I let the pressure rule the way I post, it will take away the fun in blogging. We started the blog for the purpose of spreading our book worms, not to compete. Now we’ll be dealing with college for three more years and I’m thrilled more than ever. I can’t promise that I will never take a long break like we did last year, but I’m looking forward to a more organized time management on my part.
We’re most grateful to everyone who stuck with us despite the long and numerous breaks we had. Thank you people! *hugs* For those who took time to drop some comments, you rock!
To all the authors and publishers who appreciate our hard work, thank you so much for your support and for the opportunities to read some wonderful books.
Changes are happening soon and we’re taking them one step at a time. As for the blogoversary celebration giveaway, we are having ours at the end of the month so watch out for that!
Again, thank you! Here’s to more years of blogging and to getting rid of T in TRD ;)