A Little Bit of Life and Look! I'm Back!
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Well hello, all. Fancy meeting
you here.
No, I have not forgotten you
exist. Nor have I forgotten to post in the last 8 MONTHS! Can you believe I’ve been
gone that long? Don’t worry, I haven’t died. But it has been such a long time
and I think we need to chat before we get back into the swing of book
awesomeness-things.
No need to hide under your
blanket or shade your eyes—it’s not one of those
chats (gosh, what kind of chat did you think it was?). This is the JEANNA,
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL THIS TIME chat and ARE YOU BACK FOR REAL chat.
I hope you are comfortable—grab a
chair and a nice cup of hot cocoa and let’s get chatting.
Jeanna, where have you been?
Well, I’m glad you asked. It’s
been quite a journey and I sort of fell off the grid for a little while there.
In March, I had just started taking some courses to get my teaching
certificate. And after that, I found myself on a plane to South Korea to teach
English to these wonderful elementary students. As much as I wanted to continue
posting on the blog, I knew I couldn’t give The Bucket List the attention it
deserved so I just stopped. All operations ceased.
In the last month, I realized I
had some time to myself so I could get back into blogging. No matter how long a
break I take in blogging or reading, I will always come back to it because I
truly miss it. The Bucket List and I have been together since August of 2010;
that’s a long time and we’re in this together (that sentence came out kind of
creepy but, please, just ignore it).
Sometimes, bloggers just need a break and it is not something to
apologize over because I think we can all agree that sometimes life just gets
in the way.
However, I am back!
Are you back, for real, this time?
I am back FOR REAL! It feels so
good writing this post. I haven’t sat down and wrote something that wasn’t for
class or an email in so long. You cannot believe how amazing this is right now.
(Well, maybe you can… think getting-a-collector’s-edition-of-your-favorite-book-in-the-mail
excited!)
However, things will be changing.
This past month, before I fully committed to posting again, I decided to do
some research. Back in 2010, book
blogging was just getting off the ground. There were a few of us around the web
and we would all link up and do all the awesome classic features like Top Ten Tuesday, Waiting on Wednesday, and Booking Through Thursday. And those memes
are still going strong! It is an amazing community, and now there are so much
more of us. Yah, for book bloggers!
Realizing how book blogging has
grown in the last five years was a game changer for me. Really. The Bucket List
hasn’t changed much since it started. Sure, I stopped doing some of the
features I started way back when but structure-wise among other things, I’ve
stayed the same. The Bucket List was
created six years ago and in Internet-speak, that’s like at least 100 years
old. I’m so old.
It is time for The Bucket List to
make some changes. This, of course, will be a slow process. However, you may
have noticed some changes around here like the DESIGN has been changed into
something super cute (am I right?) and The Bucket List has finally gotten its
own name!
It’s been six years and I have
finally decided to get a proper URL for the site. It’s pretty awesome!
Other changes may include:
- For a while, I will only be posting on Tuesdays and Fridays and every other Monday. As I get back into the groove again, I will begin to post more frequently. However, as of now, Tuesdays and Fridays and every other Monday are the days.
- There will be some structural changes to my reviews. I’ve realized that a lot of my reviews—in attempt to be spoiler-free—use the same adjectives and some even sound similar to the next. That’s definitely going to be changing. Over the next few months, I will be playing around with different formats, utilizing my own photos, and even trying my hand at shorter paragraphs (shocker, I know, since I like to run-on about books when I get so excited!).
- I’m going to attempt to tackle discussion posts. These sort of posts will be companion posts to the book reviews: A Look Deeper into the book. These posts may include a little spoilers but will allow for some amazing conversations to continue in the comments. I can’t wait to discuss some of my upcoming reads with you and other book-related topics! If you have something you want to chat about, let me know in the comments. What discussion topics should we be chatting about?
- This month, I am taking on a photo challenge on Instagram (or better known as #bookstagram). I’ve never done a photo challenge and so far, I’m learning a lot about photography and how beautiful my books can be (so pretty!). I’m loving it so much that I’m thinking about making this a full-time thing so as months go by, you may start to see more awesome pictures created by yours truly.
This will not be happening
overnight but I’m trying out these new things so definitely keep an eye out for
them (better yet, keep two eyes out for them!).
So, there you have it: the
lowdown of what’s to come (do people say “lowdown” anymore?). And now on to the
good stuff, right? Since I have been gone, there have been some AMAZING books
published and I need to get to them stat and then we can all talk about them!
Are you ready for the awesome to begin… again?
Have you ever taken a blogging
hiatus? If so, how long?
What has been your favorite book
this past month?
Do you like the new design?
Thoughts, please.
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