Two Years in Blogging…

Today marks the day two years ago when I sat down in my  sunshine-filled, warm garden (seriously, what’s happened to the weather this year?) and clicked ‘Publish’ on my little pink corner of the web. I can’t actually believe that I am sat here two years later (in my living room. It’s raining…I could have sat in the garden but that would be an electrical hazard waiting to happen. Also, my hair would go curly.)

I can’t believe that my blog is still going strong all this time later and that I have actually stuck at it for 730 days. I have loved every single book-filled moment of my blogging journey so far and I just wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who has visited, commented, shared, liked, read, retweeted, etc any of my posts. I am so, so grateful for all the support I have received from fellow book worms, bloggers, readers, publicists and authors.

There are two things that have made these past two years special blog-wise. The first is, of course, all of the amazing books that I have been given the opportunity to read and review. Receiving books for review will never get old and the opportunities that blogging has given me to discover new authors and try new things has been phenomenal. My list of favourite authors has quadrupled and I am also a fully fledged crime/thriller fan; a genre I hadn’t even dipped my toe into before I started blogging. I am not the quickest of readers and circumstances have sometimes led me to fall behind on my reviewing, so I also wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who has been patient with me. I am reading every spare minute of every day and I know that sometimes even that is not enough. I wish I could dedicate my whole life to blogging but if I were to do so then I’d have no money to buy important things like books and shoes (and y’know, a roof over my head…) I often find myself wishing that I had an all singing all dancing blog that was updated every day, that all my reviews went up on release date and that I was super organised and didn’t sometimes leave things to write until the night before they were due to go live. There’s also been a few times when I get (what I am naming) ‘reviewer’s block’; that horrific moment when you go to start writing your review and the words just disappear from your head. It is truly terrifying when that happens.
Anyway, the other thing that has made these two years in blogging special is all of the amazing friends I have made through starting Bookaholic Confessions. The book blogging community has to be one of the friendliest ever and it’s one I am so proud to be a part of. Everyone I have encountered has been lovely (but bookish people usually are, right?) and I have even MET some of these wonderfully gorgeous people in real life. I have been to FOUR bookish events/meet-ups in the last year and got totally star-struck and fangirled over authors and fellow bloggers at pretty much all of them. I also feel incredibly lucky to call some of my favourite authors my friends.

When I started this blog I had no idea of where it would take me. All I really wanted was somewhere to talk about books (I was boring my family/friends/dogs senseless with my bookish chatter.) Not only did my blog let me do this, but it has also led to so much more and I couldn’t be more grateful and (*cheese-alert*) proud.