A Blogoversary Post + Diwali Wishes

Whew! What a year this has been. In terms of blogging, it’s been up and down but also extremely satisfying. Last year, around this time, I slowed down my blogging activities, and started gearing up for the arrival of the piglet. There was tons of work to finish up at office before I went on maternity leave.

Blogging (and reading) then became an after thought for the next 6 months or so. I just didn’t have the interest or time.

Then around June, something changed. I knew I didn’t want to let go of my blog, but I also wanted to change things around a bit on my blog.

Inspired by The Picky Girl, I decided to jump into the deep end and purchase my own domain, and that led to purchasing a new theme, and then teaching myself CSS to be able to customize the look the way I wanted it. Big changes!

I also lucky enough to get a couple of sponsors though and that helped me to pay for all the blog upgrades from blog income itself :).

Another big blog change was deciding to apply to the WordPress Wordads program, which is an advertising program, where WordPress shares a percentage of advertising income with the blogger. The money is peanuts really, but I was tired of ads being displayed on my blog without my consent, and thought hey…if there are ads being displayed anyway, why not at least get a share of the income…so, that’s how Wordads came about.

All these back-end changes made a huge difference to me emotionally, and motivated me to get more efficient about blogging. Earlier, my blog posts would happen when and where I felt like it. Now, I schedule some weekend time to think through my posts and schedule them throughout the week, and sometimes even the month.

It was finally time to get organized…

In terms of books, after 6 months in the beginning of the year, when I didn’t read anything much at all, I went on a huge reading spree, combining contemporary books with classics. My reading choices also became a little less random. I knew I wanted to read more classics and make a dent in my Man Booker reading list, and this year, I think I did it consciously.

Another great blogging event is books offered for review. I have been getting requests for book reviews for some time now, but most of the books were average reads. But, this year, things turned around when I got many really good-quality books for review. It made reading books for review purposes a pleasure.

Honestly, this blog had a bumper year, and I am pleased to have done so much with it this year. On the personal front though, things could have been better, but hey it’s Diwali today and even though we aren’t celebrating, I am not leaving room for sad feelings and regrets today. It’s a day we are coming together as family, putting the bad stuff behind, and looking ahead, I feel very positive and hopeful that things are only going to get better.

And on that note…I am wishing you the same. Happy Diwali to you all!