Well, I have to say that I think I'm just coming out of a slump. This last semester, I was going crazy. I was teaching for the first time, trying to keep up in grad classes that I just didn't care about anymore, and dealing with an upcoming backwards move. I was trying to figure out what I wanted out of life (still don't know) and I was just not a happy person for awhile. My bright light was (and is) young adult literature and I clung to it. Even so, with all this going on in the background, the reading and blogging was starting to feel like a chore. I was putting off reading books and if you were visiting my blog about a month ago, I had a list of Upcoming Reviews that was about 10 books long. Some of my reviews suffered because I wrote them so long after I read the book. I was just trying to get through from one day to another - both on the blog and in life.
Then for awhile I had to seriously examine why I was doing this - the blogging thing. When I started it seemed like such an obvious thing for me to do. But there's been so much negativity floating around lately, to the point where I'm nervous posting anything. Honestly, with the way some people talk on Twitter, I'm waiting for someone to tear into something that I do. I really hate that feeling that I have to be so careful about the way that I'm running my own blog that I feel like I'm holding back or trying to fit into a box, and sometimes it is too much pressure. But then I go back to why I started and it was to write my thoughts on the book I was reading (because my memory is short) and it was a way to hold myself accountable to recording my reactions. And of course, it's a way to share the books that I love with anyone I possibly can. While it's important what others think of my blog - I want people to feel comfortable visiting, free to comment, and I definitely don't want to make someone cranky - I've come to realize that there is always plenty of criticism out there, and I just have to keep going and remember that I'm doing this for the books and authors I love and the readers who are looking for the next amazing read.
In some ways I still am in this weird limbo place where I don't know where I'm going - but I'm not teaching anymore or taking classes, so I feel hugely relieved in some respects. I've been able to just curl up and read. Plus, I spent Christmas vacation shortening my to-be-reviewed list and cranking out posts. By New Years I was completely caught up and I started the new year with a fresh slate. Even better, my incredibly talented little brother helped me put up a new design for the blog and I'm so happy with the way it looks now. (How do you get out of a slump? Get a makeover!) Now I'm getting back into memes, I'm keeping up with my reviews and happily working my way through my TBR pile.
Ok - apparently I had more to say than I thought I did. But what do you think? Have you ever been in a slump? Reading, blogging or otherwise? How do you get through?
