Let's Talk: Two Challenges For My Book Blogger Self

What's one thing you'd like to challenge yourself as a book blogger to do this year?

Since I'm apparently a huge cheater when it comes to narrowing things down, I actually have two things I'd like to challenge myself to do as a book blogger this year. 

Challenge One: Blog however / whenever I want to blog.

Sometimes, it's easy to get caught up in memes and trying to stay on top of everything. I honestly do not know how some bloggers manage to post 5+ times a week, or even daily! Despite having been a book blogger for almost four years, I consider YA Book Queen to be a small blog. I do not receive bundles of review books each week (thankfully, because I'd probably lose my mind from stress), so I tend to run my blog a bit more slowly. I take a lot of breaks whenever life gets too crazy, and sometimes I feel guilty for doing so. So, it's a goal of mine to keep my blog as relaxed as possible. If I want to post 5 posts a week, awesome. But if I only manage a couple, then it's still fantastic so long as I'm happy with my content. In essence, my goal is to simply be happy with what I'm blogging about and not rush my content just so I can keep up with the "big" bloggers! 

Challenge Two: Interact more with my readers and other bloggers. 

Readers who comment regularly might have noticed that I started answering comments in the comment section during the last month or so, instead of emailing my responses. I've been trying to be a bit more active on Twitter, too. I'm not sure how I'm going to manage adding in more time to interact with readers and bloggers, but I know that I really want to make the time to do so, even if it's only 10-15 minutes a day. I tend to be more of an anonymous blogger, so I want to engage my readers more, since I do read and appreciate every comment I receive. I especially want to interact more with my fellow bloggers, because I rarely get to talk about bookish things in real life - the closest I get to bookish discussions are always about  Shakespeare or BEOWULF whenever I talk to classmates, but it's more fun to talk about YA lit. ;)

Visit I Swim For Oceans to participate and see more responses! 

Image from I Swim For Oceans

Slowing Things Down and Taking a Step Back

Hey everyone!

I've been having some health concerns for the last three weeks, and I finally managed to meet with my doctor a few days ago. Apparently, all of my current health problems are being caused by stress, and I was told to take it easy and try to cut out as much stress in my life as possible. 

Unfortunately, since I can't exactly take a break from all of my school/college stress (darn it), I'm going to have to slow things down with the blog instead. While blogging may be so much fun, it can also be extremely stressful for me. It bothers me to have to push blogging to the side, since I love it so much, but I need to focus on my health right now.

So, I'm going to be slowing things down and taking a step back from YA Book Queen for the rest of October and possibly November (we'll see). However, I will still have my posts for the Silk and Paper campaign (and my contest) each Monday. But, for the rest of October, those posts are likely going to be the only ones going up on YA Book Queen until I start feeling better. I'll hopefully get my stress level down and health back in order soon!

Also, out of curiosity, do any of you have any de-stressing tips?

Hope you all are having a fabulous October so far,