She's alive!

Yes, folks, I am indeed still out there, even though I haven't posted anything for over a year. I have no idea if I still have any readers, but just in case, I thought I'd let you know where I've been and what's going on.

It's nothing traumatic or even terribly interesting. I simply burned out on books and everything to do with them, including blogging. I probably went for 6 months straight months without picking up a single book and, even after that, I've read only rarely. That's the way it usually is with me. I start a project or hobby, go at it full force for a while, and then WHAM!, lose all interest. Most hobbies I never pick up again and I was afraid that was going to happen this time, which broke my heart because I've loved to read my whole life. But I also knew I couldn't make myself get back into it. I had to wait and see if the desire naturally came back and trust that it would. And it has, although very low key. I may have read a dozen books all year, which is a huge drop from where I was. And only this week did I feel any desire to jump back into blogging, so here I am.

Which leads to the natural question (at least for me): what is the plan from here?

1. First and foremost, no more committing to reading ANYTHING in advance. That was one of my major mistakes before, especially with the long-term reading challenges. I'd make up my list at the beginning, and a few months later I couldn't stand the sight of the books I'd picked and I dreaded thinking that I had to read them. From now on, if I feel like reading, I'll read. Otherwise, I'll do something else (like play FarmVille, to which I am now addicted). Which leads to...

2. Not limiting this blog to just books. I'm not going to share all sorts of personal stuff here; that's fine for others if they're comfortable with that, but I'm not. But I'll never blog if all I write about is reading, because this only contributes to making it feel like an obligation. To that end, I'm planning on changing the blog name (again), whenever I figure out what to call it.

That's the extent of my plan so far, which is good because the whole point is to be more spontaneous, so if other things occur to me, I'll go with them. Maybe I'll post cute pics of my beagles, maybe link to things that strike my fancy, who knows? Maybe nobody but me ever reads anything on here. That's okay, too. Thinking of my blog as something written for others fed into the obligation feeling and I've decided to think of it more like a diary that I don't mind others reading.