Recapping 2020 and looking ahead to 2021
Feel free to join us!
Tell Me Something Tuesday was hosted by Rainy Day Ramblings, but she has (temporarily?) stopped blogging. So a group of us that had been doing posts (Linda from Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell, Karen from For What It’s Worth, Roberta from Offbeat YA, Jen from That’s What I’m Talking About and me) decided to get together, come up with some more topics and keep the meme going.Michelle made us a logo and we’re off and running. For more details, check out this post where I reintroduced the meme.
I’m combining these posts because the topic was very similar: Tell me Something Tuesday asked – What are your blogging goals for 2021? So first a recap of 2020 and then my goals.
Blogging
out with the OLD: 2020
I have to say, 2020 did see an actual improvement in blogging for me. I mean, I still have had dips where I post nothing and don’t visit and let’s not even mention replying to comments. However, when 2020 started, I was holding on by a thread to blogging. Now, I have found that I’m really focused on it again. I want to get back to regularly posting and visiting and everything. And for the last few months I’ve been semi regular. I actually have had a blogging plan. I think it goes back to why I started blogging in the first place – I needed to feel connected when I was super isolated in Grad School. That’s where it started. And here I am finding my blogging wings again… in the middle of a pandemic where I’ve been forced into isolation again. Blogging is my happy place and at least this time I already had a community I was part of and I’m hoping to really be a more active member in 2021.
in with the NEW: 2021
One big change (which I mentioned on Tuesday), is I plan to review as I read. No more of this “oh what was that book I read and want to review? Let me see what I remember.” I’m cleaning out and starting fresh – I have a shelf on Goodreads with over 200 books on it that I’ve marked as needing to review. I’m going through them and unless I wrote a semi-decent review on Goodreads, they are coming off that shelf.
The other big change is that I’m scheduling time in my day to blog, instead of trying to squeeze it in here and there. I got ahead on the blog at the end of 2020 (I wrote this post in November and have come back to edit at the end of December), so that’s a huge help. I’ve been trying out different schedules and I haven’t found the magic one yet – I tried carving out 30 minutes at the end of the day and increasing that to 1 hour. But I found that neither worked. So I’m going to try doing blogging after work every day. I’ll keep trying new schedules until I find one that works.
One thing that has worked though – I’m working on the Sunday Post a little bit every day at the end of the day. This takes only a few minutes and allows me to have the post ready to go by Saturday night. I’ve also been working on a post every day – whether it’s setting one up or finishing, etc. Just working on 1 a day seems to keep me ahead (since I only post a few times a week).
If you have a routine that’s worked really well for you, I’d love to hear it! I’m super busy between work and family, but I want to keep the blog a priority moving into 2021.
What are your blogging goals for 2021?
Next week’s TMST Topic: Resolutions/words of the year – do you do them? What are they for 2021?
My routine is, blog while I catch up on shows 😉
Happy New Year!! I love seeing you more and more online. I am a scheduler, so I put almost every book I pick up on a schedule to review. It’s become so second nature to me, that it’s very rare I don’t have a review written for a book within 2 weeks of reading it. It helps that I take a lot of notes while reading. I’m glad you are finding more joy out of blogging… I look forward to reading your posts in 2021.
I think we’re both figuring out our blogging grove at about the same time. Tracking the Sunday Post a little bit each day helps out immensely! I like to do mine after work because I’m work from home and I have a slice of time where it’s just me for about an hour but sometimes can be as long as an hour. I typically use whatever times I have available until Jeff gets home.
Good luck with your blogging goals this year!
I think that is all reasonable and everyone just has to adapt and adjust as they go along. Good luck! I love seeing you more.
I think all of your goals sound good, Berls. I was so bad last year about not reviewing books as soon as I read them. That’s something I definitely need to change this year. I can’t do anything without prepping, but I want to do a better job of keeping up with it this year. We’ll see how that goes. I wish you the best this coming year, Berls! I’ll have to check out your link to Tell Me Something Tuesday. I started to participate in that the beginning of the year last year because it sounded like a lot of fun. I am glad you and the others are keeping it up!
I take the do a little every day to keep my task list reasonable and, like you, I try really hard to get reviews written close to finishing the book so I can remember what I want to say. Looking good for 2021.
This year I have the time to be able to be consistent so my goal is to stay on track by staying ahead in my posts- and participating in challenges helps me because I like goals and community!