IT'S MY BLOGOVERSARY!

So today is 5th of December, which means

IT'S MY BLOGOVERSARY!

Seriously, this gif never gets old

I honestly didn't expect to went this far. I mean, before I have this blog, I used to have a fandom instagram (you know, the one who post quotes, movie scene, etc.?) and tumblr, but both only last for around 6 months. So it's a huge surprise for me that I've went this far!

I will be honest here : my very first purpose on making this blog is not to share my love books. I'm a reader, yes, but at that time I didn't read that many books. In fact, way before the blog's name is The Bookish Thought, I made this blog to write about personal things. I didn't have any chance to write anything beside an introduction post before this blog was forgotten for months. One day, when I was studying for my finals, I accidentally stumbled upon a book blog, YA Midnight Reads. I'm a little surprised when I found out that the owners are a teenager. After following them (and maaybee do a little stalking xD), I found that being a book blogger is really cool. You could talk about books, and you could get a free books! (I'm unfamiliar with ARCs at that time). So I decide to change my long-forgotten blog to a book blog, and I'm glad to say that it's the best decision I've ever made.

Being a book blogger change me in some ways, but I also learn some things :

1) How to be an organized person
Being a blogger means you have to be responsible on some things, especially when it comes to posts like blog tour or ARC review. I'm not an organized person before (I already lose count on how many times I do my homework at school), but now I always write it on my journal, along with my blog post schedule.

2) ARCs are not everything
Admit it, getting an ARCs is one of the thing that made us book blogger start blogging. Well, me too, and when I found out that it's hard to get a physical ARCs since I'm an international blogger, I was very upset. Sure, there's e-ARC, but I didn't really like reading ebooks (also, there's an expiration date which means I literally have to read it before the publication date). After a while, though, I realize that ARCs are not everything. Getting an ARCs only means that you could read a book sooner than everyone, that's it. This doesn't mean I'll stop requesting ARCs, it's just if I got rejected, I won't feel upset.

3) Practice my English
Okay, it might be sounds silly, but being a blogger help me practice my English, especially in writing. As most of you probably know, I'm an Indonesian, which means I don't use English as my everyday language. After I made this blog, my English gradually became better. Sure, there must be a lot of mistakes, but at least when the teacher asked me to write an essay, I could write it smoothly.

In this past year, I have :

• Write 96 posts (there's more, but I haven't post them yet)
• Have 170 followers (GFC, Bloglovin, and subscribers)
• Reach 100 twitter followers
• Reach 10.117 pageviews

Top 5 Most Viewed Posts :

1. Blog Tour : Signs Point to Yes by Sandy Hall
2. Insurgent : Book vs. Movie
3. Top Ten All Time Favorite Authors
4. Top Ten Books I Recently Added to My To-Be-Read List
5. Do You Have Any Weird Reading Habit?

One year is definitely not enough to accomplish all your blogging goals, so in the next year, I hope :

1) Make more friends. I feel like I haven't made many friends in my first year of blogging (I blame my shy personality), so I'm planning to make more!

2) Interview an author. How many times I interviewed an author during my first year of blogging? Answer : NONE. I'm actually planning to do one or two, but since the last 6 months I'm pretty busy, the thoughts were quickly erased from my mind. In the future, I hope I could do it.

3) Write more discussion post. You probably notice that I rarely write discussion post. That's because I'm the worst when it comes to idea! Any tips maybe on how to get an ideas for discussion post?

4) Start a new feature. I really want to start a new feature. I already have some ideas, but a feature definitely need a consistency, and that's something that I don't always have (because of school and all). Hopefully, next year I could do it!

There's also some goals that I want to accomplish in the future (as in, something that I can't accomplish next year) :

1) Meet an author. Like, who doesn't want to meet an author? Unfortunately, if I want to meet an author, I have to go to the US, and sadly I don't think I'll go there because of time and money (last time I checked, only the airplane ticket cost you $1000!). Hopefully someday I could, though.

2) Attend a bookish event, especially BEA. Attending BEA is one of my dreams, so I hope I can accomplish it!

3) Meet fellow blogger. There aren't many Indonesian blogger. In fact, up until now I only know one, Kezia @ Chapteriosity (and she happen to live at the same city!). That's why, I hope I could meet you all in the future :)

So, this blogoversary post might be longer than I originally intended, but I still have one more thing to say :

Thank you for all of my blogging friends for helping me, for accepting me to the book blogging community, and for supporting me. Also, thank you for those people who visit my blog, and even for you who's reading this post right now. I don't think I could survive this without you all :) So thank you!