It’s been more than a year since I took a hiatus from blogging. Life took over. And blogging took a backseat. Yes, it was inevitable. No, it wasn’t easy staying away. But, that’s the way it had to be. Now that I’m making a conscious effort to blog, (and thoroughly enjoying it) I realize that there are so many many things about it that I’ve missed. Here’s my short(-ish) list of 10 things I missed about blogging:
Reading: My primary goal behind blogging about books was to read more and read well. When I stopped blogging, even the reading took a hit. I’m terribly ashamed to say this, but I have to - I stopped reading for almost a year. Now, it’s time to change that.
Structure: Though I hadn’t created a reading routine, it gave me some structure. I knew I wanted to do a certain number of posts and specific types of posts in the following week and worked towards it. I missed that.
Variety: Till I started blogging, I was more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants reader. I read books that I could get my hands on. And if I found a book from a genre that didn’t interest me, I simply put it down. I never challenged myself to experiment with books till then.
Tags: They really helped me expand my horizon with writing itself. It made me look within and answer questions about reading facts that I would previously would not have thought of revealing.
Challenge: Blogging really forced me to challenge my preferences with books. It definitely would not do if I shared my thoughts on one fantasy book after another. I knew I had to look into other genres and explore them too. And I did!
Conversations: Virtual or not, conversations are conversations. And there was plenty of it with like-minded people. It struck me that when I stopped blogging, I really didn’t know much about what was happening in the literary world.
Discovery: Blogging was not just about me sharing my thoughts with the blogosphere. It was also about finding out what other readers out there had to say about what they’d read. I have discovered so many new book titles this way.
Chronicling: Most of all, I missed jotting down my thoughts on what I had read even before I stopped reading. I just missed writing.
Have you ever taken a hiatus from blogging and returned to it? What did you miss in the meanwhile? Let me know your thoughts!