Book Blogger Confession -- blogging goals for 2013

I'm determined to get back on track with this blog, so I'm starting off this week with my Book Blogger Confession.   Hosted by Karen at For What It's Worth and Pam from Midnyte Reader, the Book Blogger Confessions is a meme for the 1st and 3rd Mondays of every month.    

So, this Monday's question is:   Question for Monday January 7th – Happy 2013! What are your blogging goals for the new year? Are you making any changes or testing out new ideas for reviews or organization? Have you joined any challenges?

What are the trends you noticed in blogging from 2012 and what do you hope to see for the blogging community in 2013?

For the new year, my big blogging goals are:

• Get back on my usual schedule of trying to keep to one review per week, with a Wordless Wednesday post at least every other week.
• Not kick myself if I don't keep to that schedule.
• Leave more comments on other people's posts.  It's easy, and I just need to do it.

My smaller goals are:

• Keep to the one challenge I signed up for.
• Read more from my own shelves (the books I own, not the ones I get from the library) and write thoughtful posts about re-visiting those books.
• Keep up with my regular posts over at my other blog (MarbleTowns).

Last fall, I took an online public library administration class, and usually, an online class isn't enough to slow me down by too much.   But, then work got crazy for a few months.  And my personal life popped a few little extra challenges up.   Before I realized it, my personal reading was slowing down, and then my blogging started slowing down.  And then, the worst thing happened: I started feeling sulky about blogging.  I turned into a petulant child --- "But I don't wanna write a blog post!  I wanna sit and watch TV!!  And NAP!!!!"    

But, the class ended in December, and I got through the holidays, and now, feel invigorated and ready to pull up my socks and get back to blogging.   The fact that I signed up for another library administration class is something that I'm determined will not be slowing me down (fingers crossed).

Either way, I'm determined to keep moving .....

And there was a second question today: What are the trends you noticed in blogging from 2012 and what do you hope to see for the blogging community in 2013?

I don't know if what I saw as trends were actually trends, or just things that I was noticing in what seemed to be a lot of places.   But, I do feel like I'm not the only person who felt overwhelmed at times by blogging, and I'm hoping that in the new year, that we all relax a little more about this and remember why a lot of us started blogging, which was to have fun, and share our thoughts.  I did notice some of the scandals last year (authors behaving badly, bloggers behaving badly, etc) and I'm hoping that this year, things are a bit quieter.  I don't tend to get involved at all when something blows up in the blogosphere, and while it can make for entertaining reading, it's disappointing, as well.  I hope that in this new year, we can all get along.   And write our own content (or give credit when we get some ideas from someone else).   And agree that it's okay to disagree about how we feel about a book, and it's perfectly okay to not like a book.

Okay.   Whew!    Happy New Year!!!