And Then We Were Six : My SIXTH Bloggoversary!

Yes, I know. I have no idea how we got here, either.

That's right, people. Today, this beautiful Playing in the Pages book blog turns 6. It's freaking me out, too. 

It's kind of like last year was the Sweet Sixteen... My big year of no book-buying was bisected by this one instance of being able to purchase books, so I bought five of them, in honor of my Fifth Anniversary, and I had been planning it for about a month ahead of time with a notes section I kept on my iPhone. There was a ton of build-up and decisions to make about it, and my parents had a running commentary from me about how it was all going to go down. 

This year, I forgot about it until earlier last week, and my parents didn't hear about it from me until last night (I sprung it on them during a late-night Pokemon Go session with my brother). Fifth Anniversaries are so cool, and I - and my blog - had grown so much! Now it's just like, another square in the pavement. 

Of course, that doesn't mean that things haven't changed around here since last year... or that I haven't celebrated it, either! 

how we've changed

• For starters, as regular readers might have noticed, I recently added AdSense! I know, don't hate me too much. Basically, it's something I've been kicking around for a while now, and one afternoon this summer, I bit the bullet and tackled it all. And it really hasn't been that much of a hassle! My content isn't really that affected, and it's prompted me to work a little harder on figuring out how to make the blog monetizable. 
• Even though I am focusing more on drawing more readers, I'm not so worried about constantly updating. I used to be in this constant panic about the fact that I wasn't uploading regular and current content, that I wasn't even enjoying the content that I did end up writing. Part of this change is due to...
• The posts that I'm publishing now are of a lot higher caliber. I don't know if you are as proud of me as I have been about my current content, but they're a little more lengthy, a lot more informative, and way more interesting to me. I think some of my favorites have been tackling the importance of this year's Nebula Awards, recapping the contents of my Capstone on Thyra Samter Winslow, and discussing what multimedia forms of Nancy Drew have been successful. Not typical book blog fare, but they're what's cool about BookWorld to me... and hopefully, they help me stand out from the crowd a little bit. 

how I celebrated 

Well, like I said, I didn't exactly tell my parents what was really going on with me until at about 10pm last night, but this is, in my mind, how I celebrated. 

(Honorable mentions: seeing Gentleman's Guide at the 5th with family and my best friend; trying my hand at brush lettering; new Disney swag from a Tacoma thrift shop I adore)

• Naturally, I had to go check out Barnes and Noble in order to pick up a couple presents for myself, so I made a beeline for the YA section to grab V.E. Schwab's This Savage Song. Of course, while I was running past the Recent Release table, I threw out an arm for the Hogarth Shakespeare retelling Vinegar Girl, by Anne Taylor, and when I was vaulting around the turns by the Graphic Novels department, my hand caught on volumes 2&3 of Rat Queens. 
• Most importantly, my mother forced me to confront my status as an adult and begin sorting through the books of my childhood, as we're cleaning out the playroom of our house to prepare for a (hopefully avoidable) move home to Tacoma once my lease in Seattle ends in August. Cleaning out those old bookshelves unearthed a lot of physical memories - and a metric ton of dust and dead bugs - and I didn't think that I'd spend part of this weekend crying over the Cirque du Freak series, by Darren Shan, but lo and behold, I'm still the same person I was when I was 13. What better way to spend an anniversary than by reflecting on your youth? 

So, thank you all for journeying with me for another year around the sun, and plenty of fun around the web. This hobby of mine has turned itself into a network of friends, a portfolio of writing, a two-year fashion career, and several hundred books in my shelves and in my heart. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and if I could ever do anything for all of you in repayment, you need only ask. 

Thanks so much for spending time with me, whether it's been six years or six seconds. Love you!