☆ The Inability to Read All the Books I Want—The Future of This Blog ☆

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This update post is quite long overdue because it's been in my draft for several months already—but somehow I can't seem to find the time to finish it sooner. First of all, before I jump into the main topic of this post, I'd like to briefly celebrate this blog for reaching 1,000,000 pageviews! It's a pretty huge milestone for my blog that's been going for almost five years now. As always, I'd like to thank each and everyone of you who still supports me and this blog despite the lack of update recently. This blog will never reach what it achieved now if not for all of your supports :))

Back to the main topic of this post, I'd like to share about what my plans are for the future of this blog. If you've been keeping up with this blog, you might notice that I haven't been posting as much since the start of 2016. Years ago I could post regularly every single week, but now it's a struggle for me to fit blogging into my schedule. That is what I want to address in this post: my problems and limitations since I have less time for reading and blogging—and what I've decided to do in the future :)

Since a few years ago, I've had the opportunities to work with publishers/authors by reviewing sponsored books. I have always been (and will forever be) grateful for these amazing opportunities that I get to experience in my life. However, at the start of this year when I received several offers for blog tours and reviews, I started having issues keeping up with the deadlines. Because I have less time to read these days, I was able to finish the book only a few days before I had to publish my review for it. To be honest, these deadlines started giving me pressure and I realized how it begins to take away the joy that I had for reading and reviewing—which is the exact opposite of my initial purpose in creating this blog. I started this blog for my love of reading and writing and sharing my passion for books. I want it to be my happy place; not something that will stress me out. I've had enough stress at work already XD.

As a result of those deadlines, I was unable to read the books that I really want to read—because I'm constantly reading sponsored books, which doesn't always fit my reading preference. When I think about this, it saddens me since I own TONS of books that I'm dying to read in my bookshelves. It's not that I have issues with reviewing sponsored books; but like I said earlier, the deadline and pressure is what's taking the pleasure away for me. Furthermore, these days I spent a lot less time staying at home compared to when I was still in college. Although I absolutely love staying at home, meeting up with close friends and catching up with each other after work also makes my day. If you've read my post called "How to Fit Reading into Busy (Life) Routines", one of my points was that I would not sacrifice my quality time with my friends and family just so I can read or blog—because my relationship with them matters more to me. Taking all these issues into account, next I will announce some of the changes that I'll be making in my reading and blogging routines :)

I became a book lover at a very young age.
Books taught me that there were different lives and beautiful things.
—Rene Denfeld, Author of The Enchanted

After contemplating on the issues I mentioned above, I have made a decision in doing things differently in the upcoming future—in terms of both reading and blogging:

• Less sponsored books or review copies.
The first thing that I would do is to be more selective in accepting review offers from authors/publishers. I felt quite bad these past several months because I wasn't able to accept all the review offers that I received. But I'd rather do that than accepting everything and not have the ability to keep up with the deadlines. I do have to say that I will be forever grateful for all the offers and opportunities that I have received from authors/publishers. However, I've now decided that I will only be accepting review offers that can fit my schedule and interests me in the future.

• (Possibly) No more wrap-ups / TBR
Wrap-ups for me is a way to take a look back at my reading progress throughout the month and I also mentioned some life updates along with my favorite music/movie for that month. These days though, I really have no time to make wrap-up posts because I barely have time to write my book reviews. And also, I won't be making TBR lists anymore so I can just read whatever I want.

Goodreads Reading Challenge
If you're friends with me on Goodreads, you'll realize that I just made a huge change on my Goodreads Reading Challenge recently. At the start of this year, I set a goal to read 75 books in 2016. Few months after, I started to realize that I won't be able to keep up with that goal and brought it down to only 52 books, which means that I only have to read one book per week. It's actually sad for me to admit that nowadays it took me about 4-5 days to finish a standard-length book. Took me even a bit longer to finish English books. I think with this change, I will be able to just enjoy reading and not constantly be reminded by Goodreads that I'm several books behind schedule on my challenge :D

• Compiled Book Hauls
This one is bit similar to the point about wrap-up post. Book hauls post might actually take longer to make because I have to take pictures of the book first, edit them, and stuff. Again, I really don't have that much time to do all that regularly anymore. Furthermore, I've been doing extremely well with my book buying (because I just moved in to my new apartment and realized how much books I still have to read). In the past two months, I've accumulated less than 5 books. So in the future, I won't do monthly book hauls anymore. I will only post a book haul when I feel like I've accumulated enough :)

I guess that's all the changes that I could think of right now. I'm going to update this post when I remember what else I wanted to write. Anyways, ending this post, I'd like to say that I came to these decisions after thinking long and hard about it. I considered many things and I've decided that I'm making these changes for my own sake. Like I said earlier, I'm prioritizing the things that matters to me more. And if I have to read or blog less to spend time with my family/close friends, I'm willing to do that :)

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I hope this post isn't too long to read.
And I also hope authors/publishers can understand my decision on this matter :)))

by.stefaniesugia♥ .