I Do What I Want!

I'll just go ahead and put it out there: I'm a blogging failure.

This is my third attempt at maintaining a blog. My first attempt (Biblioharlot's Bookshelf) ended when I got my first real job and was struggling to balance work with....well everything else. Blogging fell to the wayside.

My second attempt (Teen Troves) failed because I was attempting to review YA books for their target audience: teens. I found that I was trying to write reviews for an audience that I really didn't interact with. I'm not a teacher, I'm not a teen librarian. I work in an academic library. When I recommend teen books, I'm recommending them to other adults. When I discuss them I 'm discussing how I liked them. I'm not determining if they're appropriate for teens or how they will appeal to teens but how I, as a twenty-seven year old, enjoyed them. Because of this disconnect my reviews for Teen Troves became very generic and, frankly, pretty lame. I was censoring myself because I felt I had to write my reviews to a specific audience. Then the thought of writing reviews became more of a burden than something I was excited about doing. Then I felt guilty. Then I just didn't want to deal with it at all.

This time around I'm not putting these expectations on myself. That clearly hasn't worked for me in the past. Perhaps, at some point, I'll have more defined expectations but for now, as Cartman so eloquently said it, "I do what I want!"

Next time: why I read YA lit. Stay tuned.

That is all.