BBAW: Keeping it Fresh

It's the last day of Book Blogger Appreciation Week! Hosted by Ana, Jenny, Heather, and Andi, the week is designed to "celebrate the hard work, dedication, and love we all put into this adventure we call book blogging." If you missed the rest of this week's content, you can see all the link-ups over at The Estella Society.

Guys, this week has been such a blast -- exactly the push I needed to reclaim some of my blogging oomph and reconnect with the greater community. There are so many of you out there doing incredible wonderful things, and talking about incredible wonderful books, and sometimes I forget that this little blog doesn't have to live in a vacuum.

Which brings us to today's prompt for BBAW -- the last prompt of the week!

One of the unfortunate side effects of reading and blogging like rockstars seems to be a tendency toward burnout. How do you keep things fresh on your blog and in your reading? 

Actively Seek Out Events & Community for Inspiration

That may be things like Book Blogger Appreciation Week (my intro here may have been a tip off). It may be Readathon, or #24in48, or a readalong, or something far less formal, like Twitter conversations or comments on others' blogs. Whatever it is, there is passion out there--and there's nothing wrong with tapping into that to rediscover your own.

Never, Ever Treat This Blog Like Work

This blog is not work.  There are aspects of my reading life--like the reviews I am actually paid to submit to Shelf Awareness--that are work. This blog is not that. This is my own space, where the rules are of my own making, where schedules and deadlines and required topics are only those I create for myself. I sometimes write about non-book topics; I sometimes stop writing for weeks at a time. I sometimes review everything I read in a month; I sometimes review none of it. All of that is ok--has to be ok--or this blog will cease to be fun and start to become a burden.

As for how to keep content fresh...

To be honest, I'm still working on that--and very much looking forward to others' ideas on this very topic today!