I Love Blogging.

I recently switched my domain provider for the blog over to GoDaddy and somehow during that switch my blog unexpectedly disappeared. I immediately called tech support, but then discovered I had to call my old domain provider and then tons of other stuff happened too, so long-story-short: the dude who helped me at GoDaddy on Friday morning is my hero because Call Me Crazy is back! WOO!

During all of this craziness I realized...

I love blogging.

I love being able to share my thoughts; whether they're about my love for books or art or even my adventures of growing up, with others from around the globe. I love the open discussions that are created and all the different passions for life that can be shared.

I don't want to keep feeling that blogging is something I need to feel guilty about or something that I need to be ashamed of. There's all this bad stigma that's around blogging, but I guess everything has something 'bad' connected to it while the 'good' stuff is so easily left to be ignored.

I don't want to stop blogging. I don't care if others don't always understand it. I do and I love it.

One of the many thoughts I had while trying to fix the 'no blog' problem was, oh man, I want to blog about this. Not only did I want to blog about what was happening, but about this huge realization I was having: I love blogging. As simple as it may sound or as obvious as it should have been to me, it felt like my eyes were opening to something I never really considered a hobby or had accepted as something that I could proudly love and put time into without feeling guilty. It honestly shocked me how upset I got at the idea of not having my own safe place to express myself.

I started blogging when I was sixteen-almost seventeen.

I'll be twenty-one in March.

That's a long time! That's a big part of my teen years, a huge part of me growing and exploring the person I wanted to (still want to) become.

Sure, I blogged mostly about books and (up until recently) not my personal life, but my voice and writing has changed so much. Just as a whole, who I am is vastly different from the teen girl who started Tales of A Teenage Bookaholic back in March of 2010.

Sixteen year old me a few months before I started blogging. 

When I was planning the new, worst-case-scenario blog I was thinking about how much better it would be than this one. About how it was going to have posts three times a week, funny videos, a cool design and a name that I actually liked. (Completely forgetting about the fact that I 'd still have the same amount of homework and the same time consuming responsibilities as I do now.) But then the next morning, after a somewhat good night's sleep, I realized that this is my space, my blog. I put a lot of work into her (you know something means a lot to you when it earns themselves a pronoun.) I want to work on her, have her grow as I hope to and take her on this adventure with me.

I have this bad habit of wanting to fix things.

Recently, it was pointed out to me that I am always saying I want to 'fix' something about myself. I constantly think something is horribly wrong with me that it needs 'fixing'. I've been thinking about how I really do use the word 'fix' frequently when talking about myself and how it's become this negative word for me.

I'm constantly wanting to throw something (not usually a literal thing) away if it doesn't work or I just talk about wanting to change everything about something in order to somehow make it 'better'. I thought this only applied to the thoughts I have about myself, but reflecting on previous plans for this blog, I realized it occurs here too.

I don't want to fix anymore, I want to improve. I want to accept  and I want to grow from the past.

So here's to taking out the word fix and replacing it with improve.

Here's to accepting the past for what it was and taking what you learned with you while you go onto new, brighter things.

Here's to appreciating the things that got you to where you are now and learning, as cheesy as this old saying may sound, to grow from where you are planted. 

Some fun first posts:

Book Review 

Bookshelf Tour 2010

'Random' Post

Book Tour

Writing

Rant