FEBRUARY GOALS | RAISING MY BLOGGING GAME

Oh my god the first month of 2019 is already over! January was a weird month because on the one hand I did a lot of really lovely things, but on the other some pretty horrible stuff happened. So it was a bit of a mixed bag. One of my personal goals was to stop being a crappy friend and always finding excuses not to see the people I love, and in January I made the effort to go see almost everyone I'd been flaking on, and was so proud of myself and delighted to catch up with some of my favourite people. 

I'm hoping to hold myself more accountable to my goals this year. I'm that person that will set huge elaborate idealised lists of things I want to do in a new year, only to flake on them by April, so I'm going to start tracking my goals on the blog, in order to hold myself accountable. So without further ado...


FOLDED PAPER FOXES 

 As you can see, we've got a bit of a rebrand/revamp is going on at the moment. I've been thinking about switching things up for a while, and my blog started getting more traffic recently, so I decided to make the jump sooner rather than later. Folded Paper Foxes was the name of my old book blog (still floating around somewhere in the internet), and while I enjoyed having my blog named after myself, it never felt as characterful as I'd like it to be, and actually I think there are benefits to not having your name be front and centre of your online profile.

Please do bear with while things start changing up, it shouldn't be too much of a hassle and I'm hoping by the end of the month that everything will be sorted.

RAISING MY BLOGGING GAME

To add onto changing the name of the blog, I'm planning by the end of the month to move Folded Paper Foxes to Wordpress, and then to go self-hosted. Blogger was the platform I've always used, and so it was easy to get into when I came back to blogging, but I quickly discovered that Wordpress is the place to be, and I feel like stepping up my blogging game means going self-hosted and ditching the platform name in my URL.

I also really want to get into a better routine and create more content of a higher quality. As I said I've noticed an increase in subscribers and views, which is awesome, and it's made me want to put more energy into what I'm putting out into the world. I can't promise daily world-changing essays, but if I can keep producing one or two quality posts a week I will be very pleased with myself. I want to focus on books, but will still be posting about creativity, sustainable living and cruelty free beauty. In many ways the clean-cut look of a completely one note blog appeals to me, but I'm passionate about other things besides books, and it would be so unsatisfying if I couldn't share them here.

BOOKSTAGRAM 

As I've changed my blog up, I've also committed to switching up my Instagram. It's been a pretty personal feed for a long time. Though I've always tried to keep my feed aesthetically consistent, the content has been relatively varied. I've generally thought of myself as a half-hearted bookstagrammer. This year I've decided to step it up, creating a more curated feed and focusing on book-related content. I've always loved the book community on Instagram, but felt a bit nervous about fully committing to a specific feed. After all, what if it turns out I'm rubbish at it? But I'm letting go of that fear now and just jumping into it. I'm pretty pleased with my new feed so far, feel free to go give it a follow if you like!

CREATIVITY

Another general goal of mine this year is to complete more creative projects. I'm forever playing around with ideas and getting excited about them, but never seem to get to the end of anything. I'm very much a starter and not a finisher, and I'm hoping to work on that this year. 

In the middle of 2016 I wrote a short story, called Blood, White, Bone for a creative writing course. The story was just a first draft and, although it got good feedback, I never did anything with it once the course was over. I discovered the draft a few days ago while I was clearing out my google docs, and have decided to keep it and work on it this month. The story is about 1500 words, and is a creepy feminist retelling of Snow White, so it'll be interest to go back to it so many years later and see what I can make of it now.

READING

So, I read two books in January... Actually, scratch that, I finished two books in January. This is because the book I'm currently reading (The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson) is well over a thousand pages long and is taking me a few weeks to get through. I'm definitely enjoying the novel, but I'm starting to feel really done with it. I wish I'd bought it in the two volume set so I could justify a break in between but I know, if I put it down and pick something else up, that I'll struggle to get back into it again. I'm planning to blitz it this week and get it finished so that I can move on. As I said, I am loving it, but at this stage it's starting to feel like a holiday that's going on a little too long. After that I have a nice pile of beautiful hardbacks to read, and want to have at least three of them read by the end of the month.

Let me know why your February is going to look like, and what your goals are for the month.

Thanks for reading!

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