Happy (Late) Blogiversary! My Peacock Books is 1 Year Old! #MPBooks

Happy first birthday to this blog! 😀 – Image from Pixabay.com

Yes that’s right, My Peacock Books is officially a year old…Or at least it was a year old on the 8th April but I was so caught up in stuff I didn’t realise!  Sorry for being late and for generally being less involved with the blogging community recently but I wanted to celebrate getting my blog to a one year mark 😀

The last year has been amazing.  The support so many of you have given me since I left my old blogging platform (Happymeerkatreviews) has been so wonderful I can’t thank you enough.  I’d gradually grown tired of my old blog and wanted to start afresh, and so I created a blog that I loved the look of and felt reflected my personality a lot and it’s been so amazing to have had my blog accepted by both the book community and more.

The last year has been amazing and I’ve received so many visits, likes and follows, and had so many lovely comments on my posts that I can’t believe it!  I’ve got over 9,000 views in the last year, over 590 followers and that’s all in just one year! Amazing!  Thank you so much to each and every one of you who has taken a look at my blog or commented and liked something and an especially big thank you for following too ❤ 🙂

What has happened in the last year?

Reminisce with me… – Image from Pixabay.com

The reason this blog and the success of it means so much to me is because of how my old one ended, or rather how I ended my relationship with that blog….(Feel free to scroll down if you don’t want me to bore you with my reminiscing :p )…You see, I never even intended to be a blogger or book blogger, I happened on the blogging community by chance.  I used to review lots of my own things on Amazon (I still do to be honest – it’s fun! 😀 ) but I got the thought that I should have a copy of all my reviews, especially as some of them took a long time to write.  A friend told me about WordPress as a new platform for creating websites and I’d enjoyed having a free and quite popular website in the past on the old and now defunct Geocities (seriously, does anyone remember that?) and I thought ‘why not?’.  And so I began blogging my reviews.

My old avatar surrounded in books!!! – Image © copyright of Happymeerkatreviews / © My Peacock Books
mypeacockbooks.wordpress.com

After a while I realised how much I loved reading and reviewing books and so my blog became a book blog, focusing on reviewing.  But like lots of new bloggers I was a bit naïve going into it and when I started to receive requests from lots of different authors for book reviews I said yes…to ALL of them! (well, nearly all!) and so soon felt the burnt out.  Then -and this is the sad bit- people, authors, began taken advantage of my good nature and bombarded me with requests and emails even when I’d said no.  Others said nasty things to me via emails and even Facebook groups and chats (which is why I shy away from Facebook in general these days), to the point that it could be called online bullying 😦

However, long story short, I picked myself up and dusted off all the nastiness and made sure that all the nonsense I’d been through would ultimately become my strength and not my weakness, so I learned to say no, learned what I really wanted to do with my blog and decided to begin again…and create the blog that really was Me 🙂

A blog I love! (and hope you love too!)…

Phoenix the Peacock: “Hi!” – Image  My Peacock Books mypeacockbooks.wordpress.com

And so My Peacock Books came into my head because I just loved peacocks!  I’d thought of using a cat first, because of my name, and the fact I love cats, but then I did a search and found lots of blogs popping up with cat related names, so then I thought of my favourite bird and that’s the peacock.  I decided to design the banner from scratch, rather than just use a photograph, so it would be completely unique to me 🙂  And so my logo and mascot of the site Phoenix the Peacock was born, and I hope you like the logo because he kind of appears on every banner and header you can find 🙂

Along with creating the look of this blog I was determined to make it a fun place filled with book reviews of books I enjoyed and wanted to read.  I also decided I was going to do whatever else I liked with the blog so I stuck my random photographs whenever the mood suits me as well as poetry (both happy and sad) and also the odd random piece of colouring in that I had done.

By now I’d learned a lot running my previous blog so I knew how to hook it up to social media too and so I hope my blog’s been more accessible nowadays as (I think) I finally know what I’m doing…And most importantly I’m enjoying it! 🙂 ❤

So why is the anniversary late?…

Won’t you have a slice of this…erm…cake? (look closer if you do think it’s a cake!) – Image of Pixabay.com

Offline life for me has been very hectic lately.  Despite everything and my determination to keep my blog going, the truth is the last few months have been a challenge for me.  I also suffered a bit of a confidence crisis recently which probably had more to do with what’s going on with me personally rather than online.  The biggest problem for me has been recent illness.  Some of you have read that I’ve struggled a few weeks ago with chest pains which left me barely able to move I was in so much pain.  After a while the doctors finally figured out what was wrong and I’d started to recover…

But I’m not out of the woods yet and the fact is that I’ve relapsed into some of that pain again this last week.  It’s starting to get worse all over again and I didn’t even think to check my blog’s anniversary date (which I knew was going to be in April) as I’ve been focusing on getting through the days.  On top of that both this pain and a few things going on recently damaged my confidence in myself quite a bit 😦  I even suffered a lack of complete confidence in my blogging abilities and blog in general, wondering if you guys really enjoyed reading my blog or whether you were just being nice 😮  But of course I know that a bit of a down mood can create such thoughts and I’m getting through it though, trying not to give seed to some of the thoughts that crept in.

A happy blogiversary either way…

Of course I wish that I was completely pain-free at this moment but truth is that it’s still there…however I’m determined to have a good and happy blogiversary and I hope you guys will want to keep reading my blog in the future, and keep enjoying the presence of Phoenix the Peacock on this blog 🙂

From this year to next… – Image from Pixabay.com

If there’s one thing I look forward to is another year which I hope will be filled with happy memories, happy posts and (hopefully) lots of fun and interaction too 🙂  I also hope that I can get a better grasp of my social media accounts which have been a bit hit and miss lately 😮  I’d love it if you guys could give me any thoughts or ideas you may have about how I can improve my blog and make it better for you.  If there’s anything technical like the site not working properly or posts not displaying then of course let me know, but I’d also love to know if you guys have a preferred type of post you like to see, or something that you don’t see that you’d like to?…I can’t guarantee I’d change anything, but I’d love to know what people think of my blog, good or bad.  I’m constantly thinking up all sorts of off topic posts and things to add to the blog so it would be good to know if any of your thoughts match mine.  Let me know in the comments below and feel free to be honest…I’m very resilient these days 🙂

Thank you again to everyone who has read this post as well as anyone who has ever read, liked, commented on anything or followed this blog.  You make a simple hobby so much more special.  Thank you ❤ ❤ ❤ 🙂

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