Sierra's One Month Anniversary » Co-blogging & Life Update

Hello friends!

I was looking through Quest Reviews' stats and analytics today when I realized 'OH MY GOSH ITS BEEN A MONTH'.

It's been a month since I started reviewing again. A month since Ellen and I have become even better friends. A month since I've reconnected with familiar faces (Joy!) and made new blogger friends (that means you!). A month since the Netgalley gods have decided, hmmm, maybe we don't hate her so much anymore.

Life Update

The last couple of months have been really tough on me. Some of you may already know this, but I have PTSD (Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder). Debilitating depression and agonizing anxiety (see what I did there, I do love me some alliteration!) just comes along with the territory. This means an endless parade of therapy, doctors appointments, medicines to try, side-effects to deal with and visits to the hospital (just to name a few). All done in the hopes that one day, I will be normal.



Normal. The word makes me laugh sometimes or cry in frustration. What the hell is it even supposed to mean?

The point of this somewhat depressing sneak peek into my life is that blogging has given me a sense of purpose with achievable goals. It's also helped me connect with wonderful people out there in a meaningful way. It's something I will never take for granted because I often struggle with maintaining such connections with my dearest friends in real life.

Co-blogging Update

I LOVE co-blogging with Ellen! I love the support we give each other, our ridiculous and semi-frantic messages we exchange about books at all hours of the day, and the excitement we feel when our stats get higher and higher.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500"] Can you tell I'm excited?[/caption]

We've done some fabulous joint posts together like our Top Ten Tuesdays (bookish facts, books under 2000 ratings & books we feel differently about). We tackled the Buzz Books 2016 YA sampler together, which was a doozy!

My favorite joint venture by far was our discussion of Paper Princess. The post took a lot of time to write but it was just so much fun to do it together and discuss wild and outlandish theories in the process.

Ellen is participating in a Comment Challenge (for the month of July) hosted by Alicia @ A Kernal of Nonsense & Lonna @ FLYLēF. Even though I'm not exactly an official participant, I have been having a great deal of fun visiting other blogs and leaving (hopefully) interesting comments. It's been a wonderful way to network and I encourage all of you to join us for the month of August! That's how Ellen and I met our friends Lauren @ Always Me and Anne @ My Head is Full of Books, and they are amazing bloggers.

My personal blogging goal for the rest of the year is to write more discussion posts. I made the mistake of assuming that as a book blogger, I should stick to book reviews and bookish memes. As I've been wandering around the blogosphere, I realize that while I do enjoy reading my share of reviews (as my TBR berates me), I enjoy reading discussions more.

To that end, I've decided to join a challenge! I'm officially signing up for the 2016 Book Blog Discussion Challenge hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight.



Thank you everyone for being such a valuable part of Quest Reviews and Happy One Month Anniversary to Ellen and I as co-bloggers!