Hello! It’s New Year’s Eve!

2020 has honestly been such a strange year that I was a bit scared about writing your post. I knew that I had keywords that I wanted to follow for this year, but I have no idea how well I’ve followed them. So I went to my Keywords for 2020 post and took a look.

Consume Thoughtfully

I wrote a lot about buying from local brands and indie authors and I think I’ve only achieved one of that. This year was the year I found out about remaindered book stores and as you may remember, I ended up going overboard on it.

Was I very thoughtful in my consumption?

I think maybe for things like podcasts and buying more ethically produced clothes, but not so much for books. I did enjoy my month of rereading because it got me to re-familiarise myself with the books I own, so that is something to do a bit more often in 2021.

Create Intentionally

I mentioned that I wanted to blog a little less this year and wow, I have definitely not done that. I think I stuck to roughly five posts a week – three book-related posts and two tea-related posts. Most of them were reviews, but I did manage to start writing a few discussion posts and do a few tea-experiments (I didn’t mention it yesterday, but I really enjoyed the time I tried making houjicha from stale tea)!

One thing I found really helpful was the Classic Remarks prompt by Pages Unbound. While I didn’t take part in it every week, I found the list of weekly prompts to be very useful in getting me to think about what else I could write about.

Another thing I put more effort in this year was Instagram (and youtube)! It sounds a bit superficial but getting into the habit of taking bookish/tea photos was another way for me to be creative. I’ve always been writing about books and more recently, tea, so taking photos and sometimes making myself record videos was a good way to step out of my comfort zone without stepping out too far. A new thing I’ve recently started is a telegram channel to share posts about books and tea that I enjoy.

Oh! And this is not related to reading, but I’m really happy about having developed a baking habit. It was definitely sparked by the lockdown period and helped by the fact that I’m still working from home, but the fact that I bake about once a week is a huge achievement for me and it’s actually really nice to be able to make something tangible on a regular basis.

Overall thoughts

Personally, I think I did a bit more creating this year than thoughtful consumption. It has been really fun trying different things, and while I don’t know how many I can sustain, I am enjoying the process so far. Check back tomorrow (1 Jan 2021!!!) for the new keyword that I’m planning to add in 2021.