Slice of Life Day 27: Thrive Virtual Conference

I love to learn! That’s probably no surprise coming from a person with two graduate degrees and the longing to get a Ph.D. But, realistically, a Ph.D. in my field isn’t really going to help me move forward in my career and it’s a lot of time and money I don’t have to devote to the program. With that said, I’m always looking for new ways to learn.

Last year, a coworker and friend suggested checking out the Thrive Blogging Conference. And due to the pandemic, the Thrive virtual conference was free and virtual which was awesome! I was able to connect with a lot of really great people and learned a bunch. So, when this year’s conference came around, I was super excited to participate again. In fact, because I had to take a few days off work before the end of the quarter, I got to devote most of yesterday to the conference.

Some of the sessions were about things that I don’t really need to worry about, but others I have pages of notes on and I’m super excited to take some of these ideas and run with them. It’s always fun to be a part of a group that has the same passion for what you’re doing. Most of these bloggers do not blog about kid lit, but we all can benefit from learning about email newsletters, branding concepts, and content creation.

Part-Time Blogger Thoughts

As a part-time blogger that gets paid absolutely nothing – I love what I do, but really I have to fit it into the leftover bits of time I have after working and spending time with my family. But, after blogging for the past 5+ years, it’s truly become a part of my schedule that I really enjoy doing. I can’t imagine not blogging, so I know it’s something that I want to keep working on.

So I love to blog, but I always feel a little out of my league as a blogger. Why would anyone want to know what I think about books? Imposter syndrome is a very real thing and I’m definitely going to get better about sharing my voice. Not what I think my readers want to hear, but what I really think. This is hard to do when I’m worried about saying the right thing or the wrong thing. The Internet is a very big place with lots of opinions! So, why not share mine in my own little corner?

The Thrive Virtual Conference got me super energized to jumpstart some new ideas for my blog. I’ve got some ideas and projects that I’ve been wanting to work on for a while and I’m even more excited now! There’s never quite enough time during the day. But with an extra couple of days off this weekend, I’ve got some big plans to devote a lot of this time to my blog!

This is my third year participating in the Slice of Life Challenge. I’ll be sharing brief posts that show a glimpse of my life in story-format. I hope you enjoy just a slice of my life as a librarian, book lover, and blogger!