Words of March || Wrap-up + An Exciting Announcement!

Welcome to this blog's first ever wrap-up!

Wrap-ups are one of my favourite posts to write because I get to share updates, look back on happy things, and share some plans for the future. These are also some of my more personal posts because I take the time to talk about my month, share posts that I loved reading, and just talk to you in general.

I have a TON to tell y'all today so grab a drink and settle down!

words on the blog

March was the first full month for this blog, and it was a great month!

I was VERY nervous when launching this blog. Not only was I leaving behind years of work on my old blog and starting from scratch, I've also invested money into this now. There's no going back.

So to see the amount of love this blog has been receiving is a huge relief. Several of you have been DMing me on my socials and commenting that you love this blog, and it MAKES ME SO HAPPY. One person even emailed me with compliments and questions and it made me into a blubbering mess. I responded with a very long and wordy email, which was barely coherent, because I was high on gratitude.

Thank you so much! Thank you for visiting and taking the time to read my very wordy posts. For reaching out to me with compliments. For asking me questions (being able to answer and help makes me feel like I actually have some experience haha). For loving this blog even with its imperfections.

There have been multiple days where I woke up to compliments and they literally made my day. So yeah, thanks for validating my work and reassuring me that taking this step was a good thing.

I was also unsure about posting less frequently because I'm not used to posting once a week or less. But I'm really happy with the quality of each post and it's amazing to see that y'all are loving it as well.

If you haven't seen the three guides* I posted this month, do check them out!

*the fact that I posted THREE in a month is unbelievable. Who am I? How did I find the time? How do I maintain this momentum?

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words on books

This month was filled with me working for the blog, doing art, and playing badminton with friends regularly. Hence, reading reduced. I'm not disappointed, though. I elaborate on this in an Instagram post but basically I am okay with reading lesser if it means I get more things done.

I read 15 books in March, not counting three unfinished books. I actually read lesser but in the last few days I got into a reading kick and read four books!

My best reads were definitely Act Your Age, Eve Brown and The Palace of Illusions. The former was a really good romance that made me super happy. The latter was more thoughtful and exploring. I highly recommend both of them! Little Fires Everywhere was also really good.

my words on other platforms

Instagram has always been a problem for me because I am not passionate about photography at all. The algorithm doesn't help as well because Instagram wants us to spend all our time on the app in return for morsels.

Recently, I finally became okay-ish with less engagement but I still did not fully like the content I was putting out. It did not make me proud.

After launching this blog and having a few good illustrations, I impulsively decided to start posting my illustrations instead of photos. And I'm loving it!

I'm proud of my art and, in turn, I spend more time writing good captions. I've moved into the "thoughtful" side with my captions recently and while it's off-brand compared to my previous content, I don't care. It's making me happy enough to post very regularly and that is all we need.

All the captions are written on-the-fly and don't have any structure but the messages are good, in my opinion. My favourite Instagram posts so far are:

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I also did TWO video features in March! You get to see my face!

One was an IGTV live interview with Sukhaja on Instagram where we spoke about reading, journalling and blogging. You can watch it here.

Another was a very interesting discussion on romance books, diversity and influence of books on society on Siman's YouTube channel. I absolutely enjoyed this discussion and forgot that we were even recording it, actually. It was really fun. Watch it here!

One of my goals this year is to say yes more often, especially to opportunities out of my comfort zone. Videos are not something I prefer but I said yes and enjoyed it!

words by other bloggers

March saw me spend a lot of my time reading other blogs and finding some GREAT bloggers. Here are some posts that you should check out as well!

• Eleennae has an amazing new idea to build a classroom without walls.
• Laura wrote a great article on importance of literature and reading.
• Prutha recommends books based on Kpop songs.
• Kal wrote an SEO guide for books reviews.

If you're looking to find new blogs, do check out this blog's footer anytime! I feature a few different blogs every month that absolutely deserve more love.

words on the future

The consequence of loving this blog, the content I'm putting out, and the response to it all? Becoming motivated to try new things! There will always be nervousness when trying something new but it can get easier over time because I know that people might love it.

I'm starting a newsletter!

My content plan for this blog is very different compared to my old one. One of the changes is less personal and chatty content. I absolutely love writing them but I just don't see how valuable they are to y'all to have them posted forever. Plus, those kinds of content don't make as excited to write.

But I still want to connect with y'all on a more personal and casual level. The newsletter will be my way of doing that as you can reply to emails and we can have personal conversations!

It's harder to have one-to-one conversations on the blog as our comments are public and starting a random conversation on social media can be hard. The newsletter gives a way to bridge that gap where we can chat easily without it being public.

What to expect in the newsletter:

It's going to be like a literal letter to you. It will be way more casual and will not follow a rigid one-topic structure like my blog posts.

The main bit of the newsletter will be a personal section where I talk about life-related things. I'm a positive person who likes to acknowledge the past and focus on a better future so I'm going to bring that uplifting attitude to your inbox.

Along with that, I really want to mention some book recommendations in every newsletter. Either books I've read recently or recommendations for that specific month based on other events.

One section I'm excited about is the causes to support section. I'm a huge believer in regular donations and returning a bit of what you get to the community. Since I started earning, I've been donating to different causes every month.

I really want to encourage more people to start donating because we spend so much time absorbing information about current events and raising awareness that we forget to actually donate. Twitter can also be very overwhelming. So I'm going to share a couple causes you can monetarily support in order to make your decision process easier without being overwhelmed by information. Donating is also a great way to help if you're not comfortable with raising your voice online*.

For some exclusive and helpful content, I'm creating a resource library that will only be accessible to newsletter subscribers. I considered adding a freebie with every newsletter but it would be hard to access everything together without going through every email.

The resource library will be full of resources like checklists, templates, printables etc. I also want to add in illustrations to use as desktop/mobile wallpapers. Basically, things that you can use. And I'll add a new item to the library every month.

For now, I'll be sending the newsletter once a month, at the beginning of the month, because I don't want to take on too much immediately. I may consider making it more frequent later but we'll see how this goes first.

The newsletter will start going out in May. Yes, that's an entire month later but I don't want to rush and send something that isn't good.

If you are interested in hearing more from me and chatting with me, sign up for the newsletter below! I'd love to connect with y'all ❤

*like me. I retweet and share but I generally hold back from being loud in general—whether about things I love or about world events. So I just donate because monetary help always helps.

Fun fact: I added this form in the sidebar a few days back to set it up and try it out. During that time, two people already subscribed! It felt so good haha.

let's chat!

How was your March? Did you read any good books or start something new? Did you do anything exciting?

What do you think of the newsletter idea? Is there any content that you would like to see in the newsletter or the resource library?