Social Media Hiatus? Book Buying Hiatus?

Many thanks to everyone who has recently subscribed to this blog (as well as to those friends and cetera who've been here off and on for quite a while now).

I never did write my traditional year-end summary blog post for 2020. Maybe I'll end up sharing it piecemeal. One thing I did share was my list of 47 books that I finished reading last year. That sounded like a lot until I tried to count the number of new (or new-to-me) books I acquired in 2020. For years I have posted pictures on Facebook whenever I've procured printed books. Based on these pictures, I acquired 102 in 2020. But there are likely some books I missed photographing. And that doesn't count the number of e-books I downloaded during the course of the year, which I would estimate exceeds another 100. (For example, I know I downloaded 75 chapbooks just from Ghost City Press' 2020 Summer Series alone.)

I'm going on a temporary book buying hiatus in 2021, though I just received the four pictured here in the past few days and I know there are a handful more still on their way to me. I'm sharing the photo here now instead of on Facebook because, like the headline suggests, I'm also going on a social media hiatus this month. I meant for it to begin on January 1st, but so far I have had to check into my social accounts a handful of times since then just to tie up loose ends (like gathering January event information for my role as moderator of the online NE Ohio Literary Calendar). I plan to reach the point where I can avoid social media completely (at least for a while) in the next twenty-four hours or so. I'm not sure how long the hiatus will last (the rest of January? the rest of winter? the rest of 2021?). But I think that the longer I stay off, the easier it will be to continue to stay off. Maybe I will get back on regularly after the pandemic is under control and I can begin doing live events again. But mainly I want to break the cycle of being available (and feeling I need to check in) on social media all the time no matter what else I'm doing. I've been stretched too thin for a while now and I want and need to focus more on other things.

One of those things is reading more books than I acquire. Another is spending more time on my own writing. Then there are myriad household chores that need tackled. And I could go on and on. But I'll save some of that for a future post.

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Books pictured:

Stonepicker and The Book of Mirrors by Frieda Hughes
Forty-five: Poems by Frieda Hughes
Woman's Work by Marie Chewe-Elliott
What Kittens Like by Marie Chewe-Elliott (illustrated by Jennifer Stolzer)