Book Blogger Confessions #3

Book Blogger Confessions is a new meme hosted by All-Consuming Books and For What It's Worth. You can find out all about it here. 

Every second week there is one topic that has something to do with book-blogging that you can discuss on your blog.

This week's topic is:

Let's talk about a positive aspect of blogging! How has blogging influenced your real life in a positive way? (not related to books or reading) Have you learned to be organized or are you more social now for example?

One way that blogging has affected the rest of my life is confidence. I know, this is going to sound super-corny, but blogging helped me figure out who I am. Before I started blogging, I read, and that was my only real interest. I mean, I had other interests and hobbies, but nothing I'm really passionate about, like reading. I'm a senior in high school, was a junior when I started blogging, so it's the time when you start thinking about what you want to do with your life. Since reading was what I was passionate about, I thought I'd try writing - maybe that would be the direction I wanted to go. I tried writing, but, well, it didn't really work. I just couldn't see myself as a writer.

When I started book-blogging, I found out how much fun it is to talk about books. I figured out that I could do something bookish without being a writer - there are lots of bookish jobs out there! I now know I want to go into publishing, and I don't think I would have figured it out without blogging. Knowing what I want to do with my life has made me more confident in who I am.

Blogging also made me more confident in stating my opinion. I write reviews - some of them good, some of them bad. Not everyone agrees with me, and that's fine. When I started blogging, I felt really bad giving a book lots of people have loved a bad review. But by now, I've gotten used to it - different people have differente opinions, and that's never going to change. I've gotten used to not always agreeing with everyone else, and that's made me more confident in giving my opinion in real life.

Another aspect of my life blogging has improved is time-management. I've gotten a much better handle on being productive and efficient. I've figured out when to waste time on Twitter and when to step back and do whatever I have to do - be it something blog-related or something from real life, like homework.

So that's the way blogging has influenced my "real life"! What about you?