Hi dear friends,

First of all: Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate!

Living in Europe and being Christian, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving but I love the idea of being grateful for something and expressing my thanks!

So today’s discussion is all about being grateful to be a blogger!

What did and does blogging bring you?

What are you grateful for? Maybe things you’d never have imagined before blogging? Some “side effect” of blogging?

Did blogging change you for the best maybe?

Let’s see what I am grateful for:

-I am grateful for the blogging community!

I think that’s what I never realized before blogging: the support of this huge international community. There is always someone to help you!

Be it because you did a mistake on your blog and don’t know how to code something.

Or because you don’t know what a meme means or how to entre in a blog tour.

Or just because you feel down, go through hard times and need someone to talk to and boost you.

So my first thank is to all of you!

-I am grateful for the skills I learned that empowered me and boosted my confidence.

Choosing to self host meant learning some basic coding skills that I did not possess in the beginning. Thanks to other bloggers and nerds I quickly got what I needed.

I learned photoshop and the art of making graphics thanks to Talia @redhotink who taught me for hours through Skype, her in new York, me in my small town in Belgium! This is the magic of technology and the magic of an online friendship!

I had no clue how to set up an Instagram account nor take pretty pictures of books with cute prop.

I did not know that each media has its codes to communicate and that you have to adapt your post format. WordPress is not Facebook. Facebook is not Twitter etc.

This showed me that even nearing my fifities I could adapt quickly and learn fast and that is priceless! Best confidence boost!

-I am grateful for meeting fantastic friends, from different cultures, ages and upbringing.

I love people.

I think that the more you are different from me, the most interesting it is! I know that peer call to peer and that’s true. But I also think that encountering so many bloggers from diverse origins made me richer.

My US friends taught me to be confident and tell people, PR agencies, authors etc that yes, my work as a blogger was great! That’s not something that is praised in my culture.

My muslim friends taught me that even if their religion have strict ideas sometimes, even if their families are very traditional, they are open minded and ready to take risks. The best example was with my chat with an online friend about Someday, Someday by Emma Scott. This is a Male/Male romance story, something that her culture forbade but she took the risk, read it and loved it! It gave us a very interesting chat about religion, culture and love.

I could go on and on about all the incredible people I have met while blogging.

-I am grateful for going out of my comfort zone with books.

Visiting blogs from people who have very different taste than mine made me curious and bolder! I had never read science fiction but after seeing some friends gushing about Honor Among Thieves; Skyward and Lifel1k3, I took the risk and I so loved it!

The same happened with mysteries and with historical fiction.

Thanks to you and your recommendation, your tireless enthusiasm for your reads I broadened my horison and had some of my best reads!

-I am grateful for all the authors I have met

Blogging showed me that it was possible to meet authors and chat with them at book events! I had names of events, dates and places to go! That’s something I had no clue before blogging!

I could meet my unicorn authors like Emma Scott, Amy harmon, Suanne Laqueur and so many other!

I even was a Personal Assistant for Scarlet Cole at RARE Paris and could help many French speaking readers to have a personalized meet with the author! This gave me so much happiness to help and give!

I could go on and on about the things that I am grateful for!

Now do tell me: what are YOU grateful for since blogging?

Thanks for reading!

Sophie