Five years of blogging! Who saw THAT coming? Five years ago, it certainly wasn’t me. And sometimes I still feel like a newbie who’s playing catch-up, and will always be a few steps behind no matter what; the online world changes so fast. On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of “what goes around, comes around” over the course of five years–plenty of fads, lots of blogs started and retired, and some things that have stuck around. With that experience behind me, it’s easier to take the changes as they come…and to decide which ones I’ll let pass me by. With experience comes a better sense of what works for me, and what doesn’t.

I started this blog to keep a record of the books I read and my thoughts about them. If I’d known about GoodReads before that first post, I might never have published it, since that would have served my purposes just fine. But I’m glad I didn’t know about it (GR was barely two months old then, so I’m not sure how many people knew about it then anyway), because I really can’t imagine what the last five years would have been like without this blogging adventure–it’s taken me so far beyond my original intentions.

Or maybe it hasn’t. “Reading, ‘Riting, and Randomness” was always intended to be a mission statement (although it wasn’t always a tagline).

It took me a while to find my place in the blogiverse. My explorations led me on a side trip into the land of the mom-bloggers, and part of me has stayed there–that part is primarily local, and those relationships were the first to transition from online to off-line. Bloggers like Donna and April and Kim and Jessica are fellow blogging veterans (April started a few months after I did, and the others were there ahead of us both) who are still in the trenches and nowhere close to running out of things to say (although Jessica admits she sometimes does think about quitting–but if she did, I suspect she’d come back.)

Finding my book-blogging tribe wasn’t so easy at first, although it was definitely out there. I began looking through BlogHer (“where the women bloggers are”), and although there weren’t as many book bloggers there as I’d hoped (still aren’t, but it’s growing!), I did find Sassymonkey (Karen), who still holds down the fort of the Books section and is one of my favorite people to see at conferences (next up: BEA/BBC 2012!) Booking Through Thursday was another good place to look (and I suspect it still is, although I haven’t played along with them for quite a while), and (I think) that’s where I met Literary Feline (Wendy), who has the dubious distinction of being my oldest book-blogging friend.

I may not have found them right away–and I found many of them with the aid of our still-missed community-builder, Dewey (the link goes nowhere now, but I’m including it anyway)–but I’m glad that so many of the book bloggers who were doing this when I started (and in some cases had a head start) are still around. Suey and Word Lily (Hannah) both started their blogs the same week I did–Happy Blogiversary to you both! Wendy was just about a month ahead of us. Softdrink (Jill) was already posting her “fizzy thoughts,” and Andi had been carrying out (Estella’s) Revenge for well over a year. (And I know I’m missing some–I’m not leaving you out on purpose, but it has been five years and I don’t remember everything!)

The book-blogging world has grown a lot–and grown up just a bit, even as it seems that the newcomers are younger and younger and the most favored book category to blog about is Young Adult–since I first entered it. Book Blogger Appreciation Week has blossomed from a virtual party that our friend Amy hosted on her own blog to a much-anticipated annual event where hundreds of us get to know each other better and recognize the best among us.

BBAW, Blog Hops, Readathons, Bloggiestas…you might not expect people who are so into books to be so into group activities too, but book bloggers do love to mingle with one another, even if they’re miles–or continents–apart. I was present at the creation of the “virtual convention” Armchair BEA two years ago, when a group of us who weren’t going to the expo and the first Book Blogger Con decided we should “do something of our own,” and worked up a blog development/networking/book-discussion event that really took off–and it’s coming back in 2012 (even though several of its founders are actually going to BEA/BBC this year, we love this event too much to let it go)!

I’ve seen what happens when book blogging opens opportunities like it has for Trish and Lisa, who have built on relationships with bloggers, publisher reps, and authors to become the leaders in virtual book tours. I’ve seen what happens when authors blog, and when book bloggers champion authors like Beth Kephart, and I’ve seen things come full circle when bloggers author books (and once spent a couple of hours in an airport with Anna Lefler long before she started on that journey) whose books get attention on the blogs.

Blogging has opened up some opportunities for me, too. I get to pick and choose among the review offers that come my way now. I get paid for some of them–and when I don’t, it seems like I prefer the books I pick on my own to the ones that others want to pick for me. I get to write in other places sometimes. I’ve had some chances to be a leader. And now that my employer has discovered social media (“like” their page, would you please?) I don’t feel like I have to keep my social-media self under wraps at work (although I will only very rarely bring my work around here).

One of the defining features of the online world is that it seems to celebrate and nurture the new. It’s very easy to get started, and bloggers love to help one another find their footing. But there seem to be fewer resources out there once we’ve got some experience behind us…although we still need and want that support. It’s a big part of what keeps a veteran blogger in the force and out of retirement.

I might decide to turn out the lights here one day; if and when that happens, I’d like to feel that I had a pretty good run. I’ve seen the landscape change over the past five years, and I haven’t always been sure of my place in it. Sometimes it’s been challenging to keep doing it my own way and not play by the new rules, and it can be hard to accept that such a decision means that I may not find myself with much of a place in it at all. But as I said earlier, having seen those changes has helped me understand that the only right way to blog is the way that feels right to me. I think getting to that acceptance is probably part of attaining blogger maturity…and even after five years, sometimes I’m still not very mature.

But I’m glad I’m still here. I hope to stay a while longer.