WHY am I blogging??

This is a hard question to answer, and also pretty straightforward. It is hard to answer because it really doesn’t make any sense to me from a rational perspective – it is really perplexing like in those middle-of-the-night wake up moments I have found myself asking “Huh? Me? How? Can I do this?”. I am a super private person, I am introverted, and have not enjoyed participating in social media ever. But here I am, finding myself wanting to connect with others who, like me, love books, bookstores, and Maine. I want to find “my people”!

I started to follow more of my passions in the past couple of years. For me, turning 50 brought a sense of urgency to spend more of my time doing things that I like. Like a lot of people, I have devoted a better part of my life to my career – thankfully I love my work and a bonus to being a mental health therapist is that I get to read a lot of amazing books about health and wellness – a personal as well as professional interest of mine. I often share some of the best books in this genre with my clients – then recently I began to feel drawn to wanting to share my other favorite books with people also - to connect with other book lovers. Which brought me to the initial idea of starting a book blog.

Simultaneously, the pandemic fanned my concern about losing bookstores. One of my lifelong passions has been seeking unique and independent bookstores wherever I live or travel to. (My idea of a perfect day would include skiing, eating something chocolate, and stopping by a cute bookstore on the way home to buy ANOTHER book for my “collection”. I like used bookstores, independent bookstores, bookstores with or without a coffee café (or in my case, hot chocolate) – I ESPECIALLY love bookstores that allow dogs in them).

When businesses began shutting down – some permanently, I began to seriously worry about whether our bookstores would survive. The idea of not having my sweet, special stores to return to made me further think about how important it is for all of us to support our town bookstores (among other businesses of course!). If we all continued to only shop online, our neighbors (who own our local shops), our communities, our Main (Maine) Streets would all suffer and possibly not be here in the future. That’s not my idea of how I envisioned my future here in Maine.

Authors bring magic to our imaginations through their writing. Bookshops bring magic to our souls through supporting authors, their books, and for people like me, a feeling of being at a home-away-from-home in a bookstore.

So, here I am, hoping to inspire all of you to support our/your local bookstores and authors by sharing my little excursions to shops & author events and little book reviews of special books I love. I will also happily share local, Maine ‘insider information’ of local places to eat, and off-the-beaten path places to check out nearby our little bookstores.

When I am not reading, traveling around Maine, or visiting bookstores, you’ll find me skiing, doing yoga, playing the fiddle, baking something with chocolate, or hanging out with my pups & family.

Does any of this sound like you too? Here at Bookish ME, we can all connect about our favorite books, bookstores, and authors.

Stacia