Did I Make a Mistake?

​I’ve moved to Substack!

12 years ago I started a blog. 

I was 17 years old, obsessed with BookTube and somehow built my personality around reading classic literature. I’d just started my A Levels and wanted to be a part of the online reading community that I loved. 

I looked around my childhood bedroom for inspiration and settled on my Futon Company bookshelf which leant against the wall like a ladder. And there it was - The Leaning Bookshelf. 

Over the next 3 years I published post after post - From my own recommendations to book hauls to life advice. I even interviewed an author and was invited to an exhibition opening at my local art gallery. 

The Leaning Bookshelf followed me to uni - St Andrews - where I set up an Instagram account and started posting pictures of my books (with brightness violently turned up of course). 

And then somewhere along the way - I stopped. I think the heavy reading of an English literature degree killed my reading for fun and the blog started to feel more like a university assignment rather than a hobby. 

It’s been 10 years since my last post, and I really regret stopping. I look at the opportunities I was starting to get and can almost see this alternate timeline I could have lived if only I knew that the burnout would be temporary. 

I’m an English teacher now, and suddenly things seem to have come full circle. I’m teaching the same A Level students that I once was and I’ve found myself itching to get back into writing and reading again. 

So, here I am. My first post on The Leaning Bookshelf 2.0. I want to write about the books I’m reading from the opposite perspective from when I first started - the teacher rather than the student - and share what it means to rediscover a passion you once built your whole personality around. Maybe the next chapter of The Leaning Bookshelf will look a little different, but I think I’m finally ready.