Happy Birthday, Little Blog!

It's my blog birthday! And, as is traditional, I baked for the occasion and I know that, even if my blog doesn't necessarily appreciate it because it doesn't have tastebuds, my family and I will because mmmmm, coookies...*

Anyway. Enough of this talk about food! Although, I would like to share all my cookies with you and I'm not even good at sharing cookies, so that's how much I love you all. It's a lot.

It's weird to think how much a blog birthday actually means to me, and it's even weirder to think how much it brings things into perspective for me, even more so than Christmas, or my actual birthday. Maybe because there are no presents, none of the business of birthdays, that I can look back and see clearly how much things have actually changed. Last year I was in a completely different place to the year before, and this year it's different again, and if I really think about it, it's only getting better.

This past year, I started sharing more about my actual life with you all, much more for my own benefit than for yours, so that I would actually talk about things that were happening rather than just storing them up to freak out about them later. I don't think even I know how much that helped me, but I do know that your comments of love and support were amazing and helpful and so wonderful at all times, you don't even know.

I'm crying now while I'm writing this, so I guess that I know, at least.

And really, I say this all the time but I really didn't have any expectations about blogging before I started and I never ever expected to make friends through it, but the fact of the matter is, I think I'm basically more popular on the internet than I've ever been anywhere else in my life, and by popular I don't mean page views, or comments, but actual friendships, conducted via blogs and twitter and email and watching Clueless transatlantically and OMG through readalongs. Seriously, discovering WILKIE with the best bunch of people has been the best, and we're already having SO much fun reading Harry Potter, and, yeah, it's just amazing.

I've just finished reading Ready Player One (I love it so much. You'll see...) and there's this one quote that made me think 'yep. That's me and my internet friends alright.' It comes after the main character meets an internet friend for the first time:

"As we continued to talk, going through the motions of getting to know each other, I realised we already did know each other, as well as any two people could. We'd known each other for years, in the most intimate way possible. We'd connected on a purely mental level." 

And we do this all the time, every day, and it's the reason I keep coming back, far beyond just talking about books which, let's face it, is also a really really fun part. So thank you all, and let's keep having fun and being friends because you make the internet the best and um, did I mention that I love you? Did I say it in cookies?

So now you know.

AND. I was going to be all like

But dammit, I like to give away books and if you can't do that on your (blog) birthday then when can you? (the correct answer to this is, 'whenever.' But hush.) So, I'm going to give away a Penguin English Library book to someone I love, which could be any one of you reading this, I reckon. So just leave me a comment and tell me which one you want and we'll see what happens. (I can't be bothered to drag this out, so you have until... Sunday? At midnight? Yeah, that feels good.)

And thank you again for making the internet awesome. You're the best.

*I genuinely took about 50 photos of these damn cookies and this was the best one. Which is a shame because LOOK AT THE ICING MESS. But never mind. Cooooookies...