Bye-Bye Nerdette Reviews...

It's been a really, really long time, but I'm finally back and better than ever! This revamp took a lot of brainstorming, even though I had the name picked out a long time ago, and I'm so happy with the way that everything looks! For something so simple, I think that I've done a pretty good job.

My design for Nerdette Reviews got to be way too busy with all of the colours, paterns and moving things, so I figured that it would be better to take a cue from fashion bloggers, and a few fellow book bloggers too, and go for something more clean so that I can still continue to make GIF banners. Woo hoo!
"Why did I decide to change my blog to Exploring by Starlight?" I hear you ask. To answer that, I'm going to ask a question: How many book blogs have you seen with the word 'Nerd' in the title? In fact, go to Bloglovin and do a search for 'nerd'. There's half of your answer. 'Nerdette Reviews' just wasn't original enough and doesn't really reflect my personality. No disrespect to people who do consider themselves do be nerds, but I really don't anymore. Recently I've shied away from major fandoms, and I'm not even into Star Trek or anything else 'nerdy' anymore (except for video games and DC, I'll always love those), so thinking of myself as a nerd makes me do this total full-body cringe and I also would hesitate to tell people about my blog because I grew to hate the name so much. New name = bye-bye embarrassment!

SOME CHANGES HERE AND THERE...

Obviously with a change of blog name and design, I'm going to be making a lot of changes around here in terms of what I post. What are these changes going to be?

• I'm no longer going to try to post every single day. I've only ever managed to have a full week of posts once or twice, and it's fucking exhausting. I always end up running my creative juices completely dry, so now I'm aiming to post about three or four times a week. If it's less then that, that's okay.
• I'm limiting myself to one book review a week, and full movie reviews whenever I have one. I don't read as much as I used to, and not every movie I watch is worth writing a full-length review for.
• Speaking of movie reviews, I'm going to be doing a Mini Movie Reviews post at the end of every month. I know that lots of bloggers do mini book review posts, but I don't read enough to have tons of mini reviews, but I do watch tons of movies.
• I'm going to be participating in Top 10 Tuesdays, which I've been wanting to do for a long time now, but I never got the chance because Tuesday used to be my book review day (I'm now going to post on Wednesdays)
• I'm going to be writing more discussion posts, and personal posts, and I'm going to try to make more bookish posts, as well as posts about other things I like.
• I'm going to be more active in the blogging community. I know, I know. I say this all the time, but this time I actually do mean it. I'm going to be commenting more, and replying to comments, which is the only thing that I always forget to do.

SO WHAT HAVE I BEEN UP TO?

To sum things up in a GIF, things have been like this:

Alright, alright. Here's the longer version:
For me, life has been hovering between meh and just bad. During April I was completely riddled with paranoia that I'd missed my assignment deadlines because I just couldn't remember when they were and I was too scared to go look them up. It sounds totally stupid, but it makes sense to me. Turns out that I hadn't missed any of them and they were all in May so I calmed down for just a little while.
May was full of assignments and deadlines (I had three: one essay and two short stories) and I ended up being even worse. I'm the kind of person who freaks out over things and then leaves them until the very last minute, and then somehow ends up with a good grade even though what I thought I handed in was total shit. I really have no idea how I do it, but that's just how I work. It's not healthy and I really don't recommend it. I got 72/100 on the last short story that I handed in (which I think was the best one I wrote) and I was so happy with it! Once all of the assignments were over, I became a total hermit and my mental well-being just plummeted. The worst thing about it is because it was literally no reason whatsoever. I guess it could be said that I was depressed but I haven't seen a doctor about it (I hate going to the doctors and thinking about my health freaks me out), so I'm not going to call it that.
Anways, enough of my sadness, here's some other stuff that's happened to me:

• I made a shit-ton of GIFs, and I've got a series of posts sharing them planned, so keep an eye out for them!
• I finally reached over 200 followers on Tumblr (and not to sound bitter or anything, but I've been on Tumblr for five years, and some people manage to get to 600 in the space of a few months, so it's about time!)
• I crashed into a borderline-unhealthy obsession with Nine Inch Nails and developed a humongous crush on Trent Reznor. Am I embarrassed? Not in the slightest.
• I worked my way out of a terrible reading slump, and it's all thanks to contemporary YA fiction.
• Apple released iOS 8.4, which has Apple Music on it, and I became probably the only person to hate it. In fact, I hate it so much that I downgraded my iPhone back to iOS 8.3 but lost all of my data in the process, and also apparently the new iTunes update deleted all music that you haven't purchased in the Store (which is about 80% of my library) so I haven't downloaded the update because I really don't want to risk it.
• I went to Disneyland Paris with my university friends. It was a thing that happened.
• And finally, my brother got me this beautiful mouse pad:

I seriously have no words for how beautiful this is.

If I'd had something planned, this would be the part where I'd be hosting a giveaway, but since I'm broke (as per usual), there is no giveaway, sorry! I promise that I will host a giveaway sometime in the future (maybe around about October if I'm doing a horror-themed month again)! That's about all I have to say for now, so I will see you all around!