Welcome to Worderland

New year, new me… or so the saying goes. Well I guess for me, it’s new year, new-ish blog; because I’m finally back in the blogosphere but with a new looking blog!

It’s the New Year which is synonymous with a new start for many. A new start filled with new or renewed hopes, dreams and aspirations, and never ending optimism, so what better time to announce a blog relaunch and rebrand than the New Years?

In that light, I’m pleased to present to you my reworked blog, Em in Worderland – where whimsy meets reality.

Before

In 2019, I started blogging after a wild end of the year decision to start a WordPress site on the very last day of the previous year. I’d just started interacting with book bloggers on Twitter a few months prior and book blogging seemed so cool and simple (disclaimer: it actually isn’t simple), so I decided to take the leap.

So on February 1st 2019, I published my first ever blog post and went live with the name “Em’s Bookish Musings”, a simple looking literary blog.

It was good; being a book blogger was fun. I was able to challenge myself to read more books and more diversely too. I made some of the best friends and gained a lot of knowledge about the publishing industry. Being a book blogger, despite its hardships, was a great experience.

But at the end of 2020, I found that I wasn’t really happy with what I was doing anymore. I was burnt out and exhausted (which is also partially due to life things), I didn’t feel quite content with what was I doing anymore and I really disliked the name of my blog.

So I decided I needed a change. Again another wild end of the year idea.

‘curiouser and curiouser.’
Alice In Wonderland

A wonder – Worderland

The name Em in Worderland came to me while brainstorming for a new blog name. I wanted something that reflected me, the me of now.

I wanted a name that said me more than anything else. A name that made me happy and reflected some of inspirations and one that didn’t limit me like Em’s Bookish Musings did.

I’m not quite sure what made me think of the name to be honest. Maybe it was thinking about Alice in Wonderland, a classic that I never really read but watched an adaptation of once, but I really loved how it sounded.

It sounded wild and whimsical and kind of me.

My favourite type of media is one that blends beauty, whimsy or absurdity with barely veiled critical views of reality. Media like animations from Studio Ghibli, and from what I could remember, Alice in Wonderland did that.

I wanted the Studio Ghibli vibes (beauty, whimsy and hard hitting reality) and the mostly forgotten classic lent it’s name to me.

“We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
Alice in Wonderland

Features in the Clouds

While I first thought Em in Worderland sounded brilliant because of the whimsical sound to it, I liked it more because it didn’t limit me, instead it seemed like an introduction into what my blog is and it made this expansion easy.

Alice’s magical land might have been through a hole in the ground, but mine hangs in the clouds where my head is perpetually at and hosts so new many features and possibilities

The new categories on the blog are

Books
Media
Life
Politics
Services (paid)

Special features include

The Black Experience
Guests, Fests and Interviews

‘Who are you,’ `I—hardly know,’
Alice in Wonderland

All that being said, it’s a new year and now I have a new-ish blog.

I’m not quite sure what this year will bring for Worderland and myself but I have hope it’ll be good things, especially now that I have a blog that reflects who I am, who I am now. I think it could be happy things.