The Liebster Award 2018 – Discover New Blogs

Do you enjoy letting other people know that you like them? Do you tell people when something they’ve done has inspired you? Do you love discovering new things, places, and people? And when you find a new thing, place, or person do you share them with others, share the love?

The Liebster Award is a way of letting bloggers know that you like their blog.

It’s a way of introducing the readers of your blog to other blogs and bloggers.

It’s also a way for you to discover new blogs and bloggers.

If you’ve been nominated but you hate blog award nominations, PLEASE IGNORE THE NOMINATION.

If you want to be polite, then a simple THANK YOU to the person who nominated you will suffice (don’t ruin a simple Thank You with a story about how you don’t accept blog awards and are an award-free blog, that may sound great in your head but it doesn’t sound so great to the person hearing it). The blogger who nominated you also has a busy life and other things to do like writing their blog posts, so they won’t mind if you do absolutely nothing with your nomination.

Blog Award Nominations aren’t just about you, they’re about the spirit of the Blogging Community. And since The Daily Post shut up shop and stopped working to bring the WordPress Blogging Community together, it’s up to us bloggers to find creative ways to do that for ourselves and for others.

The above words come from my personal experience of going through an – I Hate Blog Award Nominations – phase of being a blogger. All I achieved by doing that was to hurt some very kind-hearted souls with my ego, which hurt me too, but it taught me a valuable lesson and clued me in to what a plonker I was being.

Blogging has taught me a lot about myself, and not just through listening to myself through writing and re-reading and being haunted by some of the things said in my posts. It has also taught me a lot about others, particularly the good side as I became a little too used to the bad side of people and got stuck in that rut where you think – hell is other people. I also used to think hell was being myself, but now, thanks in large part to all of you (bloggers, readers, visitors, viewers, seekers, etc) who have shared yourselves with me, being myself has become a happy place (this is one of the things which makes me passionate about blogging – see the first #3 below for why I just said this).

“We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say “It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.” Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.”

― Fred Rogers

Melanie, the creator and creative soul behind Sparks of a Combustible Mind, is one of my blogging heroes. She embodies the mind, heart, soul and spirit of the Blogging Community. Thank you very much, Melanie, for being you! You inspire me ❤

And now for the acceptance ceremony:

The ever effervescent raw and real genius known as Melanie, from Sparks of a Combustible Mind, received a Liebster Award Nomination from Kristian of Tales from the Mind of Kristian, and she very generously passed it on to me and several other superb bloggers (please click over to Melanie’s post to check them out).

Thank you very much, Melanie, I am honoired… no, that isn’t a typo (yes, it is), it is something else just like me!

Here are The Official Rules of the Liebster Award 2018 posted by Jack of The Global Aussie – if you’ve been nominated please share your link with Jack, he apparently reads every entry and at the end of the year he chooses his favourite question, the winner wins a prize (no idea what it is… it might be a tiny clippy koala). Please check out his Award post for more information and for links to other Liebster Award Nominees.

If I’ve nominated you and your blog AND YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT, please read the WHAT TO DO below (which I copied from The Official Rules on The Global Aussie):

1. Thank the person who nominated you, and put a link to their blog on your blog. Try to include a little promotion for the person who nominated you. They will thank you for it and those who you nominate will also help you out as well.
2. Display the award on your blog
3. Write a small post about what makes you passionate about blog posting
4. Provide 10 random facts about yourself. (Again this year I’m making this optional. If you wish to engage with your readers it’s a great idea to include random facts about you.)
5. Answer the questions given to you
6. Nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel would enjoy blogging about this award.
7. Create more questions for your nominees to answer (I’m looking for unique and creative ones)
8. List these rules in your post (You can copy and paste from here or simply link to this post.) Once you have written and published it, you then have to:
9. Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post or mine if you don’t have all the information so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!) Post a comment in the comments below so I can view your post and check out your blog. I personally visit each and everyone.

Melanie passed on a slightly different set of rules, which I’ve shared below:

• Acknowledge the blogger that gave it to you and display the award
• Answer 8 questions that the blogger gave you
• Give 8 random thoughts about yourself
• Nominate 8 other bloggers and notify them of their nomination
• Ask your nominees 8 questions

I’m going to do a bit of both, what you decide to do is up to you. HAVE FUN WITH IT!

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this is the image of the award to display for 2018

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Now I’ll share my questions for my nominees (and anyone else who wants to join in the fun – you don’t have to receive a blogging award to participate, if you would like a blogging award nomination don’t wait for one to come to you, just start your own fun and friendly blog award nomination chain this will let people know that you enjoy blog awards!) so that you don’t have to scroll down forever to find them (yes, I know you already had to scroll down through a century of words to get to this… and no, you don’t have to read the rest of my post, or even Like it, just do what you want, what you enjoy!)

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”

― Kurt Vonnegut

Here are my questions for you:

1. What question are you always hoping someone would ask you about yourself?
2. If you could come from anywhere in the world, where would that be and why? (and yes, you can say your actual place of origin if you’d like)
3. What always keeps happening to you?
4. How would you describe yourself to someone who couldn’t see you and would see you as you wanted to be seen?
5. Did you find what you were looking for?
6. Does a person’s name influence the person they become? (I borrowed this question from Conversation Starters World: 202 Philosophical Questions)
7. Does a person’s blog name influence the blogger they become and the posts they write? (see what I did there)
8. What is the question you always want to ask people but never do?
   

“We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.”

― Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices

And now for my nominees:

Wanderings of an Illusive Mind: Taking Stock – I enjoyed reading this post and loved the way Carol approached the challenge. I did click over to the blog where Carol found the Taking Stock idea, and to the other one listed, and it was interesting to see how different people do things differently. I am nominating Carol because she kindly visited my blog to share her perspective on a question I had asked. Thank you, Carol, that meant a lot to me!

Coffee and a Blank Page: Skin-Deep – I was blown away by the brilliance of this post (This post is part of a series which Alice is working on, and you can find the series here: Myths & Fairy Tales Project). Alice took a well known fairytale and shapeshifted it into a deep dive into the human psyche and experience. Alice and I have had a few comment-chat conversations in the past, one of which was about Once Upon A Time, the TV series, and we both agreed that while we loved Rumpel, his relationship with Belle was, as Alice put it: “if this is a love story, it’s a really sh!tty one”. Thank you, Alice, for sharing your creations!

Draliman on Life: Tales from a Chessboard – So, where do I begin… I was checking out the pingbacks on a recent Share Your World (you can find those on Melanie’s blog as she is the courageous curator of the series), and landed in Dralimanland. I loved his spin on answering the questions, so I followed his blog (poor him… as he was soon to find out). A wobble of the Moon later I read the post to which I’ve linked and decided very sagaciously to comment to let him know… well if you really want to understand why I’ve always been reluctant to comment on other blogs, check out my comments on his post. Thankfully he survived my experiment in doing what I’ve repeatedly told myself not to do, and he helped me to decide to do it again and again (only perhaps experiment on someone else, spread my lurve around). Thank you very much, Draliman for being such an awesomely good egg, what what!

This, That, and the Other: I Love Answering Questions – I’ve only just started following Fandango (that’s his real name, yes it is, just check out his Who Am I? on his blog… I think he’s a he, I’m never sure about these things especially online as gender was not something I thought about until someone at some point pointed out that I was this thing known as a she and even then it didn’t seem to matter… wtf am I talking about or more to the point what was I saying before I went off on this tangent?), and I’ve noticed that he (I’m going with he) often borrows the questions in the blog award nominations posts of others, so I thought he should be given a blog award nomination of his own because I’d like to see what he does with it. He also is a Blogging Community supporter and does a Word of the Day. Thank you, Fandango, for Fandangoing!

How many is that?… I’ll do one more. This is going to be a bit different. Last night as I was pondering who to nominate, how to do the nominations, and such and such, my mind said: “Why don’t you take a leaf out of OM’s (Opinionated Man – the guy who used to be the first person to follow new bloggers, I don’t know if he still does that but it was rather nice – the first follow is a weird and wonderful experience) blogging tactics and search WordPress for the tag – First Post.” So I did just that and found:

Yours Truly-Ivan: First Post – Hello, Ivan, and welcome to the blogging community! 🙂 Thank you for sharing yourself with us, I hope you’ll enjoy it here, and won’t find receiving a blogging award nomination from a stranger too awkward. I am also a TCK (Third Culture Kid – link to the Wiki description of TCK). It is both a bizarre and beautiful experience, with many culture shocks and surprises, and a lot of figuring out how to fit in and whether you want to fit in. You have a resilient and inspiring attitude to life. I wish you all the best!

“Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.”

― Albert Einstein

And now for that part where I ramble, babble, and tumble through answering questions and sharing some random thoughts (I’ve gone with thoughts rather than facts) about myself:

Melanie asked:

1. Do you like bubble gum?  As a flavor or as a sticky treat?  Or is it an annoyance?
2. What’s the best advice you ever got?
3. Dress up or casual if invited out?
4. What’s a time when you really stretched yourself; either physically or mentally?
5. Do you have any trophies?
6. How would you decorate your dream home?
7. What are three things you’d take with you if you could only take three?
8. Is the printed word really dead?

1- Do you like bubble gum?  As a flavor or as a sticky treat?  Or is it an annoyance?

I have a pack of bubblegum flavoured gum sitting open on my desk. Sometimes I’m chewing gum when I write blog posts, and blowing tiny bubbles (in my gravatar bio I mention creating cyber bubbles).

Thought #1 about myself: When I was in kindergarten I had a side-job as a bubblegum pusher. The other kids’ parents were rather posh and proper and didn’t let their kids have sweets. My parents… thought all other parents were immense bores and bought me all the bubblegum I asked for, and I passed it on to the other kids. Did it come at a price? Yes, it did, but not of the monetary kind. I was buying friends. I gave that job up when I realised I didn’t want to have friends whose friendship could be bought with bubblegum.

2 – What’s the best advice you ever got?

The most relevant one was – you should consider starting a blog. That was from a live flesh and blood person who knows me, liked what I was doing on my FB when I had one, and encouraged me to spread my wings a bit. I am very grateful to them, thank you!

Thought #2 about myself: I’m the sort of person who seems to have one of those – please everyone give me unsolicited advice of the type which isn’t useful and is really a criticism or envy in disguise – kind of auras. I wonder why that is? But it wasn’t always due to what people thought my face was saying to them. I had the sort of parents who used other people to manipulate me. My daughter is being such a brat, can you go and tell her off for me, I want you to tell her that a child must never disagree with their parents about who that child must like and mustn’t like. It is most impudent of her that she keeps glaring at our (possibly a peado since he liked to give me very creepy dolls and I didn’t like those type of dolls, my mother did, while also getting a little too close, towering over me and giving me a very creepy leer) friend/business associate, it’s so inconvenient and embarrassing for us. I’m glad I embraced being called a brat and used it to buy me some personal freedom which stopped me from being completely consumed by the adults around me.

3 – Dress up or casual if invited out?

When I’m invited to go out (and I can’t get out of it), I always dress to suit the occasion. I’m not a completely eccentric pain in the ass of others, even if I may come across as one on my blog and beyond. Even if it’s casual I’ll dress the casual up a bit to show whoever (was crazy enough to want to be in my company and in public) invited me to go out that I respect them and appreciate the outing.

Thought #3 about myself: I used to love dressing up as a child, especially in my mother’s fancy evening gowns (my bedroom was her walk-in closet). She didn’t always mind, and my father once took a pic of me like that and dressed-up little-me is in one of his paintings. These days I don’t really like dressing up even when it’s fun to see myself looking like that (me: who the eff is that!?! mirror: Yeah, I know, luv, I was wondering the same thing, it’s friggin’ weird but kinda lovely weird, you look nice, luv), because I’m lazy, it’s uncomfortable… particularly shoes… all the little piggies want to go wee wee we’re free!

4 – What’s a time when you really stretched yourself; either physically or mentally?

Physically… this year I tackled some tough DIY. I had to rebuild some interior walls (the year before I’d removed the plasterboard, the old crumbling plaster, and the rotted down to crumbs bits of wood which someone had used instead of bricks to make repairs long ago, and left the wall dry out), finish installing a damp-proof course, then plaster it, then paint it.

My partner couldn’t help me as much as he would have liked and was planning to because he injured his back rather badly when we moved the cast iron wood burner out of the fireplace to fix the surrounding wall, but his support and cheering was immensely helpful in getting me through my I can’t do this terrors.

  

this is how it looks now, and yes there’s more to do – the floor, and replacing the fireproof glass

   

this is how it used to look – that hole went all the way through to the other side

  

Thought #4 about myself: I stretch myself mentally on a regular basis as those who read my posts may have noticed. Do you find it exhausting or exhilarating to read my posts? I’m often exhilarated while writing them, but afterwards I may feel exhausted, satisfied but a little fried in the membrane. Lately writing has been so different from before. Sometimes I amaze myself, and it’s nice to now be okay with enjoying being amazed by myself, instead of feeling as though I should feel bad about being amazed by myself, and should only feel bad about myself.

5 – Do you have any trophies?

I’m not a serial killer even if I did contemplate it as a career option, then decided against it because it requires patience and planning, repetition and rituals, and… I’m tired just thinking about it, my lazy just fist-bumped me!

Oh, you didn’t mean those kinds of trophies…

No. But I do have trophies of another sort, things which mean something to me, which I keep in my knick-knack shelf above my desk.

  

see that leaf… that’s the one which I mentioned in a post, there was a question about what scares me – creepy Autumn leaves which sneakily creep into my pocket

  

Thought #5 about myself: I’ve only ever been to one trophy (of sorts) awarding ceremony, at school, in which I supposedly had a remote possibility of winning something. Everyone in my class of about 20 pupils got an award except me and one other girl. My mother went ballistic, not at me this time but at the school, because a) we’d sat through an interminable and interminably boring ceremony (most of the parents and pupils were in a tedium induced trance throughout) with no reward for having done that b) a few of the trophies were for odd made up things just to give everyone (except me and one other girl) an award. Sometimes my mother was right when she lost her temper, but maybe one of the reasons I didn’t get anything was because she’d done that a few too many times with the people in charge of this school.

6 – How would you decorate your dream home?

Like this…

  

shhhhh… no molestar… sleepings

   

Thought #6 about myself: I remember all those endless years of longing for a home, a real home, the subtle pangs and pain of the yearning, the dreams of what I would do, how I would decorate it, etc. It’s nice to finally have a house and home of my own. It’s a relief I didn’t get it sooner… as I would have turned it into an uptight idealistic perfectionist nightmare for myself and my partner. It’s so chill and cheery the way things are now. It’s also a creatively chaotic mess (don’t be fooled by how tidy that bit there looks, that’s the tidy bit exhibit) and I wouldn’t have it any other way (even if I do sometimes imagine what it would be like without all of the entropy).

7 – What are three things you’d take with you if you could only take three?

  Where am I going?

If I’m just going out, then wallet and keys. Sometimes I’ll remember to take my phone. I don’t carry a bag because they have a tendency to get left wherever I popped them down for a minute and… hmmm… I feel like I’ve forgotten something, that something is missing, but… never mind. The same applies to umbrellas. Or anything else which isn’t attached to my body (both wallet and keys are attached to my body by a chain… yes, I am that dopey).

Thought #7 about myself: If we’re talking about a scenario like the one in the question Kristian asked of his nominees, then I’d have an SAS survival guide (I used to have one of those, studied it at length, but the only thing I can recall from it was burying yourself under the sand wrapped in a blanket during the day if lost in a desert), one of those multi-tools all in one (but not a Swiss Army knife, at least not the kind made for the general public which are difficult to open without injuring yourself, the blades break and don’t cut unless it’s your fingers), and a GPS satellite phone (which I probably wouldn’t use so why did I take it with me?).

8 – Is the printed word really dead?

No.

Thought #8 about myself: Which reminds me that I need to fill out and print out that form… and that other form… better get on with it as it’s not going to do itself. Yes, yes, post-it, I see you and raise you an I will do that too in a minute or two.

“If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life’s exciting variety, not something to fear.”

― Gene Roddenberry

That’s it from me… over to you!

Thank you for sharing 🙂

And now for some music, a song which I was taught as a kid at school by a funny and kid-friendly Kiwi teacher: