It’s turned into a bit of a rave, or Mea Culpa

Date: Author: Category: Awards, Uncategorized Tags:
Rave is King

Rave is King (Photo credit: kadluba)

You know when they say “everything happens for a reason”? I hate that.  Especially when something happens and a reason immediately springs to mind.  It happened to me the other day:  an award nomination from A Pirate’s Haven and now I have to ‘fess up to a guilty secret because the rules for The Wonderful Team Member Readership Award are stringent – nominate, within one week (yes, that’s seven days!) fourteen blogs you appreciate.  Here’s the rub: up on my bookmarks bar is a shameful catalogue of 23 other award nominations, all awaiting acceptance speeches.

When the first award came in on June 9, I’d just depleted my list of newly discovered blogs, so I put Francine’s generous thought aside till I could meet seven new bloggers I could recommend to you.  The next day, Maggie at Fly Away Home kindly nominated my blog for the Sunshine Award, wasn’t that wonderful?  But now it was seventeen new blogs I needed to find.   By the end of the week I was totally frazzled:  it had become 48 new blogs!

And so it began. I’d go to look at the other nominees (some delightful blogs which I gladly ‘followed’), but rather than actively chasing up new leads, these generous acknowledgements were instead numbered and bookmarked till goodness knows when I’d have time to go out and meet dozens hundreds of new bloggers.  In all honesty, I don’t know how I’ll ever find 231 new blogs to recommend to you – or make up (or answer) almost 200 things – scintillating or otherwise – about myself that I haven’t already revealed through my writing.

Like every one of you, I’m sometimes up against that real life vs. blogging time quotient, where real life must prevail, no matter how guilty we feel.  I’m ashamed I let things get out of hand, and I’m sorry if I’ve broken chains.   In my defence, I always explored the other nominated blogs, often joining them, as I said, and I did try, for months and months, to keep my Blogroll up to date.

Sadly, I can play no longer.

All I can do is to publicly thank my proposers, and promise that whenever I see any of you nominating others in the future, I will continue to explore your nominated blogs.  It’s the best I can do. I’m sorry.  I’m sorry because I am so grateful for the kindness I have received from complete strangers whose encouragement and support has often turned grey days into days of golden sunshine – and I’m sorry because I would like to have been able to give back to the blogosphere in equal measure.

I like introducing people to other people, especially at small, intimate gatherings, but the party’s turned into a bit of a rave, and you’ll just all have to introduce yourselves.

I like introducing people to other people

Here are my rules: Turn to the blogger on your right (that’s below you on the list), and introduce yourself, then delve a little deeper into their blog and introduce yourself to a couple of their friends … and don’t forget to pin the award to your sidebar.

Bless you all – thank for your support and encouragement, and for making me feel so welcome.  I look forward to seeing more of your work, out there in the blogosphere ☺

The Awards Rules (as always) – thank/pingback to your proposer – write to advise your nominees – Pin the Award widget to your sidebar

Francine in Retirement  – Seeing life through photography,  Beautiful Blogger Award,  Share 7 things about yourself, 7 nominees

Fly Away Home  – Jersey shore girl living in Norway by way of Holland.   Published a book about it! Sunshine Award, Answer 10 questions, 10 nominees

MindMindful – Exploring spirituality, Tell Me About Yourself Award, Share 7 things about yourself, 7 nominees

No Holds Barred – Memories of Mexico,  Beautiful Blogger Award Share 7 things about yourself, 7 nominees

The Retiring Sort  – Time to think and travel, to take photographs … Versatile Blogger Award,  Share 7 things about yourself, 7 nominees

The Penniless Traveller – Lack of cash doesn’t keep this girl at home!   Adventurous Blogger Award, Answer 7 questions, 12 nominees

Pink Banana Shoes – Eclectic – that’s what she is. Thought Provoking Blog Award, Share 7 things about yourself, 5 nominees

Canadian Travel Bugs – A Canadian in Shanghai,  Super Sweet Award, Answer 5 questions, 13 nominees

A Global Garnish – Food from around the world. Very Inspiring Blogger. Rules not published

Living and Lovin – Beads and photographs,  Beautiful Blogger Award, Share 7 things about yourself, 7 nominees

Travel. Garden. Eat  – Tuscany or Minnesota – fabulous scenery, food and friendships, Reader Appreciation Award, Answer 9 questions 5 nominations

Writer’s Block Busters – How supportive is that? Super Sweet Blogging Award, Answer 5 questions 13 nominations

Me and My Pink Backpack  – This girl’s been places! One Lovely Blog Award Share 7 things about yourself 15 nominations

Margaret Lynette Sharp  – A writer’s ‘off’ time Sunshine Award Share 7 things about yourself 10 nominations

No Holds Barred – Memories of Mexico Sunshine Award Answer 10 questions 10 nominees

Another Day in Paradise – South Africa, Florida, the world … Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award Nominate 15 sistas

Living and Lovin  – A glass artist who never leaves home without her camera Super Sweet Award Answer 5 questions 13 nominees

The Tosin Teatime  – “What’s a little girl talk without a sip of tea?”, she asks Versatile Blogger Award Share 7 things about yourself 15 nominees

Finding Ann MacGregor – Making a new life for herself Versatile Blogger Award Share 7 things about yourself 15 nominees

But I’m Beautiful  – Out there, doing her thing, writing about it!   Versatile Blogger Award Share 7 things about yourself 7 nominees

Travel. Culture. Food  – Practical, too One Lovely Blog Award Share 7 things about yourself 15 nominees

Crazy Train to Tinky Town  – A young Englishwoman living in Turkey One Lovely Blog Award Share 7 things about yourself 15 nominees

Writing by the Numbers –  A writer, a runner, a mother, a thinker Inspiring Blog Award Share 7 things about yourself, 7 nominees

The Pirate’s Haven – He writes, he travels, he collects copper, he makes jewellery. Wonderful Team Member Readership Award – 14 nominees in any number of posts within a 7 day period – Finish the sentence “A great reader is … “ I’d say a great reader is willing to follow your story to the end.

And thank you to Alan, Trompie’s Mom and Madhu, whose nominations arrived in my in-box over the weekend:

Ohm Sweet Ohm – The world from on top of a bridge – this man has a steady head, that’s for sure.  The Tag Blogothon – Share 11 things about yourself, Answer 11 questions, Create 11 questions, 11 nominees

Scrapydo – Everything crafty, Super Sweet Blog Award, Answer 5 questions, 13 nominations

The Urge to Wander – Bitten late and hard by the travel bug, Madhu shares history, details and marvellous photographs of the world, The Booker Award, Your 5 favourite books, 5 nominees.

By the way, my number one favourite book of all time is The Atlas – any atlas – has been since I first dragged out Ma’s school atlas from the bottom shelf of the bookcase when I was a little girl.  After that, War and Peace, I think, or Anna Karenina?  Can’t choose.  The Odyssey, definitely, anything by Patrick White (Voss, if you had a knife to my throat) …  of recent reads, Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, and a romping favourite from India (since everybody understandably – chooses Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children) Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra (I’m sorry Vikram Seth, it’s phantasmagorical recounting of myth and history pips out A Suitable Boy!).

44 thoughts on “It’s turned into a bit of a rave, or Mea Culpa”

  2. Congratulations on your many and varied awards. You are worthy of every one of them, Meredith – AND ABOVE ALL – DON´T FEEL GUILTY!

    I totally understand your situation and found myself in a similar place recently. How I got round it was to create a “Recognition” Page where I say all my collective thank-yous, post the Awards, and say a few things about myself.

    As I receive further nominations I merely post that particular trophy to the list, thank the giver and refer them to my page.

    With regard to nominating other bloggers for awards, that was one of the reasons I fashioned the CBBH Photo Challenge in the way I did – so that each month I could feature two bloggers I enjoy visiting. I´m sure that the Award system is just another way of people linking their blogs together, which I am happy to do, but in my own way.

    Does that make sense without having to keep break into the rhythm of my blog by keep having to post thanks for Awards every third post? I hope so 🙂

    • Makes perfect sense – as I said last week when I featured Madhu and Kate’s blogs – It’s a manageable way of handling it.

      I think the Awards thing is absolutely marvellous for new bloggers – such a boost to the ego and a perfect upside down pyramid for meeting others, but …

      I haven’t quite decided how I’ll do it, but some type of Awards page is probably a good idea, Marianne, thanks 🙂

  3. Congrats on your awards, and on getting around to accepting them. Love the way you handled it. 🙂 I think many of us must be facing the same quandary. I have a stash of 15 award nominations in one of my drafts. 🙂 Thanks for yours, but I already accepted this one some time ago., from couple of other bloggers Have a lovely week. 🙂

  4. You crack me up. This award thing is such wonderful recognition, but yet the requisites are such that we all go insane with what needs to be done, freeze up, and it piles up. Why don’t we all agree to just say, “gee, I really like so and so’s blog, it’s great; go read it” and be done with it. And then write a post script with all the details about ourselves that might be of interest. One time only.
    Congratulations, you do have a wonderful blog, and that’s why you keep getting nominated.

    • Dear thing you are, Angeline – thank you. I’m not sure how I’ll resolve it long term, but I really like Marianne’s solution – two featured blogs from all the participants of her monthly photo challenge – it’s manageable and it’s a real recommendation, rather than dredging up new names to make the networks grow.

      The thing is, when you’re new, and want to participate, you need the Awards route (though I do think 10, 13, 14 nominees is beyond the pale, personally … ).

  5. I always enjoy your photos. Congratulations on ALL your awards, they were well deserved!

    I totally understand your predicament… I too have excepted awards in a nontraditional way and there are plenty of awards I have not yet excepted at all (shame on me). Trying to live a real life and blog at the same time can be a challenge. We do the best we can, right?

    Anyhow, I loved that The Atlas is your favorite book and its exactly what I would have expected 🙂
    Thank you for the lovely mention – Maggie

  7. Very smart and well said. I love getting awards, but i too find it hard to nominate new ones or just find the time. I haven’t been good at even keeping up with the ones I already follow and love. 😦 I guess if there were no strings the awards would never get passed around… And joy to be shared. So as if with all good things in life there are rules to follow. But some rules are meant to be broken, or loop holes to be created…. 😉

  9. Congrats on your awards… and thank you for linking to me! I know… I need to do the same thing. There are lots of worthwhile blogs out there, and I guess we all need to spread the love. ; )

    • We do, and it’s nice to be able to, but sometimes the numbers are unmanageable – for me, anyway, Anne. But there are lots of ways of introducing and recommending without losing sleep over it. 🙂

  10. Congratulations on the awards! And yes, they can be difficult to keep up with. 😉

    I don’t think there’s any need to apologize for being unable to keep up with the “terms and conditions” for all of them!

  11. Now why didn’t I think to bookmark the award posts, ho w clever of you…. she hangs her head in shame….. but congratulations, all thoroughly well deserved ! Happy days and happy reads 🙂

  13. Congratulations 😀
    I can relate to your feelings very well. I feel guilty too, but we do have to take a call when award posts begin to outnumber our primary blog posts.
    The books you list are close to my heart, particularly War & Peace….how could I have forgotten Tolstoy?? And oh….you look stunning and happy 🙂

    • I don’t know how you manage it, Madhu – every time you make a gracious acceptance speech post I quail with guilt and remorse, and resolve to try harder to keep up. But I can’t so there’s an end to it 🙂

      How, indeed, could one forget Tolstoy?!?! That shot was taken a while ago, dear – back before raves were the party scene – and being at a party gave one the opportunity to talk to one’s friends, or introduce one’s friends to other friends … 🙂

  14. Congratulations on all those well deserved awards. It can be overwhelming to fulfill the requirements and I suspect there are a lot of us that find it so. My last post acknowledged one that had been sitting waiting for a response for months! You handled this like the shining star that you are. Well done!

  15. What a great way of honouring the awards. I agree work/life/blog balance is an art to achieve. I am already a fan of quite a few of those listed and look forward to checking out new 🙂

  16. I read your blog faithfully, but, don’t always comment. Mea Culpa for that omission. I loved Wolf Hall, and, aside from myself, you are the only person I know who has read it–how sad a fact is that?

    • Me too – so sorry. 🙂

      I know a person – the person who lent me the book, in fact – but that’s not a fair survey, because here in Sri Lanka we don’t often get the best books, or films (in fact, good films are even more difficult to catch up with, unless they end up on cable TV). But I know what you mean – I’d like to be surrounded by people who loved Wolf Hall. My mother would have – not being able to turn to her and talk about it … things like that make me miss her, still.

    • Shows how out of touch I am – only today found that the Booker for this years is about to be announced and the short list has been out for ages, and guess what’s on it – “Bring up the Bodies” , the ‘sequel’ to Wolf Hall! How exciting is that?

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