Versatile Blogger Award

Every so often in blogging, as in life, you have moments of self-doubt and hesitation. You write a post and just think, ‘Yeah, but so what?’ or ‘Cripes, I can’t publish that. People will hate me!’ or worse, on a very bad day, ‘What’s the point? no one’s reading anyway’. You hover over the publish button in the back office. You search through your drafts and think ‘Now why didn’t I publish that one? Oh, yes I remember…’

And then someone drops you a comment like this: “Heya I’ve given you the versitile blogger award cos your one of our favourites” and some of that self-doubt and hesitation evaporates and is replaced by the following thought in manner of the great intellectual, albeit fictional, Bridget Jones:

Oh joy. Am versatile blogging genius. Am celebrating by writing a post celebrating blogging friends. Have sneaking suspicion am also something of a genius on Twitter** as well

…not a bowl of blue soup, or tweeting equivalent, in sight.

Something along these lines, but not exactly the same, occurred at Bibsey Towers a little while ago when the lovely Expat Mammy over at Expatbabyadventures passed the Versatile Blogger Award my way. My thanks and an apology go to her. The apology is for not having responded ‘properly’ until now. And by properly I mean:

• Thank and link back to the person who shared the award – Done with pleasure treasure
• Pass this award to *some recently discovered blogs – See my list of blogging versatility below
• List 7 things about myself – See below for these thrilling nuggets of Bibseymamaness

My belatedness is for a good reason I think. As I understand the spirit of the Versatile Blogger Award, it is in part about going forth and finding new great reads in blogland and then passing on the award to the bloggers that you find.

So, in the last few weeks I have been getting really stuck into blogs and in doing so have put myself about a bit too. What I have found is some great blogs and many of them versatile. Literally, they have received the award before.

Here are my Versatile Bloggers: 

Some are old favourites and some are new finds. Some (most) may have received the award before (and therefore need do nothing but bask in multiple oscar glory) and some not. They are all brilliant.

Actually Mummy ~ Mummy Mummy Mum ~ Mañana Mama ~ Cinnamon and Truffle ~ Martyr-hood ~ Scribbler in Seville ~ Boo and me ~ Five Go blogging ~ Motherventing

And here are my 7 things

And just for extra fun (seat belts on please) I shall relate them to the ‘versatile blogging me’ rather than the ‘goddess in the kitchen me‘ or the ‘minx in the bedroom me’ ***

1. I once started a blog by mistake and then forgot all about it, only to rediscover it when struggling to leave my virtual paw print on a comment on someone else’s blog.

2. I am sometimes tempted to leave rants about Mr B, or posts with lots of swearing and sexual reference, on my mistake blog because he and my mum read this one. I don’t ever give into this temptation however, as I suspect I would later regret it.

3. I blog semi-anonymously. By this I mean, I don’t write under my own name but my friends and family know who I am (rightly so) and read my blog. I began blogging anonymously because when I started out I just did not feel confident enough to put myself fully out there. And perhaps there was a little part of me that didn’t want a google search on my real name bringing up this blog, which is very personal.

4. I clearly don’t have enough to worry about if I am worrying about people from my past googling me. And anyway ‘if they could see me now’ right?

5. I have just googled myself and I appear to be considerably less colourful in real life than in blog life. It seems that I am most happy when blogging about my arse.

6. The above point is regarding happiness is clearly not true, but I am running out of things to say. Can we move on?

7. When I started this blog, the activity of blogging was all about this blog: my blog. I wasn’t already an avid blog-reader inspired to join the community. Very, very soon it became about the community. I wasn’t expecting that. I read and am getting to know some fabulous bloggers now that make me laugh and cry and nod my head. And shake it actually. What a lovely surprise that has been. Thank you all.

~~~

* the original conditions stipulate that I should name 15 Versatile Bloggers. I have named 9.  I do hope that the Olympic Blogging Committee don’t strip me of my honour.

**Hah! My ‘The Trouble With Twitter’ post is in the pipeline

***Hah! Hah!