It’s been a great New Year period – especially from a blogging point of view so I’m going to allow myself a little celebratory dance.
A few things to celebrate.
1 Butterfly Award Received
I’m not motivated to do things to get awards given as rewards (diploma’s, certificates, Nobel Peace Prizes, for example) but this one feels different. This is a virtual award titled ‘Coolest Blog I know’ and it’s passed from one blogger to another. I always wanted to be a cool Dad, but never held any ambition to be a cool blogger so this is a real surprise to me. I receive this award with gratitude and as feedback that someone out there likes what I write about – which means a lot to me.
It was passed to me by Lea at Ocean Of Perspectives, a blogger and a site I’d not known about before, which is even more touching as I get to meet a new writer with similar interests! A deep ‘thank you’ Lea.
The award comes with some rules. Now I normally have a very strong rebellious reaction to any rules that I’ve not been involved with setting. But I can make an exception in this case as they don’t harm anyone.
The Rules
a) Put the logo on your blog
b) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you
c) Link 10 other bloggers of whom you want to give this award to.
See what a good boy I’ve been? I’ve already done a) and b) and for c) I’ll start a new section.
2 Awarding the Butterfly Award
The idea, of course, is that I pass this onto those blogs I’d like to recognise.
Until this August I had never even looked at a blog and my guess is that there are many, many writers out there that I would love to read, but just haven’t come across them yet. On the other hand there are many writers I have read and many I check frequently and thoroughly enjoy, get inspired by, learn from or get deeply touched by. Here are nine writers and sites I visit regularly and highly recommend. And in my capacity as … well, ME! … I hereby bestow them with the Butterfly Award to do with as they please.
- Robert In Search Of Meaning
- Dereck I Will Not Die
- Dee Bloggernewbie
- Rahul Take-20
- Pushyyarag Evolve Ever
- Hayden Through The Illusion
- Vered MomGrind
- Ross Will It Change You
- Lance Jungle Of Life
There are many more I could mention … I’ll just have to wait for the next award 
3 Google Page Rank
Now this won’t mean much to the majority of the human race, but to many of the sub-breed known as ‘Bloggers’ the Google PageRank means a lot. Having been sitting on a Page Rank of 0 for the last few months, I noticed this morning that I’ve now gone up to 2! Yipeeeeee! Another dance.
The truth is that I have NO IDEA what it really means, other than 2 is better than 0. Frankly I don’t care too much either (but please Mr. Google, if you’re reading this then don’t take it away) but it does mean that I can add to my ‘cool blogger’ image by saying stuff like:
“Oh yeah! Well I’ve got a PR2, Technorati 15 and Alexa 390,693″
4 Commenters, Readers and Passersby
I started this blog on 5th August 2008 with no real idea about how many people would read it, comment on it or pass it by without more than a second’s look. I’ve been really touched by the number of people visiting the site and commenting and I have a real sense of community. It’s a huge community I know, but I’ve made some huge steps into it in these last months. Which, for someone who is a die-hard introvert (and proud of it!), is some achievement! Thank you to everyone and to myself!
I had expectations that if I put ads on the site then money would start rolling in and by Christmas I could give up all my other work and just concentrate on this blog – writing every day instead of twice a week and fulfilling a life long ambition to be a writer. Maybe even start a second blog about nonviolence in the business world.
I had to downsize my short-term ambitions fairly quickly when I realised that all those ‘Blog and Get Rich Quick’ sites out there are, how to put this without swearing? – piles of steaming shit! No, I just couldn’t find a better word. Apologies to anyone offended by that word, and I promise to never use it again.
I have a simple lifestyle but there is no way that I can live on USD 0.68 income a month. It’s not even going to make a dent in the hosting and domain costs – so for now I’m paying for this with money and huge amounts of time. But no complaints. And no turning back.
On to 2009 with dreams of becoming a writer full-time turned into a long term aim that I’ll come back once I’ve built this site into something more substantial.
