Sow a Seed Blogger Award

Awwwwwwwwwww…. yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaah!

Man, I have lost track of how many of these awards I have won now. I have been building new shelves in my house to hold all these awards when WordPress finally gets around to sending them to me. If I keep being this award-winningly magnificent, I might have to remodel. Get an extra room in there. To hold all my awards.

This most recent one comes courtesy of Thero at A Reluctant Hero, a blog about essentially whatever’s on Thero’s mind at the moment. Usually video games, but sometimes she’ll hit some other notes, such as when she recently went over some local ghost stories from her region. I found her blog a good positive place to follow, so give it a look. You might like it. And obviously. she has good taste.

So, let’s take a look at THE RULES of this blog award.

1. Put the award logo/image on your blog.

There. Doesn’t particularly match my manly allure around here, but we can check this off the list, at least.Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog.

2. Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog

Hey! I did that already! Man, I rule. And so does Thero.

3. Mention the creator of the award and provide a link as well.

Hmm… is that why people make these viral blog awards? To get additional clicks from everyone’s site that catches the virus? Oh well. The creator of this award is MyAnime2Go. Maybe they’re a great site for you! I don’t know, I didn’t read them, so no official endorsement there.

4. List the rules.

Ok, let’s see here. The rules are:

1. Put the award logo/image on your blog.
2. Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
3. Mention the creator of the award and provide a link as well.
4. List the rules.
5. Give a brief story of how your blog started and the problems you faced.
6. Give five pieces of advice for new and old bloggers. (Note: you can still mention a tip that’s been mentioned already because we all express things differently)
7. You have to nominate 5 -12 bloggers.
8. Notify your nominees by commenting on their blog or just reaching out to them.

5. Give a brief story of how your blog started and the problems you faced.

Eh, don’t have much of a story to go with here. I used to be big into online forums, and got all my online socialization piece and my discussion of all the nerd stuff none of my friends were into through them. But then life changed , and I wasn’t finding the time to keep up with them, so I let those drop. There’d always been a number of other bloggers I followed, really enjoying their work, and occasionally I’d have pangs of wanting to do that too, but never really wanted to commit to it. And then on a whim I spent a week making overly badass descriptions of some mundane things I’d been cooking on Facebook, and friends started saying I should start a blog, so eventually, I just did it. Except I use my nethandle so none of them actually know I have this blog.

As far as problems I faced go… eh. I mean, it’s writing. I can do that. There’s definitely been less of the ‘if you build it they will come’ factor than I thought there would be in the beginning, and even what I consider my best works don’t really get as much audience as I would have thought I deserved, but hey, I’m a small blog, much like most everyone doing this, but I still enjoy doing it. And in some ways, having such a select, private audience works even better. I’ve known many bloggers to completely burn themselves out by focusing on increasing their audience. So in retrospect, that’s never been a problem for me.

6. Give five pieces of advice for new and old bloggers. (Note: you can still mention a tip that’s been mentioned already because we all express things differently)

5 pieces of advice. Huh. You’d think after having done this for almost 8 years, they’d come to me more easily. Let’s see.

1. Write what you enjoy.

Again, I’ve seen lots of people burn out on chasing greater readership. And I get it. Writing takes a lot of time, a lot of thought, and sometimes a lot of prep work and research. It’s natural to want it seen by as many people as possible. But we’re working with a blogosphere that has tons of good and great and mediocre and bad content and it’s hard for even the best of the cream to rise above the rest of the crop. If you’re going to be taking all that time to be writing this material, you need to enjoy the act of writing it. That’s the only way this is going to be worthwhile. It’s not the audience that makes it worth your time, it’s you’re own enjoyment.

2. Be social with it

You know what one of the best parts of blogging has been for me? The social aspect of it. The comments. The bouncing ideas off of each other. The other bloggers cluing me into new games that I wouldn’t have given a chance otherwise. Getting ourselves a shared experience. Again, I don’t have a large circle here. I’m pretty selective about which blogs I’ll follow, and I don’t get the audience that keeps my comment section going for ages. But I greatly value everyone going through here, and every other blogger I have as part of this regular network. It has truly made all this experience more worthwhile. In fact, shout out to the lurkers, too. I don’t know you’re there, exactly, but if this material means enough to you that you’re taking the time out of your day to go through it, that means a lot to me.

3. Be wary of doing things just to generate content

This one’s not an absolute rule. Sometimes you play a game just to make a blog post about it, and it’s a really good time. Or it gets you a really great post. Or whatever. Sometimes it works out. But do that sparingly. In my experience, at least the way I’ve gone, the best content seems to come out of the things I wanted to do anyways. I didn’t originally intend to turn my Dark Souls run into a Let’s Play, but my experiences with my first few hours of the game were so profound, that I felt compelled to do so, and then I found the experience so much fun that I kept doing it, and I think I put together something really great overall. And that passion, when you’re genuinely interested and having fun in doing something, I think that comes through to your readers a lot better than when you’re forcing yourself into something just to have the content.

4. You’re unique. Trust that.

Well, I mean, of course I’m unique. There’s not exactly all that many genius video game players with a great tact for writing who also happen to be the sexiest man in the universe, but really, your thoughts, your impressions, they’re yours. I used to hold back from writing certain things I was wanting to, because I thought someone else would have said what I already wanted to say. But sometimes, I took the time to look that up. And I couldn’t find that. Like, this blog has what I believe to be the most comprehensive list of left-handed characters in games on the internet. And when I was doing my first post of that, I was absolutely sure someone else had already written a complete list. Except no. Nobody had. There were a lot of partial lists, but nothing that was as full or captured as many options as I had, as far as I can tell. Same thing with my posts on why Nintendo behaves in the unique ways it does. Or why we really don’t see that many female video game protagonists. Those things seem so obvious to me that I was sure everyone else already had those thoughts, too. But they didn’t. I have never seen anything like those posts. My thoughts are both incredibly intelligent and unique to my own style, even if they seem like I’m saying things everyone must already know. Because they don’t already know. And they need me to illuminate them. And that’s the same situation you’ll find yourself in, too. Your thoughts are worthwhile and unique, so let them fly.

5. Use your personality

Blogging is personality driven. Use that. Let that shine through. Most people change personality in writing, at least a bit. Try to avoid that. You’re not here to force humor, to tone yourself down, to put on a show for others. Be genuine. Don’t try to impress, don’t try to force, don’t try to be accepted. Be you.

7. You have to nominate 5 -12 bloggers.

I don’t have to. Watch me not.

In general, I don’t make a habit of passing along these viral awards. Because I don’t spread virus. Just watch me crush the coronavirus into submission. But yeah, I’m a curmudgeon, and nominating bloggers for content crosses out of my comfort zone, so I shan’t.

8. Notify your nominees by commenting on their blog or just reaching out to them.

Ok, I will do that with all my nominees right now.