Good day friends and fellow bloggers. Good day to those just passing through too.
Over the past few months I‘ve been accruing awards from fellow bloggers who have kindly nominated me for them. It’s always massively flattering to be thought of in conjunction with any kind of award and I truly appreciate it when I am. Here are the awards that I’ve been nominated for in recent times (in some cases more than once).
One of the stipulations of each award is to then answer a set of questions or provide facts about yourself and the sole reason I haven’t got around to accepting the above rewards is entirely because of that. I simply do not have the time to do it. When I get the time to write up a blog post I want it to be something worthwhile in terms of improving my writing style and showcasing my abilities. I don’t feel award acceptance posts do either of those things. My time is short and things must be sacrificed. Award acceptances have been one of the things to slip by the wayside in favour of what I deem to be more important stuff.
Please don’t assume me ungrateful. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I am extremely grateful to be thought of for these awards and it pleases me that my writing impresses people to the extent that they deem me worthy of recognition. Thank you to all who have nominated me and I failed to respond by way of an acceptance post.
There was one award that I feel I simply must respond to as it was different to all of the others. The difference between the Blogoquent Award and the others is that it was an actual competition. One of our WordPress brethren, thegirlonthego08, ran the competition for a bit of fun and the premise was simple; write one sentence about life. She then invited people to vote for the best sentences with five winners awards up for grabs.
I was at a rare loose end so I thought I’d give it a go. The sentence I came up with in the end was “While Life and existence certainly coexist, their paths are not the same and never should the twain be confused with one another”. It took me all of a minute to dream it up and is a firm nod in the direction of one of my idols, Jean-Paul Sartre, who coined the phrase “existence precedes essence”. I am a firm believer in the existentialist philosophy and have read many a work of literature on the subject.
I’m pleased to say that my off the cuff existential sentence won one of the Blogoquent awards with fifteen votes. The only quote that accrued more votes was “Life is a journey in which nothing is permanent and everything is precious” from Katrina with twenty-one while one of my new favourite bloggers, Cory Melancon, tied with me on fifteen with his sentence “Life is the knowing that an ending is inevitable, but the understanding that anything is possible in the moment”.
What I like the most here is that all three of our sentences differ yet they all carry with them a certain message and/or lesson. It was a good competition in terms of getting the creative juices flowing on the spot and that was entirely why I decided to throw my hat into the ring. I’m glad I did because I feel I earned this award. That’s not to say I don’t feel I earned all the others, but there’s a certain satisfaction that comes from knowing I won this one due to people voting it without any obligation to do so.
I’d like to thank thegirlonthego08 for running the competition. It was a great idea and I hope she’ll run more like it in the future. I think awards like this should be the standard to replace the old fashioned nomination style ones. The Versatile Blogger award always amuses me as you often see people who clearly aren’t that versatile getting nominated. That’s where the nomination theory falls down for me as people will generally nominate their favourites/friends regardless of what the award is. We should all start thinking of competitions and events to run instead, especially those of us who are in search of truly talented writers.
What would your sentence have been had you entered the Blogoquent competition? Do you feel that competitions like this should replace the traditional nomination style awards? Tell me what you think below and I’ll get back to you in due course. Thanks for reading!
The Adventures of an Average, White Man...© 
Congrats Paul! You certainly earned it with that quote. It’s spectacular. I feel the same way about all these blogging awards, which is why I stipulated on my blog that I don’t accept awards. I’m referring mostly to those that you were mentioning earlier. Where you have to answer a bunch of questions, and nominate 10 other bloggers, blah blah. The only award I’ve accepted (about 2 weeks ago) was the Warrior Child Award from the Mental Health Writer’s Guild, which doesn’t come with any strings attached, and actually has a good message and reason behind it. So for that, I’ll make an exception. Any of those “artificial” awards, I don’t bother with.
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Blog awards are daft because there is no winner…only several people nominated…it’s like sports day at my daughter’s school where everyone wins 😛 It’s good this award was different. Keep writing your fabulous stuff and the awards will keep rolling in 😊
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That’s my thing about them. There’s never an actual winner. It’s just a ceaseless merry-go-round of nominations. The sports day analogy is perfect. Everyone’s a winner, baby; even those who aren’t that good and were nominated by their best mate. Haha. I think a “no award nominations” thing might have to go on my sidebar. Flattery is nice, but it doesn’t get me published any quicker.
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Exactly 😊
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Congrats Paul. I like this idea of award too, plus you inspire me with the efforts you put into your blog 😉. Your efforts will always be rewarded. Have a lovely weekend😊
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I certainly hope they will. I ain’t gonna stop trying until I’ve either achieved what I want or I die, whichever comes first. Hope you had a great weekend 🙂
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I had a great weekend Paul. Now it’s the start of a new week. I wish us all the best😀
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The start of yet more opportunities if we care to look for them 😀 👍
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Oh man I’m mentioned in the same league as some epic bloggers yourself included, thanks for showing love goes a lot further than you know😎
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I always believe in giving respect where it’s due. All people mentioned here are folk who respect the world of blogging and don’t treat it as an extension to their social media outlets. We all deserve a pat on the back for keeping it real.
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Thanks for doing this post! And to tell you the truth, this is the exact reason why I hosted this competition. To some extent, I too believe getting nominated for all those awards loses its meaning somewhere in the process..though it does motivate a lot!! So I wanted to CREATE something which needs to be earned, and not just nominated..I’m glad you too think the same way! Thanks for participating, it made the competition all the more fun! 🙂 🙂 🙂
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As you rightly say, being nominated for an award is very motivating and flattering, but nothing beats winning one because you were voted by people who were under no obligation to vote for you at all. It was a great idea from you and I hope you’ll run others again. It’s got me thinking about doing something similar when my blogaversary comes around. A kind of Blogger of the Year Award of sorts.
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I do quite like this premise for a blog award, using a competition rather than a nomination method. I think both have their advantages, but this one is certainly unique. I think the trickier thing with a voting methodology would be implementing the actual voting mechanism – IE, deciding how long to keep the polls open, making your readers aware of the need to vote, etc.
As for a submission I would have made, damn… I honestly don’t know. Writing a single sentence about life is a pretty tall order. I’d have to think on it further.
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Well as far as the mechanics go, I think they were just about right on this. The initial post about the award explained how everything worked so this would probably be the yardstick. I’ve thought about doing something similar for my blogaversary and doing a cheesy Paul.E.Bailey’s World Blogger of the Year type award for shits and gigs. I’d put nominees forward and let everyone vote in order to determine a winner. Have it run for the month leading up to the final count or something. I think it’d be quite fun. Plus when I’m famous it’ll be prestigious as hell. Haha.
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That’s a fab idea! I look forward to competing 🙂
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Oh, you’ll be competing. I can’t see an event where you won’t be one of the nominees I put forward for folk to vote on 🙂
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Thanks for the shout-out!
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You’re welcome. Your sentence was a worthy winner and also worth mentioning on here 🙂
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