Irony and stuff

Irony seems like the right word to describe having been awarded a Thoughtful Blogger Award by lovely Verilion and Wanderlust Scarlett during a week of ignoring the comments piling up on the previous post. My apologies especially to those of you who thought I was stewing in something bad, with no encouraging words from me to suggest otherwise. I am fine.

You are some awfully nice people, Blogreaders.

I am told that this award means I am being honored for making people feel welcome when they stop by this page, and I am delighted to think that this might be so. I'm really more of a Cantankerous Bastard in person, but I guess they didn't have an award for that. Maybe it is too long to fit in the space they wanted to use.

And then I find that I have also been given a Creative Blogger Award by Liz Fenwick, Novel Racer and Blogfriend. She's the one who always seems to come by to prod me back into my writing when I have wandered too far afield.

This award feels a little ironic at the moment as well, since my creative juices haven't exactly been surging lately. I am not overly worried, however. I think such things are cyclical, and that before I know it, I will be awash in ideas again.

In a couple of weeks I will have been blogging for a year, and I've been thinking about it a lot lately: what a year is, what it means to keep this blog going. I have even thought about a retirement from blogging.

Even in my hypothetical scenarios, no sooner do I announce that I am done with blogging than I have something I am dying to share on my blog, and I crack open the seal to post again. I may not be posting daily like I used to do, but I have come to the realization that keeping this page, writing here, and interacting with the people who are kind enough to stop by—well, these are very important things to me.

From Liz's post, I learned a bit more about where these awards originated, which is here. I normally skip the part of any blogging experience which requires me to tag people, but this one seems worthy. If you are mentioned below, the link in this paragraph is where you can go to find your award. So here goes...

I wanted to give a Thoughtful Blogger Award to GoodThomas, but he no longer exists, so instead I'll give it to my friend David, over at Witnessing Am I (which I tend to read as Witnessing Ami, and I really want to know who this Ami is and why David is spying on her). David is thoughtful not only in his comments, which he responds to diligently, but in the content of his posts as well. I wish the best for him and for Ami.

An Inspirational Blogger Award must go to Reading the Signs. She writes with grace, whether she is remembering her father or worrying about a trip to the dentist. Like a lot of the people I have met through blogging, she is wrestling a novel onto the page. I, for one, would love to read it.

When I first met Caveblogem at Pretty Good on Paper, he was alternating posts about entering fiction comps (and goading me into the first contest I held) with somewhat strange ones about how to make a PDA holder out of paper. His scientific mind and an article he read led to his wonderful analysis of the words in actual use in the blogosphere. I think I was one of the first dozen or so to be scrutinized, but by now his word clouds and haiku have become the must-have blog accessory. I offer him a Creative Blogger Award for discovering a way to link statistical analysis with the fact that bloggers love to hear things about themselves.

I draw a lot of inspiration from Minx as well, both on and off the blog. She's talked me off the ledge with my novel a few times, and once mailed me a mysterious, empty envelope. Although I find her willingness to join literally anything that comes along a little distasteful, she has proved to be a great friend for a blogger to have, one who somewhat effortlessly draws people together, even as she is flipping us all off. An Inspirational Blogger Award for Minx.

Finally, Heart in San Francisco is so consistently entertaining that I suspect future generations will debate whether she ever actually existed, or was merely a consortium of delightfully amusing writers all using the same pen name. I have my suspicions as well. At any rate, whoever they are, they get a Creative Blogger Award from me.

I could go on and on and on, dribbling out my praises until this post was more or less a replication of my blogroll. The rules say to give out five, though, so five is what I held myself to. If you are in my blogroll at all, though, you should know that you are certainly one of the thoughtful ones, who made me feel welcome when I knocked on your doors to offer a comment. If you aren't in there, well, it's likely an oversight, and there's always room for more.

Oh! And here are my awards:








Thanks again to Verilion, Liz and Scarlett for thinking of me.