K8 the GR8

Me daddy - God bless ‘im - threw an award my way recently… this one is the ‘Break Out Blogger’ award:

“This award casts a spotlight on bloggers who are just beginning to draw lotsa attention — the equivalent of a song with a bullet on Billboard’s Top 100 chart. Lotsa good posts. Lotsa good buzz. These bloggers are going places in a hurry.�

What a nice feeling.  These awards always seem to arrive with perfect timing!  Lately there’s been a tiny rite-of-passage going on with my blog.  The honeymoon phase is wearing off as my stats get lower and my Google rating still remains a big duck egg, and this used to concern me. I used to get a bang from seeing my Technorati rating go up a notch, but it seems to be asleep lately, and I find myself not really caring so much anymore.  This proves that I’m in it as a hobby, as opposed to worrying about the popularity race.  I don’t really see my blog going anywhere in a huge hurry… but it’s still all good.

There are people who are naturally good at pretty much everything, an all-rounder sort of person.  Then there are people who float just under the surface undetected, like me.  It’s a nice place to be… you can bob up and down without the stress of having to keep afloat.  I found this especially true in school, and was musing through an old school yearbook recently, having a laugh at the awards I never won back then.

You had the Merit Award, the Studies Award, the Academic Achievement Award, the Subject Award, the Senior and Junior Linguist, the Student of the Year, the Dillon Cup, the Talented Teens Award, the Public Speaking award, the Punctuality Award, the Highest Achiever Award, the Sports Awards, the Young Entrepreneurs Award… it goes on and on.  The gas thing about these awards is, even though they apparently give everyone a chance to win something, the same kids got all the awards.  One chick walked away with 11 awards in the bag one year, thus ironically making her the most unpopular child ever.  Jealousy is a bitch.  In all my years at school, I won just one award… a subject award in music, for my fiddling endeavours.  I’d won a cup before I started school at the age of 6 for my piano-ing endeavours, so they went well together.  Along with my blogging awards, it’s appearing to me that I’m a bit of a creative cow.  It’s just hard to get used to!  Sometimes it feels like people are just taking the piss, or carrying through in a tag-like fashion. 

I don’t care.  For all the people that bitch about awards being fast and loose, I think the point is being lost.  It’s a wonderful thing to encourage someone’s efforts even if they aren’t in first place.  I think a lot of kids in my old school would’ve loved this sort of boost, instead of being left to feel a bit of a nobody in the end.

So, in this spirit, I’m going to pass the award on to the following bloggers.  Not because it’s a taggy type thing, but because they deserve them.  They are the blogs I go to whenever I need a dose of amusement and weirdness:

Grannymar, you’re brilliant because you have a huge range of soulful subject matter, with a few excellent jokes thrown in.  You’re also an extremely faithful commenter, so this is my way of thanking you for finding the time somehow to leave messages on our blogs and give us all a lift.

Coffee Helps!  Hails, I love reading your posts because you never really know what’s coming next, and at times it feels like I’ve known you for years.  AND I like the way you throw up pictures of pretty men because there’s always a need for pretty men.

Gimme over at Stranded on Gaia, you spew your feelings with such style, it’s an inspiration.  It’s like reading the blog of Withnail.

I’ve only recently discovered Foreigner by Default, but it’s one of the blogs I read most frequently.  You definately know how to entertain!

May you all bob frequently, and with style.