The Very Inspiring Blogger Award

Well, after that miserable post I wrote last night, you can imagine my surprise when I awoke to a notification that Girl Diaries has nominated me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award. After a week where I have felt less than inspired, it’s nice to know that someone out there (and hopefully more than one someone!) finds me inspiring.

To be honest (see, I’m not actually a liar) I hadn’t discovered Girl Diaries yet, but I have taken a look through some of her posts now. She’s a student and aspiring writer and photographer with a love and passion for poetry. Her blog is very personal. It takes guts to put your thoughts out there like a diary, so kudos to Girl Diaries. I hope your dreams come true :) Her blog can be found here: http://girldiaries101.wordpress.com/.

So here are the rules of this award:

1. Display the Nomination logo on your blog
2. Link back to the person who nominated you
3. State 7 things about yourself
4. Nominate 15 others and link to them
5. Notify those bloggers of the nominations & award requirement

1 and 2 are taken care of, so here are seven things about me:

1. I’m a little bit crazy, but to meet me you’d never know it… however if you’ve discovered my old blog, you know it.
2. I love to travel. So far I’ve made it to various countries in Europe, Asia and South America. I hope to make it to Australia and New Zealand soon.
3. My travel aspirations may have to be put on hold, since I’m expecting a baby. Baby + backpacking around the world = not really compatible. Resort vacations for the foreseeable future perhaps?
4. I have a dog and a parrot and both of them are completely neurotic. I blame myself. I’m pretty neurotic too!
5. A car once drove through my motel room wall and hit my bed… I slept through it. This is a true story. Ask my brother.
6. As a child I aspired to be an Olympic swimmer (amongst other dreams), but I was far too shy to take any kind of extra-curricular classes.
7. I have a PhD in procrastination. I’m so good at it.

I can’t nominate 15 blogs yet, to be fair. I migrated to WordPress from Blogger and I’ve only recently begun to discover the wonderful and supportive community that WordPress is. Blogger really isn’t so interactive and I can’t stress enough what a wonderful tool WordPress is for writers. There are five blogs that I read consistently and that I can truly say are inspiring. I’m sure this list will grow. Since being Freshly Pressed my readership has quadrupled and through your discovery of me, I am slowly (being in the final throes of thesis completion I don’t have a ton of time for reading yet… just wait til September though!) discovering more and more wonderful authors, and perhaps can add to this list over time. Without further ado, here are my nominations:

alateralplunge.wordpress.com: Peaches over at alateralplunge is nothing if not versatile. Her early posts are a chronicling of her and her husbands lives as they begin to try to conceive their first child. Being preggers, I love to read other pregnancy and TTC blogs; however, alaterplunge is much more than that. In addition to embarking on the motherhood journey, Peaches likes to write about things that make her happy, things that piss her off, and everything in between. She was Freshly Pressed a couple of weeks ago for a post about making those “like” button clicks count. The response to that post was amazing! A very good read.

katywins.wordpress.com: Like mine, Katy’s body has also recently been inhabited by a small perfect parasite. She’s chronicling her pregnancy journey, and I get very excited every time she updates. As wonderful as creating a life is, pregnancy is hard! It’s hard on your mind, it’s hard on your body, and although Katy is not exempt to this rule she takes pregnancy symptoms in stride and manages to make them funny. Now that’s inspiring!

theunexpectedpregnancy.com: This single mama hasn’t updated in a bit, but I hope she will keep writing. As you may have gathered, this blog began as the story of her unexpected pregnancy. Naturally, being in the throes of my own unexpected pregnancy, I got sucked in and read this blog start to finish over a period of three days. Through the highs and lows of pregnancy and a confusing relationship with the father of her baby, this anonymous blogger has managed to keep her head above water, using blogging as an outlet. Through it all you can feel her strength and her desire to do what’s best for her son is clear. Baby A sure did luck out in the mama department!

itsdilovely.com: Dilovely is a human being I know in real life. Not well, but sometimes I feel like I do. Her blog is a window into a lovely soul (you know, since you can’t see her eyes through the internet). She’s the mama of an earth baby, an angel baby and a baby on the way, as well as a teacher and musician. She writes both as a Mama and as a Normal Girl and her writing will draw you in. She’ll make you laugh and she’ll make you cry. Sometimes heartbreaking, always inspirational. This strong mama is well worth the read.

ljohnsen.wordpress.com: Don’t come here for a read, come here for the view :) This is a the photoblog of a dear friend of mine. I am inspired by her drive to engage with the things she loves, especially her recent venture into photography. After completing a BA and ending up, like so many of us, in a job that has absolutely nothing to do with her field of study, Miss. Johnsen decided to pursue her passion and go back to college for photography. She took some early maternity photos of me, and will be photographing J and I in October for some nice big belly shots. Hopefully I can convince her to try newborn photography once Baby H makes his debut.

As I said, I am still discovering new blogs but haven’t read much start to finish yet. I am consistently impressed and humbled by the talent I stumble upon in the blogosphere.

So, thanks to Girl Diaries once more. I’m happy to pay it forward and perhaps brighten someone else’s day as you have brightened mine.

In conclusion, here is a cute picture of my puppy:

Yup. Pretty much sums it all up.