I'm not worthy!

About a month ago, which in internet time is like ages and ages, three lovely ladies bestowed blog awards upon me.  Even though I personally thanked them I'm only just now writing about it.  Which is why I suck and I'm lame and I must be purged.  Purge me! (I tried to look for that Golden Child clip because it's the best movie ever but I couldn't find it.)


Sunny and Carolyn both gave me the Sweet Blog award within one day of each other.  I was honored and surprised and then even more humbled when just a few days later Julia gave me a Blog of Substance award!  She thinks I'm substantial y'all!

For the blog with substance, I'm supposed to share my blog philosophy.  At first, I confused that with my blog's purpose which is far more difficult to pin down, as it has evolved from when I first started writing.  But my philosophy is pretty simple - be authentic.  I strive to be authentic with every word I write.  Each post is a snapshot of my life and what I'm presently dealing with, with as little editing and filtering as possible.  When I do edit, I strive to simply tell my stories through my eyes - you can't go wrong when you're talking about yourself.  It's when you try to interpret other people's feeling and motivations that it gets sticky.  I also try to condense in the interest of time.  I don't know about you, but I keep up with everyone on my blogroll as well as a few others and my biggest peeve is being held hostage by a post that goes on forever with nary a picture to break up all those words!  If I do write a post with no pictures I try to be as descriptive as possible so at least you can make pictures in your head!


So, that's it:  be authentic, edit only where absolutely necessary, and be respectful of your readers' time.  I've really enjoyed the challenge that it presents and I feel like it has helped my writing.  In being authentic, there have been many times that I've paused over the keyboard wondering if I should really say that.  I've been nervous when I hit 'publish' and I've been flamed, but I figure that's just par for the course.  Editing is a challenge as well because it's not easy to tell a good story and keep it short and interesting but the process makes your writing cleaner.  And pictures!  One of these days I'll take good pictures - sometimes I get lucky and it's so gratifying to be able to share it with you.  I'm nowhere near even decent at photography but I'm not where I started and that counts!


As for my 10 sweet bloggers, some are repeats (because they're just that awesome), some are new but all are blogs that I really really like!

Heather

Cori

Kristina

Sunny

Carolyn

Kristin

Tanja

Gem

Diva

InBetween

Even though she doesn't know me and I'm not as close with her as the ones I chose for my sweet bloggers, I really like her blog and totally think it's substantial.

S.I.F.

Thank you so much ladies for the wonderful awards, you're the greatest!