Blogging Survivalist Award

Posted on by Mike Senczyszak in Writing & Blogging

blogging_survivalist_awardSome of you may have been honored with a Bloggers Recognition Award or perhaps a Liebster, but has anyone snagged a Blogging Survivalist Award?

Probably not, because there’s no such animal.

Until now.

I made it up, nominated myself, and graciously accepted my nomination.

Narcissism aside, November 1st marks my 1-year anniversary.  One year ago, my first post went out to tens of followers, tallying an impressive 18 views and one ‘like’ during its debut.

Each journey begins with a single step.

Despite the fact that statistically, less than 10 percent of the 70 million new Blogs created each year will make it beyond 90 days, I somehow managed to survive, relatively unscathed.  Okay, a little bit scathed.

Like many beginning Bloggers, I struggled at times throughout the year, some weeks grasping at elusive topic straws, straddling deadlines and drowning in self-doubt.  Other weeks were fraught with frustration, mulling over site stats, contemplating theme changes, reassessing priorities.

But there were good times also.

While I jest about receiving a fictitious self-created award, I felt it important to acknowledge the milestone with a post, one that not only reminds me of where I’ve been, – and where I’m going, but one that also gives me a damn topic for the week.  When the idea first came to me, I considered pontificating on the obvious; the pros and cons of the writer’s journey, struggles, peaks and valleys, what I’ve learned, what I wanted to share.

But I quickly bored myself.

So sufficed to say, despite being in the virtual blogging fox hole for 365 days, I’ve made strides, advanced creatively, but still face challenges.  One year later I’ve yet to find my rhythm – or my niche for that matter.  And I realize that may never happen.  I’ve come to accept that Blogging doesn’t necessarily get easier with time, and perhaps that’s the point.  There is no magical elixir, no fairy dust, neither time nor experience eases the workload, the commitment, the ‘ass in the chair’ requirement.  The process cannot be circumvented for the sake of brevity, time management, or other interests.  Not successfully, anyhow.  And for good reason.  While the process remains challenging, regardless of expertise, it’s the final product that benefits.  Always.  Practice makes perfect.

Or maybe I’m just not very good.  That’s a possibility.

While I’m usually more adept at criticizing my work, I’ve taken the opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and acknowledge the accomplishment.  Despite the odds, despite irresistible clichés like ‘trials and tribulations’, my readership has grown, not by leaps and bounds, but steadily.  And as I amass my tiny empire (insert laugh here), I have the great fortune to connect with other creative souls, talented writers, artists, poets and dreamers, one follow at a time.

 As I mentioned in a previous post however, as pleasant and addictive as those ‘follows’, ‘comments’ and ‘likes’ can be, if you’re only in it for the notoriety, fame or heaven forbid – financial gain, the odds are stacked against you.  Statistics and analytics play a role, but if your underlying motivation is anything other than sharing your passion with others, at some point, the ten-percenters will be holding a seat for you by the bar.

Or perhaps not.  After all, at one year in, I’m no sage.

But hey, I just won an award.

For my followers, and anyone else who’s taken time to visit (even if you only stopped by because you were looking for lyrics to a Peter Gabriel song), I appreciate the click, nevertheless.  Thanks for visiting.

rules

No Blogging Award is complete without instructions for the next victim candidate:

The rules pertaining to the acceptance of the Blogging Survivalist Award (BSA) are simple:

  1. Achieve one of the following Blogging milestones: 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, (beyond 10 years, you’re a Zen Master, a virtual spiritual entity – Awards are pointless).
  2. Nominate yourself for the Award.
  3. Humbly accept the Award and acknowledge yourself for the nomination.
  4. Copy and Paste the Award to your Blog (feel free to use my image or create your own).
  5. Tell the world whatever it is you feel like sharing at that particular moment.  Be nice.
  6. Bask in the spotlight for a day, then get back to work.

By the way, there’s nothing in the rules to indicate you cannot retro-post a BSA, so if you recently passed one, post away!

Congratulations on your milestone!  Race you to the next one.

Until next time,

58 thoughts on “Blogging Survivalist Award”

  4. Congrats. You deserve your award. I stupidly thought that for Liebster I have to nominate only mummy blogs so I am sorry I found out too late. I would have nominated you for Liebster first. Anyways, keep blogging. It doesn’t get any easier – perhaps harder as you have to come up with something new at all times – but it sure as hell gets more beautiful and maybe one day we will get up there where we dream about

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  5. Congrats on making it thru your first year!! Time flies when you’re hyperfocused online, huh?

    Alive for five now, #1 was the easy part for me. Developing the *habit* of skipping ’round the ‘net to support my blog-buds took longer (never mind-carving out the time!) — figuring out how to balance blogging with everything ELSE remaining in my life is still a work-in-process I haven’t figured out how to survive just yet.

    Given what has been going on with the WordPress Gremlins this past six months, I think *everybody* deserves your award if they still have lives, wrists, hair, computers that haven’t been chucked out of windows, and haven’t been hauled off to jail for strangling one of the “delete cache and cookies – use a different browser” Happiness Elves.

    Sorry, extremely grouchy due to sleep-deprivation after working ’til dawn to reconstruct a Halloween post that WordPress wiped out on save — TWICE — nada’ but a blank page with a title I had to trash the first time. The uncharacteristically numerous graphics I had inserted (and linked) in this piece were still in my media library the second, proof that I didn’t DREAM it – but I had to locate the sources all over again to use them – caption links don’t save in the media library. (Others reporting similar, btw.)

    My advice to you, my friend: save after every edit – and, once you’ve put a significant amount of work into a post, copy the html into a notepad file before saving on the WP.com platform — so you stand a shot at recovering at least *most* of your work from a total wipe-out. Now THAT’s surviving!
    ~~~~~~~~~~~
    btw- above Halloween piece, “THIS will REALLY Scare you!” – posts tonight shortly before midnight Eastern. Visit for a smile or two this Halloween – quick read.
    xx,
    mgh
    (Madelyn Griffith-Haynie – ADDandSoMuchMore dot com)
    – ADD Coach Training Field founder; ADD Coaching co-founder –
    “It takes a village to educate a world!”

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    2. Madelyn, thanks so much for the kind words! I very much understand the WordPress gremlins, although for the most part, I’ve been able to navigate the treacherous waters with only a couple of calls to tech support so far. I’ve adapted to the wonkiness of the program, trying to insert a photo here, it ends up there. Don’t get me started if you try to edit text wrapped around a photo, nothing aligns. Ever. Honestly, I’ve come this close to launching my laptop across the room.
      My move to WordPress.org is forthcoming, but for now I’m (somewhat) content. Probably just lazy.
      Cheers again, loved the comment!

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      1. Yeah – alignment and formatting takes more time than actually researching and writing my content. Who knew?

        Like me, “busy” is probably a better word than lazy. The idea of finding the time to port to another platform is daunting. After all, most of us would like to squeeze a bit of actual life in dribs of time when we aren’t fighting the WP wars. 🙂
        xx,
        mgh

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      2. Although I know I need to make the move from .com to .org, I’ve resisted knowing that once I do, I’ll be spending more time fiddling with the site and add-ons day in day out, than writing. I guess that’s the price for complete creative control however. Cheers Madelyn!

        Liked by 1 person

      3. I keep hoping to be able to afford admin assistance first – but I don’t see that on my horizon any time soon.

        Disgruntled posts and comments about dot com are increasing in frequency, however. I wonder if the WordPress folks are aware and initiating changes before somebody beats them to it and the writers defect. I certainly hope so.

        xx, mgh

        Liked by 1 person

    1. Cheers, I look at others who start a Blog and have 500 hits a day within their first two months. By my stats, I’ll hit that mark in about 7 years. That’s okay though. Thanks for the comment my friend!

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  7. Hi Mike, 2 things:
    1) This is your 2nd post (that I read) that speaks about some struggle, or maybe just not easy YET both posts are fantastically great and so enjoyable. Perhaps, this is your niche 🙂
    2) Thank you for creating this award – sounds fabulous! I will be taking up this offer very soon as I am about to hit my 1 year and unlike the 1st 2 tries years ago, I am still blogging this time around. Yay! I will be going back to this post on the 15th of November. That is my official anniversary although my first post on Food | Travel | Tour says April, I started my first post then and finished it in November. I know, it took a long time to write that one. Lol! And my first post on I think, I say, I do was a re-blog. I couldn’t even write my own. Haha! Again, well done on amazing creativity here. Great award. 🙂

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    1. Anne, I await your BSA award post, I cannot wait! Thank you so much for the kind words and support, November 15th (or there abouts), I will have my finger dangling above the share/reblog button. Thank you, your comment made me smile. Cheers!

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    1. Cheers Anne, I don’t recall getting a notification, but no worries. I have a limited following and I still often struggle to make sure I check all my emails, comments, etc, I have no idea how someone with thousands of followers, manages. Thanks very much for thinking of me!

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  14. My niche is something I’ve been wondering about for as long as I can remember. I had it one way and then another but still haven’t figured it out. Sometimes I get lost in the way my blog looks and all that. But for this award thing I did something like this years ago. I hyped it all up and then never posted it. Although it was just mere comedy for the ten’s of people who visited my site. I might steal this idea though

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  19. Haha! You’re funny. I definitely going to follow your blog. Congrats with the one year and your uhm award lol. I’m almost at three months so I should start designing my award or use your image. 🙂

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