The Blogger Recognition Award

I have been fortunate enough to be nominated for a Blogger Recognition Award. Thank you very much for the nomination to Emma over at Diary of a Disabled Person. Emma is an engaging writer with a good sense of humour which often comes through in her posts and short stories. So definitely go and check her blog out.

So you may be wondering what the Blogger Recognition Award is? Well it’s basically just a way of bloggers showing their appreciation of one another. There are a number of things that recipients of the award need to do. These are:

explain why you started your blog
give two pieces of advice to new bloggers
nominate some bloggers deserving of the award

So, first things first…

Why did you start your blog?

I started this blog back in 2015. It wasn’t long after I had graduated from university and I was feeling kind of lost. I didn’t know what job I wanted to do or how I was going to fill the void left by formal education.

I wanted to have some kind of impact on the world but I didn’t know how. Then it occurred to me that blogging could be a good way of influencing people as you can get readers from all over the world.

My initial intention was to start blogging about environmental issues, as this is what I had studied at university. But I soon found that my heart wasn’t in it for whatever reason. So I shelved that idea and started wondering what other topics I could write about.

I then realised that there was a topic that had been staring me in the face the whole time – disability. I had plenty to write about having had a disability for over 20 years so this seemed like a perfect topic.

It’s an important subject because it’s open to misconceptions and assumptions. Many people misunderstand what disabled people are really like and make hasty assumptions of what we’re capable of. So I wanted my blog to help raise disability awareness, and to hopefully be a source of inspiration and information to other disabled people.

I started travelling around the world in 2015 (starting with Paris) so I figured that this would be a great thing to write about. The accessibility of places around the world varies wildly so any information about the accessibility of holiday destinations could help broaden horizons for disabled people. Hopefully, my blog goes a little way to achieving that.

Two pieces of advice to new bloggers

Try to post regularly, like at least once a week. The more you write the better you will get. Also if you post on a specific day every week people will start to expect your posts and be ready for them. It helps to build anticipation. Use an editorial calendar to plan out your posts for the next few weeks or so. Giving yourself deadlines helps to keep you on track.
Read and comment on other people’s blogs because it helps to build up a community. Also if you comment on other people’s blogs they may be more inclined to return the favour, so it’s a win-win. Plus if you leave a really good comment then the people that read that comment may be inclined to visit your blog giving you new readers.

My Nominations

The following blogs are all ones I follow and read, and they all have interesting content. I think they are very deserving of your attention too, so do go check them out.

By the way, if you are new here please check out some of my other posts and maybe even subscribe. Thanks for reading!