Blogger Recognition Award

The lovely Kara from Polishing Dookie nominated me for an award, which is entirely unexpected and lovely! I love her blog. It’s all about living with chronic illness and she often discusses grossness/hilarity that comes with it – Making the best of the shit she’s got! We often share the same sentiments but Kara words them far more eloquently than I ever could. I’ll always have a soft spot for other people who say it like it is, with occasional swears ❤

THE RULES OF THIS AWARD ARE:

1. Thank the blogger who nominated you.

2. Write a post and display the award.

3. Share in your post a brief history of how your blog started.

4. Give advice to new bloggers.

5. Nominate other bloggers you feel deserve the award.

6. Let each blogger know that you have nominated them.

 

How did my blog start? In all honesty, no one in my life understood what I was dealing with. People get sick of hearing about health issues that they can’t fix or can’t really understand, but never in my life have I needed support more. The process of getting diagnosed with a rare/chronic/invisible illness is torturous and when real life friends and family can’t understand, thankfully the blog world was there for me, brimming with lovely people who knew exactly what I was talking about. is  I never expected anyone to read my ramblings, but am so delighted that they do.

I have really struggled with advice for new bloggers. I am not an expert. I am a girl with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome who moans a lot on the internet. But in order that I keep to the rules, I’ve thought of a few tips that I’ve been given or picked up over the last few months:

• When you post a link to someone else’s blog (as I’ll do below), if you want them to be notified of your blog sharing, you need to post a link to a blog post, NOT their home page. I’m not sure why. It’s annoying but I don’t know a way around it.
• Join groups relevant to your blog. For me, this has meant using my twitter account to join a “chronic illness bloggers” group who also retweet your blog. I get a lot of my views from Twitter posts.
• As Kara mentioned, there is a spam folder on WordPress. Don’t ask me how to find it. It took me AGES one day and I saved a link into my bookmarks. It’s worth checking this on a regular basis because it likes to spam people for no good reason (especially Kara)… but also for very good reasons like offers of animal porn.
• Remember, anyone could find and read your blog. As soon as I was published by The Mighty my blog was a lot more visible to my real life friends and family – try not to post when you’re really mad unless you’d be happy for your Mum or judgemental co-worker to read it. My Mum reads my blog and probably wants to wring my neck at times, but I think it also helps her understand.
• Unless you are writing your blog as a type of diary just for yourself, try not to be too self indulgent. It’s important to post some relatable content and not just your everyday life. Very few people want to read pages and pages of the same complaints day in, day out. Think about what your readers are dealing with and what experiences you share with them. I love a good moan, but I try and keep it to things that drive us all bananas.

I’m not sure how many people I get to nominate here, so I’m going to go freestyle and do what I like…

A Scottish Journey With Chronic Pain

My Ehlers-Danlos Journey

Gain Through The Pain

The Hippy Geek

Two Rooms Plus Utilities

Tiny Tyger, Baby Bear and Me

I love all of these blogs. Please feel no obligation to join in. Just know that I think you are fantastic. Love love love!

Ren x