What motivates us all

You can imagine my total surprise this morning when I began reading my mail and discovered I was awarded an Editors Choice Award from Brainwashcafe. After getting over the initial shock I surfed on over to look, low, and behold, it was true. I sent off a thank you email to the editors at the Brainwashcafe and in the event they have not read it yet, Thank you very much for the award, it is an honor.

I have won a few awards and even written about one or two, they are nice to receive because they validate why we write and at times even pour our hearts into an article. I recall a blog that was a daily stop for me, he wrote an article about an award he had recently been given. I could not help but notice the date of the article was approximately a month preceding the date of the article I was reading and I wondered why he would wait so long to write or even follow an article up. I made a note to check back later and I was glad I did. He posted what was probably the best article he had written and it had nothing to do with the premise of the blog, he wrote this one from his heart.

It was later in the day when I checked back and quickly discovered his new post. He was apologizing to his readers for not posting for a while and he appeared very emotional over everything. His rational for not writing was because he feared he would be unable to equal anything he had written that had earned him the award, so to write nothing was something. I felt for him and understood completely what he was saying in his recent article.

I feel that this occurs to all of us, what I refer to as an “Award Block. “ we win an award and can not quite figure out what to write to top that one again. We are not professional writers, we are your everyday people writing our everyday thoughts, or in my case what ticks me off or moves me. I am sure most bloggers can agree with me that the majority of us never had writing or journalism classes, mine was in criminal investigations, believe me, that is no help here folks.

We are recognized by a site or service, something we wrote not only becomes popular, it becomes internationally popular. Something along those circumstances happen to all of us and when it does it makes us each stop and think for a moment if we can ever top that or write something better, or even equal. For the majority of us that moment last but a second or two and it is back to the basics, writing something about what moves us, what we care for or about, we move forward and we grow.

So, again, my thanks to the editors over at Brainwashcafe and by the way, I like your site. One more thing, does that mean I get to use one of those neat little Acadamy Awards? (Smile)

Note: I would like to add that should anyone mosey over to the Brainwashcafe make sure you read the article, "yea but i only drank LIGHT Beer...", you will not believe the photos that are posted to back the claim up.