The Liebster Award for New Blogs

I feel so kindly “seen” today… Anacrazyfuturewriter nominated my Just L Poetry site for The Liebster Award! I’m so honored to be nominated by such a young talented blogger who cares deeply about sharing the insanely profound and the profoundly insane of her life. She boldly shares everything that goes through a teenage girl’s mind while exploring new forms and styles of poetry. I highly recommend reading her blog!

The rules of the Award are as follows:

• Link to the Global Aussie’s blog post about the Award in your Liebster Award blog post.
• Thank the person who nominated you, and put a link to their blog on your blog.
• Write a small post about what makes you passionate about blog posting.
• Provide 10 random facts about yourself.
• Answer the questions presented to you.
• Nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel would enjoy blogging about this award.
• Create 11 questions for your nominees to answer.
• List the rules in your post.
• Display the award on your blog.
• Once you have written and published your post, then inform your nominees of their nomination!
• Comment on the Global Aussie’s blog post with a link DIRECTLY to your Liebster award. To make it easy for Global Aussie to read all of the nominations.

Entries start January 1, 2018, and end on December 25, 2018. The winner will be picked on the 31st of December.

What makes me passionate about blogging:
I kept a journal from 5^th grade until I was approximately 35 years-old. Around that time I noticed my journal writing morphed into poetry writing, mostly about love and loss. I was first published in the Love Blender Digest, the web’s original love poetry community, in 1997, and have continued to be a featured contributor. I found that my bad relationships, bad romantic poetry, and positive life attitude resonated with others. This connection, along with my yoga teacher and friend encouraging me to participate in NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month), fueled my passion to start blogging. I write grants for nonprofits for a living. I spend much of my time writing silly, semi-autobiographical love poems to avoid work deadlines. At age 55, I appreciate that my musings on love and loss resonates across all ages and continents.

10 random facts about me:

1. “They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.” By F. Scott Fitzgerald is my favorite quote.
2. I went to Skip Barber’s race car driving school at age 50. I may have missed my life’s calling.
3. I have three tattoos. The words from an e.e. cummings poem, “I carry your heart in my heart” around a heart; A Pascal quote, “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of;” and a dandelion blown into hearts.
4. I have worked in and/or traveled to 14 countries. I currently live part time in Oregon, USA, and part time in Jalisco, Mexico.
5. I follow Mila Stauffer on Instagram. She makes me laugh, and her teen sister who scripts and films her is brilliant and current.
6. I am a wine geek. My current favorite is a light, sophisticated Pinot Noir rosé from Gran Moraine in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
7. Mythologist Joseph Campbell’s “Follow your bliss” as highlighted in The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work is the mantra I live by.
8. I could eat caprese salad every day!
9. I like to rock out to AC/DC.
10. Shawshank Redemption is my all-time favorite movie. I see it as a love story.

Answer the questions presented to you:

1. What is one feature of your Utopian vision of the world?
   Social justice is so ingrained in my Utopia there is no reason to label it as such.
2. What would you entitle the book about your life?
   My mother always said it would be Rebel Without A Pause. I think that has since been taken. Plan L: Because A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, and K didn’t work out is my newest venture; I think it would make a good book title. My life has had extreme highs and lows. I have been married three times. I have two wonderful adult children. I have had great adventures. I have a fabulously rich life, friends and family. I have learned to embrace it all.
3. If you could give one piece of advice to your teenage self, what would it be?
   Don’t give yourself away so easily. Much of the advice in Cosmo magazine is complete bullshit.
4. Which TV series/book/movie is your guilty pleasure?
   I binge watch Hallmark movies. I like a sappy, happy ending.
5. What is one hilarious quote from a book, show, or movie that cracks you up every time?
   Longshanks to Isabella: “You may return to your embroidery.” A quote from the movie Braveheart. I don’t even know why I find it so funny, but I do. Perhaps it is how she shows him that she is her own woman with her own mind after that cutting remark.
6. Which dystopian future would you want to be part of?
   Hmm, I always wanted to be Aeon Flux! But I am a little obsessed with Westworld at the present.
7. Which underrated person, real or fictional, dead or alive, would you want to have lunch with?
   Dominick John Dunne was an American writer, investigative journalist, and producer. He hobnobbed with the rich and famous of the 1950’s. I was addicted to the TV series he hosted on truTV, Dominick Dunne’s Power, Privilege, and Justice, in which he discussed justice and injustice and their intersection with celebrities. He had many successes and tribulations in the entertainment industry and in life. I have always found him fascinating and overall underrated.
8. Which World Record would you want to break?
   100 meter dash. To be named the fastest woman in the world would be really cool. But I also love motorcycles…
9. What is one thing you thought was true as a child, but now know is most certainly not true?
   Everyone grows up, gets married, has a house with a picket fence, Volvo station wagon, two kids, and a dog, and lives happily ever after.
10. What is the least dignified way you’ve been injured?
    After sitting on an outside bar at a dance club in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, hooking my high heels on the rail, I fell face first onto the sidewalk.
11. And finally, the question that just begs to be asked: Laurel or Yanny?Laurel.

Though these blogs may have more than 200 readers, here are my nominees:

1. After Narcissist Abuse
2. A Short Conversation
3. Bloglovin’
4. O at the Edges
5. The Naga

Create 11 questions for your nominees to answer:

1. What does your blogging name mean?
2. When did you start blogging?
3. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
4. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
5. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
6. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share… “
7. What is your best advice about love and relationships?
8. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
9. What would you like to be famous or infamous for?
10. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
11. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

Nominees, I pass the torch on to you. Thanks for reading! ♥