Blogger Recognition Award

“These days, you have the option of staying home, blogging in your underwear, and not having your words mangled. I think I like the direction things are headed.” ~ Marc Andreessen

First of all: Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU! To the amazing Sarah over at LifeWithLilRed for the nomination. If you haven’t checked out her blog, RUN not walk to her site. She is full of sass, fun, and fashion. I am so lucky to have been given the opportunity to know her. Plus she makes my blogging days so much better and brighter!

The Rules:

• Gush tons of gratitude to the blogger who nominated you and share their blog link.
• Write a post to share your award.
•  Give a tell-all albeit brief of how your blog started.
•  Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
•  Pick 15 (I chose 5) other bloggers you want to nominate.
•  Spam their blog and let them know you have nominated them.

 

My Story:

I am really going to try to keep this short. (Try being the optimum word) I began my illustrious blogging career at the tender age of ten on a Diary-esque site called Live Journal. Since I was six I had been writing (my mom still has my “books” with really bad stick people) and I had always kept a diary. LiveJournal became the online extension of that. It wasn’t anything special with my adolescent angsty heart and obsession with nineties boy bands (all thanks to my sister who ALSO introduced me to LiveJournal so really I just blame her for all of this) but it cemented my love for interacting with people in a different way, as well as being able to express myself with words when I couldn’t bring myself to verbally speak them. (I was painfully shy as a kid)

Flash forward ten years and I had been blogging on various sites; Myspace, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress, Weebly, You name it I have used it to get my words out. About that time I was preparing for my move to the Concrete Jungle, not to get all depressing and self profligate I had been through a lot and once again the only way I could express myself was through writing. I also realized that I wanted to create a solid foundation to not only heal myself but also help others along the way. Which I have been incredibly blessed to have done and hopefully still do today.

Small Town Asanas was born and I stayed with it for a couple years before I realized that I had evolved into more then just yoga and self-love. It was also at this time that I realized I really wanted to pursue writing, and I needed to establish more of an online presence. Thus I decided to incorporate all of my blogs here in one place (though not LiveJournal because well cringeworthy). I scrubbed my oh so original name (Really it was original it was mine and my birthdate) and after much debating, settled on Ankhoryou. Anchors have always been symbolic to me for their steadiness and perseverance in any storm, and the K was a twist since my name begins with a K. The rest is cyber blogger history.

My advice: 

Always be authentic. Be you. Let the world hear YOUR voice. When you are, that is when your writing and personality can shine. It is so easy to invent yourself into anything you want, especially online. But it can and will sound hollow if you aren’t authentically true to yourself or passionate about what you are writing. You don’t have to be typecasted into any one role. You can write and blog about anything you want. That IS the beauty about blogging and writing in general.

Interact with other blogs. I have made so many dear friends through the blogosphere. The incredible thing about this community is everyone is willing to give a helping hand. Be reciprocative and return that to someone else. Spread that love. Do not gobble up the help, shares, likes, or comments, but give them back. Actually connect with people. You might be surprised at how it actually helps your blog as well as others and in the process who knows you might just end up making some new friends.

My Nominees are (Drum Roll):

Jouska at The Jouska Blog

Dani at A Beautiful Thing 

Mack at MackMarie

Shannon at Adventures in Thirty Something

Jenny at Sitbackandjustlive

Congrats ladies and please check out their blogs! They are all so amazing!

Thank you again to Sarah and I hope you check out her blog and stay tuned you never know who just might pop up over there 🙂