I Was Nominated for the Blogger Recognition Award 2017!

I’m so happy to announce that My Life in Colour was nominated for ‘The Blogger Recognition Award 2017″ by Brains and Bodies

Morgan, the creator of Brains and Bodies, writes about a variety of topics including her experience with Ehlers Danlos syndrome III and depression. Thank you so much for the nomination!

My nominations:

1.       Rose Minded

2.       Mindshare 2017

3.       Rich Biscuit

4.       Strongertogeth1

5.       Bipolar Bear Speaks

6.       Reclaiming Your Future

7.       Barb Natividad

8.       It's Okay Right

9.       Relief From Anxiety

10.   Survival Is A Talent

11.   Gemma Callaway

12.   Halfway Girl Turned Whole

13.   Sarah Berneche

14.   Stumbling Mind

15.   I Am But Wandering

If you want to accept the nomination there are a few things you must do:

• Produce a post about the award
• Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog
• Write a brief story about how your blog began
• Provide two pieces of advice to newbie bloggers
• Select 15 blogs to nominate
• Comment on each nominee’s blog and provide a link to the post you made about the award

How My Blog Began

If you have read my first post you’ll know that I’m taking this year out of university to focus on my mental health recovery. I’ve struggled with my mental health pretty seriously for years now and I’ve seen a lot of people I love struggle with their mental health but no one was talking about it. Not really. There’s the romanticised portrayal, the medical descriptions and the ‘hang in there’, ‘it gets better’ and ‘you are not alone’ discussions but no one was talking about what it was actually like and how difficult mental illnesses can make everything. Or if people were talking about it they were leaving out the ugly parts. The parts that I needed to hear when I was at my lowest. The parts that I knew a lot of others needed to hear.

Advice for New Bloggers

1.       Don’t Force It

I find that when I need to do something, I respond to the pressure by running away and avoiding the situation. So there’s no point in dedicating a specific time-slot to writing because then I definitely won’t write. Or at least I won’t write anything remotely readable. Write when inspiration hits you, don’t try to force it. Write when you want to write and write what you want to write about.

2.       Choose Your Measurement of Success with Care

I think that most people consider a successful blog to be one with a lot of views. So did I before I started blogging. But the truth is, that only reflects how much you promote your blog. It doesn’t reflect how well written, insightful or helpful the blog post is. It doesn’t measure the impact it had on the reader or the writer. You could write the best blog post about world peace ever written but it probably won’t do as well as a post about weight loss because that’s what more people are searching for. That’s not to say the weight loss post isn’t good, but you can’t compare a post about world peace to a post about weight loss, or a post about Victoria sponge cake to a post about motorbikes. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write something just because it won’t do as well as something else. The post that I am most proud of, ‘Happiness isn’t the Default’ is one of my least viewed posts because it doesn’t have key words in the title and it doesn’t explicitly tell you how to do something. When I write about Eating Disorders I know they won’t get as many views as my posts about anxiety but if the people who need to read it read it, whether that’s 2 or 2,000, I consider it a success. Even if no one reads it, if it’s something I need to say for myself then it will still have been worth it. At the end of the day, if someone doesn’t care about motorbikes they’re not going to click on a post about motorbikes.