The Blogger Recognition Award

I can’t believe I’m so blessed to be tagged for the blogger recognition award by the amazing and lovely Emer at The Little Haze Book Blog! They are truly wonderful and I’m so grateful, so honored, and really soft about this whole thing. They’re too kind and there aren’t enough words to express my feelings. If you get the chance, definitely check out Emer’s blog! She has amazing content and she’s such a sweet person!

🎃 The Rules

1. Thank the blogger/s who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
2. Write a post to show your award.
3. Give a brief story of how your blog started.
4. Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
5. Select up to 15 other bloggers you want to give this award to.
6. Comment (or pingback) on each blog and let them know you have nominated them and provide the link to the post you created.

🎃 How did Chapter Malliumpkin come to be

I briefly talk about this in my ‘About Me‘ section on my blog, but I’ll go into greater detail here. I’m probably going to get emotional and a bit sappy so I hope you’re ready for this.

I have always been a reader and a writer, ever since I was a kid. As a kid I had a lot of health problems and even now that I’m older, I still have a lot of medical struggles. With those struggles, I reached a point in my life where I felt like I was on repeat all the time. Around this time, a lot of difficult things were happening in my life and I remember like it was yesterday. It was a Wednesday, I had finished all my doctor appointments and I was at my LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) meetup for our next big chapter of our adventure. I had just finished putting on uniform for my character I play as (Malliumpkin or Mally-m-kin) when I got a phone call. That phone call changed a lot of things. After that day, there were a lot of events that happened over that following two weeks that caused me to take a step back and look at my life.

A few of my most trusted, most loyal friends actually pushed me into blogging about the books I read and they really helped me make the commitment to starting my bookstgram. I have been in the book community since 2014, but I was never really in it the way I am now. I had always wanted to start my book blog, but it wasn’t until I had been on bookstgram for a long enough time that I wanted to really invest my love and my time into my hobby of reading. And as for the name, well… Malliumpkin is not only the character name I go as for LARPing, but it’s my gaming tag, it’s a nickname that’s very personal and was given to me by someone very special and whom I value very highly in my life. The ‘chapter’ part was something that was added on at a later time when a lot of my LARPing buddies caught me reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban before one of our meetups started. So the name ‘Chapter Malliumpkin’ is something that was born from the love of many incredible, talented, and wonderful people who I’m immensely grateful to have in my life and very blessed that they put up with all my shenanigans.

Reading had always felt like some sacred, something kind of intimate throughout my life, and I never knew there were so many people out there who were interested in what I had to say about books or liked similar books. After really getting involved in the book community, I met so many incredibly kind, warm-hearted friends that really pushed me forward to making this blog and telling me to just go for it. Having that kind of support, it was like coming up for a breath of fresh air. I have never had that kind support, love, and so many people in my corner telling me to stop holding back (outside of my spouse, of course). And so here we are. On this blog that came to be out of inspiration, friendship, support, passion, and immense love.

🎃 My Advice

If you were like me, holding back from doing something you really wanted to do then let go and just do it. There are so many of us who will support you and want to talk with you about your thoughts, opinions, and you can make some of the strongest friendships in this community. I never would have started my blog if I never found the courage and if I never knew so many people supported me, wanting me to be happy. It truly has been an incredible journey and life it too short to be doing anything but the things you want to do.

My second piece of advice would be to just be yourself. You don’t have to try so hard to impress everyone or sacrifice your self-care for the sake of making sure you’re posting constantly. Not to mention, readers can tell when you’re forcing yourself to write about something you’re not that interested in. When you’re passionate about something, the writing will come naturally and your true emotions will always shine through in the end.

Getting involved is going to be your biggest challenge, but it’s the most rewarding. I’m the type of person who gets really bad anxiety and I stressed over saying the right thing. I blame the perfectionist side for that. But commenting, chatting, or even sending a simple message saying, “Hey! That sounds really amazing! Can you tell me more about it?” are some great ways of building friendships, establishing connections with others who like the same things that you do. And if you don’t connect right way, that’s okay. Try again and keep being social. In fact, if you’re here on this blog post, right now, reading it then comment something and let’s start a conversations! Let’s build a new bridge of friendship right here, right now!

And my final tip to you, dear reader, is to branch out and participate in something you normally wouldn’t do on your blog. Tags and memes are a great way to meet new people, interact with blogs you’ve never seen before, and overall just have fun. I worry, stress, and want things to be so perfect that I forget to have a little fun every now and again. You can still be serious and have fun. It’s also a great way to put out interesting content and help motivate you for regular blogging.

🎃 Bloggers I’m nominating for this award!

🎃 Melanie from meltotheany

🎃 Kayla from Books and Blends

🎃 Donna from Moms Book Collection

🎃 Robin from Paperbacks and Planners

🎃 Kat from Treestand Book Reviews

🎃 Destiny at Howling Libraries

🎃 Lauren at Lala’s Book Reviews

🎃 Kristin at Kristin Kraves Books

🎃 Sara at The Bibliophagist

🎃 May at Forever and Everly

🎃 Amy at A Court of Crowns and Quills

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Okay, Chapterlings! That’s everything for this blog post! I hope you all enjoyed this and once again, make sure you go check Emer out. She is absolutely marvelous and I love her to pieces. And of course, I hope you enjoyed this blog post as much as I did. Until the next time, may October be treating you kindly, I love you! 🧡

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