Like everything else since I became a father, I’m really late on this… who am I kidding? I’ve been terrible at deadlines and assignments my entire life.
Anyway, I was nominated for the Sunshine Blogger Award nearly a month ago by 3cupsofcafe. I want to thank her for the nomination, as well putting up with my tardiness. Better late than never, right? I encourage you to follower her on Twitter @3cupsofcafe, check our her YouTube channel, and read the post where she nominated me and 10 other great writers.
I started The Modern Father with one goal: to provide a place for fathers to get what they needed to become the dads they wanted. It’s only been six months, so I have no idea if anyone has found any articles to be helpful or life-changing. Like anything kid-related, you might feel like the best dad in the world one day then feel like a complete failure the next. But I hope that my silly little articles on toddlers, gardening, and using obscure social network tools has given someone ideas on what to do next.
So the award. Best as I can tell, this has been going around for a while. I can’t find an original post or an article about the it with a few minutes on Google, so I’ll make something up:
The Sunshine Blogger Award was created in the dark days of the internet. Before Google or Bing, there was Lycos, Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, Altavista, Excite, and others. They would direct you to dancing hamsters, blinking text, and video game cheat codes. All were built on GeoCities, Angelfire, and Tripod.
All were terrible.
However, none were as bad as AOL. In that walled garden, creepy dudes asked A/S/L, bored teens waited for topless photos of Claudia Schiffer to download over 28.8 kbps modems, and Dragon’s Gate burned millions of minutes of metered access. The only light residents could see was reflected from the surface the billions AOL Free Trial CDs they were forced to mine.
Everyone was resigned to their fate. That is, until the day a single person stood up and screamed, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!“
To break through those walls, to see the blessed light of the Digital Economy and Dow 36,000, they created a way to recognize greatness. The name of the original recipients have been lost to history, but their selfless sacrifice to the god of Web Twopoint-Oh allows us to see the promised land and shatter the stranglehold of the Peacock and the All-Seeing-Eye on our brains.
Seems legitimate, right? If someone actually knows the true story, toss it in the comments. I’m always curious about internet history, since I predate it.
So this is how this award works:
The Sunshine Blogger Award, for those that don’t know, is an award created by bloggers for bloggers to celebrate one another’s hard work, dedication, and community spirit.
So, how does the Sunshine Blogger Award work?
1. A previously nominated blogger is given the task of nominating 11 more bloggers.
2. The previous blogger asks the 11 nominated bloggers 11 questions relating to their blog.
3. The 11 nominees all answer the questions and nominate 11 more bloggers.
4. And the cycle continues over and over again!
So here are my 11 answers to the 11 questions asked by 3cupsofcafe.
What’s the story behind your blog’s name?
I went through hours of market research and testing to determine the best SEO keyword strategy to drive maximal traffic with minimal effort to meet my needs for passive income generation, microsite administration, and marketing buzzword penetration.
Or something like that. It might have been a list of words and throwing them at my wife and friends to see what annoyed them the least.
What is your favorite celebrity and why?
I’m not a huge celebrity guy, mostly because I’ve never been a big pop culture consumer. I’ve also found my heart broken a few times by the personal life or beliefs of celebrities, so I tend to just focus on their work instead of them. I’ll give a shout out to J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, Alton Brown, and Nathan Fillion; the first two for their work in the kitchen and honesty about being fathers and people, and the latter because I still have a soft spot for Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds.
salad or pizza? Why?
I’ll go with salad, as they are so versatile. They can be hot or cold, made ahead or at the table, and anywhere in between. Salads aren’t just greens and some ranch; it’s coleslaw, potato salad, wilted greens, etc. There is no limit to what you can do.
Childhood favorite movie?
Probably the Lion King, though being a child of the 80s and 90s, Ghostbusters is never the wrong answer.
If you can be any super heroes for a day who would it be?
While I enjoy super hero movies and comic books, I would never want to be one. So much incidental property damage and tragic backstories. I’d rather be one of the background dudes who makes a snarky comment to one of them, and then is never seen again. Or maybe I could be Exposition Dude.
Any piercing or tattoos?
Not a one, though if the right idea or art for a tattoo came along, I might say yes.
Do you have any philosophy of life?
“You’ll survive, or die trying.” I’ve been called cynical before, but I like to think of it as experienced. Plus, there is great freedom and responsibility in knowing that you don’t always get second chances.
If you could build any machine what would it do?
I’ve actually had a few ideas for this. Given my need for a lot of medications (Cystic Fibrosis 4 Life, yo!), I’ve always wanted to put something together than can dose them all out and do some other neat tricks. I think this is actually possible, so I don’t want to give away all my secrets… though it’s likely the market is very small.
How would you describe your personality ?
Self-depreciating. Seething on the inside while pretending to be calm on the outside. Lazy. Undisciplined.
Did I mention self-deprecating?
Question from my 6 year old, why are grown up always running around?
Because there’s a toddler that went by 30 seconds ago with something they shouldn’t have or a plan they cannot be allowed to implement.
Most awakened moment in school?
Realizing that I have no idea what it’s like to be anyone but me. Perspective is so individual, making generalizations just gets you in trouble.
Okay, now to the nominations. Because this is a blog about being a father, that’s who I’ll nominate. But don’t worry, other bloggers I follow; I have another award waiting in the wings (did I mention before how bad I am at assignments? I feel like this came up already).
Up Next:
- Endastories – @endas1896
- Dad’s Tech Hub – @dadstechhub
- How to Daddoo – @howtodaddoo
- The Good-Bad Dad – @thegoodbaddad
- DaddyPoppins – @daddypoppinsblg
- Uffda Black – @Uffdablack
- Triplet Dad – @wwwTripletdad
- Dadgeek – @dadgeekuk
- The Out of Depth Dad – @Outofdepth_dad
- Not Just a Princess – @Dcareerprincess
- Maddie and Daddy – @maddie_daddy_uk
My questions for you dutiful dads:
- What have your kids done to embarrass you this week?
- Did you embarrass them back? If not, why?
- Who’s the reason you got a call from school about something your kid said: You or your partner?
- What about parenting is still a problem for you? Having kids is not an acceptable answer.
- What advice did your own father or father-figure give that was useful?
- What was completely useless?
- What personality trait of yours do you not look forward to seeing in your kids?
- What craft/artwork have your kids done that you were impressed by? Anything that made you suggest engineering?
- What was the last toy you stepped on, and where did you bury it?
- What was the most recent request from your partner or kids that you agreed to then immediately regretted?
- Why did you agree to answer any of these questions?
