Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year or so, you'll know that Hayley from Tea Party Beauty organises the #BloggersBlogAwards (or BBA for the rest of this post..) annually now. These awards celebrate the talents of bloggers far and wide within a range of niches, and Hayley personally organises it all, with very little to no help at all.
Let me break it down a little for ya. She puts together a huge event (this year for like 200 people), finding a venue, paying upfront costs herself, takes into consideration accessibility for everyone, thinks about food/drinks (if they'll be available for people to buy, and even funding certain things out of her own pocket), then putting together the voting forms, choosing which categories to include, deciding how they'll be judged fairly, finding brands to get involved to sponsor every category and provide a prize of some sort, trying to put together a raffle, sending out what must seem like bloody millions of emails, connecting with different people to try make the whole idea a reality, printing up certificates for the awards (I even seen she was buying frames the other day for these, again, out of her own pocket) and MUCH, much more. I am literally just scraping the top of the cake here. There is so much more to be thought about, and so much more she is doing behind the scenes I'm sure.
Can I just firstly admit I'd probably have a breakdown if it were me? I'm not exaggerating here.
Throughout all this, did you know she has a full time job? And then I guess she must have to try find time to also keep up with her own blog too. Oh wow, and have a life. When does she shop? Clean? See friends? I dunno how she does it all.
The important bit here though is WHY it's all being done. Sure, maybe she finds it fun and exciting and maybe she's naturally a person who loves putting together events etc. But overall, for all of us; the guys watching in awe, getting involved, voting, trying to get nominations, hell just any blogger out there - it is SO IMPORTANT that we should support what Hayley is doing with BBA.
Why?
Because this is an individual putting together a huge celebration of what we do. In a broad sense, what she's doing is basically saying 'We're awesome, let's celebrate that'. As bloggers we get a hell of a lot of flack sometimes, and it can be a nightmare. And the blogging world itself isn't always positive, so when someone tries to remind us all why we love this place - isn't that damn fabulous?!
You might think this is a given. You might think, 'Well duhhh Jemma, why are you rambling?'. The reason I'm writing about this today is that there has recently been people throwing shade on the BBA, and I'm not about to shut up about it. You may have seen me moaning on Twitter about this too, and I hate to be a negative nelly; but if someone is doing good, and people try to drag that down, I get fucking annoyed. People have moaned at Hayley for not including X, Y and Z category, and I think that's absolutely ridiculous. She CANNOT do every single category out there, even all the most popular ones still have SO many! It's not just a case of 'adding a category' either; every single time there's another category, it means she has a higher guest list, a larger space needed for the venue, which means more money needed, AND has to find ANOTHER brand to try sponsor this event with ANOTHER prize. So it's not just that she's missing out niche's for a laugh.
Some absolute fuckers (I just can't be arsed censoring my thoughts here, soz) have slagged the girl off, and she's working her arse off! I also seen Hayley mention how much this upset her. I can't believe this. Are they mistaking her for a huge global brand? Do they think The BBA is created by a huge load of people? Do they not realise it's just one girl doing it all with her own time, effort and money??? I ask because I cannot understand why you would pull her down otherwise. Sure, if it was a global brand, I'd be like 'YO WHERE'S THE CREATIVE CATEGORY? WHERE'S THE ARTIST CATEGORY? WHERE MY FELLOW DOODLERS AT??' But since it's just one girl going out of her way, you better believe I'm giving her 100% support.
So please, take a moment before you moan that your category isn't in there. Or maybe set up your own awards, and see how easy you find it. She's doing more than anyone could ask of one individual. AND there's more categories this year round too! So let's give her a little support eh? (I know a lot of you are already, you babes!) Go vote for your favourite homies, tell those writers you love that thing they do, and send a nice Tweet Hayley's way if you fancy it.
Anyway, I promise I'm back to my positive, cheerful self now. But I really needed to say this.
Go vote here if you want to nominate someone you know.
Stay supportive folks - xo
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Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to know what you thought :)