The Sunshine Blogger Award

I was nominated, quite surprisingly, by the wonderful Sarishboo for The Sunshine Blogger award.

While I just write about games, and certainly don’t inspire the type of positivity and joy she does, I’m honored to be recognized in this capacity!

The award itself is given by bloggers to other bloggers they find positive, inspiring, and creative. It helps to support blogs you love and the wonderful people who write them.

Like anything worth something there are rules to the nomination if you choose to accept.

The Rules:

• Thank blogger(s) who nominated you in a blog post and link back to their blog.
• Answer the 11 questions the blogger asked you.
• Nominate 11 new blogs to receive the award and write them 11 new questions.
• List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award logo in your post and/or on your blog.

My Answers:

1. What is one thing you love about yourself? I love that I can make people laugh.
2. What goals do you have for yourself right now? I want to lose weight, write more, earn my black belt, start a new career in gaming, and be a better person/father/husband. There is no limit to better after all.
3. What or who inspired you to start blogging? My father died without warning in October of 2017, at the time of writing this only months ago. It made me realize that we are not promised tomorrow and so I’ve decided all the things I was too scared to try, or was so sure I just wasn’t good enough to try, that I would challenge myself to do. It inspired me to start Tae Kwon Do again after 17 years of being out and it inspired me to attempt to chase my dream of writing for a living.
4. What adventures would you like to have before you die? I would want to take my children to Disney Land. It sounds silly, but I’ve never been a terribly wealthy person and I’d like them to experience that magic once in their life before they get too old to enjoy it with the eyes of children. I also would love to go to Japan, both the cities and the rural area, and if I could learn the language; live there.
5. If you could choose any other career than what you do now, what would you choose and why? I would be paid to write and talk about video games, or even better, be the creative director and writer for a developer I love.
6. If you could change one characteristic about yourself, what would you change? My anxiety. I struggle with it every day of my life.
7. If you could be the richest person in the world, what would you do with your money? I would start with the adventures above, then I would buy a dream home, I wouldn’t work for a living, and instead, live for a living. Opening huge saving accounts for my children would be next, with full rides to the college of their choice. I would then pay off the mortgage of everyone I loved and give each of them money to fulfill their dreams. I would invest time and money into people that needed and deserved it.
8. If you could experience being another person for 24 hours, who would you be and why? I would be my son, so that I could understand him better. He faces a lot of challenges in life because of chemical issues in his brain and I would like to better understand how his mind works so I could help him more.
9. How do you think humans could have more fun in life? Quit worrying about failing and just try. Don’t let small things snowball into a “bad day”. Stop worrying about people viewing you as childish: play that videogame, swing on the playground, laugh loudly, be a big kid, don’t let go of the joy of childhood. Go hug the loved ones in your life, because you don’t truly know how much you’ll miss them until they are gone.
10. What are five things that make you happy? My children and wife, my immediate family, video games, martial arts, and reading/writing. (See when you smash stuff together between commas you get more than five!)
11. If you were born in a new life, would you rather be alive in the past or the future? I would rather live in the future. Humanity continues to make all of these wonderful advancements in every way. We becoming a better society (though we still have a long way to go), our technology is always improving, and medical advancements are always improving. Also, can you imagine how much more awesome the video games are going to get?

My Nominations

I don’t know if this is in the rules or not, but I’m going to list why beside each nomination.

• Luna of GamersUnitedGG – She patiently answered my questions when I sent her an email, followed me, and helped promote my blog, not to mention she has wonderful articles. Most importantly she is always kind to people in the comments. Why aren’t you already following her?
• The Well-Red Mage – For being kind in their commenting and seeking to make gaming less toxic.
• Tori from Tori’s Story – Not only is this young lady smart, funny, and talented, but the types of articles she writes we need more of on the internet. Tori has a lot to say, you all should listen.
• Kelsey Schmitt – I don’t know if Kelsey is a gamer, but what I do know is hours after posting my first review, not even my family had visited it. I had 0 views, 0 likes, and no comments. She was the very first person to push that like button, and it was so encouraging. I’m not sure why she did, but from reading her site I’m guessing it is because she is very nice.
• Darth Toothpick – They were the first person to follow my blog and also happen to have an awesome site.
• Strangegirlgaming – Because anyone who loves Dragon Age, Crash Bandicoot, and Jak and Daxter can’t be bad.
• Geddy from Nostalgia Trigger – He has Mario and Link as his start up image on his webpage AND he writes intelligent articles and is great at responding to his followers. How could I NOT nominate him.
• Athena with AmbiGaming – Because they are always kind in the comments and they have a sweet blog with awesome articles.
• Mike Scorpio with Miketendo64 – They’ve always engaged with their community and their Nintendo news game is on point.
• pix1001 with Shoot the Rookie – I’m found them whilst competing against them in a writing competition, in which we are currently neck and neck. They write great articles and I know first hand they can come up with killer characters.
• Becca from With Love and a Little Self-Deprecation – She is uplifting, funny, and has wonderful content for people with children. Also, all around nice woman.

My Questions To You Wonderful People

Since Home Button is focused around gaming, and most of you are as well, most of these will be gaming based. If you don’t game, since there are a few of you that I nominated that don’t, I would say replace “games” with your biggest hobby when answering. It may not be 100% parity, but I wanted to be inclusive as possible and recognize people I appreciate.

1. What is your favorite game of all time?
2. What is your least favorite game of all time?
3. Who or what first got you into gaming?
4. Have you ever cried while playing a game? What game and why?
5. How have games impacted your life in a personal way?
6. If you could play a co-op game with anyone who has ever lived, living or dead, who would it be?
7. If you can pick one game currently released as the only game you could play from here on out, which would it be?
8. What is the most important thing you’ve learned while writing your blog?
9. If you could give one bit of advice to people who want to write a video game blog, or any blog for that matter, what would it be?
10. If gaming was removed from your life tomorrow, what would become your new number one hobby? If you don’t like games remove your main hobby; what would take it’s place as number one?
11. Can video games be art and why or why not?