It gives me great pleasure to announce that The Slider has been nominated for a Versatile Blogger award by Depression Is The Enemy. This is the second award The Slider has received and I am very humbled to have been nominated for this award by someone who writes extensively about mental health issues which means a lot to me. I am also always in awe of those who publicly share their own journeys with mental health issues as this is becoming an increasingly acute problem all across the world. I’ve already written a couple of articles on my blog focusing on mental health/self help topics and I intend to write many more pieces and even share more information about my own mental health challenges some time in the future.
I feel that the Versatile Blogger award fits very well with my blog as, since The Slider’s inception only six months ago, I have already written many articles covering an entire range of different topics from my passion for art, music, and poetry to my interests in travel, self-help/mental health issues and even technology.
7 random facts about me:
1. I love to travel the world and have already visited vast swathes of the globe. However the the trip I’m most proud of is my 2008 trip where I travelled overland (without planes and only via buses and at one point a motorboat) from Los Angeles all the way to the Argentinian city of Ushuaia located at the bottom of South America on the island of Tierra Del Fuego. I have also been to the most eastern point of the Americas (Ponta do Seixas in the city of Joao Pessoa in Brazil) and the most western point of Africa (Pointe Des Almadies in Dakar in Senegal).
2. I have a lazy eye.
3. I get obsessed easily over particular things I love. There are certain films I adore which I used to watch constantly. Get Carter, Sexy Beast, Chopper and more recently The Great Beauty are a handful of films I’ve watched way too many times although the film I’ve watched an insurmountable number of times is The Big Lebowski. Even today that film still has the power to light up my life and make me fall off the sofa in raging fits of laughter whenever I find myself taking life a bit too seriously.
4. I am a huge fan of all kinds of music. The first major concert I ever attended was a massive homecoming show by The Verve in their hometown of Wigan in 1998. It was a magical and electric concert and I’d never experienced anything quite like it in my life before. At the time The Verve were one of the biggest bands in the country. However the musician I am most proud of ever having had the pleasure to see (and even meet afterwards!) live is a very old Mississippi Delta bluesman named David “Honeyboy” Edwards. Born in 1915, he was a friend and contemporary of the legendary blues musician Robert Johnson who was rumoured to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for amazing out of this world guitar skills. What’s more, Honeyboy was also present on that fateful night in 1938 when Robert got poisoned by a jealous partner of one of the many women he was sleeping around with. He subsequently died a very slow and painful death.
5. Remaining on the subject of music, I got my first guitar when I was 13. It was an electric black and white Fender stratocaster. The first song I ever wrote was a song called Malcoordination (I will not say who it was about) when I was 15. Looking back on the song and lyrics now, I am so glad it was written during the time it was when there were no smartphones and the internet was much less developed. I formed my first band with a bunch of school friends when I was 16. We disbanded when I left school at 18. Since then until the age of 22 I’ve been in various other bands. From the ages of 19-23 I think I wrote enough songs to fill a few albums. Nowadays I haven’t been too involved with my music although perhaps one day I may get back into it.
6. I’ve been an artist since day one. My latest series of paintings was completed in South Africa earlier this year. You can view my entire art archive by visiting my website http://www.nicholaspeart.com
7. My favourite country is India. There is no other place on Earth quite like it. I will be returning later this year and boy am I looking forward to it!!
I nominate the following blogs for the Versatile Blogger Award:
Creative Ideas For Starving Artists
Riding effortlessly on a large green turtle
Rules to be followed:
1. Thank the person who nominated you
2. Share the award on your blog
3. Share seven random facts about yourself
4. Tag 10 bloggers with less than 1000 followers and let them know they have been nominated
Latitude Post 