Kathleen O'Neill, MA (Hons), MSc, MPhil, and now VIB

What means VIB, I hear you ask? I got a lovely, and most unexpected, tweet two days ago from Kat at I Saw You Dancing (the brains behind December’s #reverb12). She nominated me as a Very Inspirational Blogger! I blush. I stutter. I beam.

A lovely accolade to receive

I’ve said so many times, in various blog entries, that I started this blog to record my adventures on a librarianship research trip to Toronto in Autumn 2011, to the point where I think I’d save time if I made my own meme to copy and paste in as and when required. I certainly never gave a great deal of thought to the direction in which the blog would go in my post-Toronto world. I’m happy that I’ve managed to keep it going, and I find it a great way to exercise my writing skills. But I never would have expected that I would be acclaimed as an inspiration, much less being described as a woman of “intelligent brave decadence”. I plan to live up to this portrayal of me in the future. Each day I will look for opportunities and reasons to be intelligent, brave, and decadent (possibly not all at once).

Venus di Urbino, by Titian, c.1556 (Uffizi Gallery, image via Wikimedia Commons)

The format of the thank you speech is thankfully – heh – provided for any and all VIBs. We are encouraged to share seven facts about ourselves.

1) I will walk the Camino de Santiago one day.

2) The item of clothing I most long to own is a full-length cloak with a deep structured hood, ever since I saw one being worn in a play.

3) One of my best London memories is being taught to fight with a quarterstaff at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

4) When I finally buy my own house (ideally on its own island, with a causeway), I will commission a mural of Titian’s beautiful Venus di Urbino to be painted on one wall (I haven’t decided on which room yet).

5) There’s a really fat squirrel who lives near my work. I have christened him Doorstop.

6) The one and only Valentine’s Day Card that I sent in secondary school (before I began to have views about that kind of thing) was carefully written in Elvish (I had a Middle Earth grammar book)

7) I wrote my first illustrated collection of short stories and essays when I was 8 and my family have hidden it from me to prevent my destroying it.

About these ads