At the end of 2005, Ricky Taylor set up on his initiative the Deaf Blog Awards. While there were some charges of self-promotion and a lack of impartiality, I thought it was a neat idea. At the very least, it exposed me to a number of blogs I wasn’t aware of, and an opportunity to re-evaluate those that I already knew of. To his credit, once the voting had ended and the results were posted, Ridor promised to find a more neutral host for the following year. Well, guess what? It’s that time of year again.

The Deaf Blog Awards are now hosted by DeafRead, and Tayler Mayer made the initial announcement of this year’s retrospective look at the deaf blogosphere of 2006 at his individual editor’s blog at DeafRead, then subsequently crossposted on the new Deaf Blog Awards page. Underhill, over at Roblog, followed up by announcing this year’s edition. I’m simply joining the crowd at this point.

While I think we’re all important and have valid opinions in our own ways, I’m looking forward to this year’s awards, mostly because it’ll afford me the opportunity to explore even further what DeafBlogLand has to offer. When I started blogging, there were a few deaf and hard-of-hearing bloggers around, and I dutifully joined the masses in reading the “big names.” But there was no inclination for me to seek out smaller platforms with people who just might be equally good, if not better, than the “premier names.” As I started my own blog, and friends and friends of friends started sending me the URLs to their own corners of cyberspace, my horizons broadened. I started reading more and more, and became enthralled. I added a small list of blogs that I read on a daily basis to my original site.

By the time this blog switched addresses, I was actively monitoring more than a dozen blogs (and vlogs!). If I listed all of them, it’d resemble a carbon copy of the list over at DeafRead. I weeded out a few, added several, and posted my new blogroll. But that certainly doesn’t cover half of what I read. My latest “find” is “Simply Saunière,” a blog that seems to have stopped (temporarily?) in its tracks, but showed promise in its third entry. I re-discovered the blog of a close friend, who re-launched her blog and has started 2007 with some good posts. Adam Stone smoothly segued from both DeafDC and his personal blog to a new site chronicling his adventures in Sri Lanka, and Found in Ceylon has been a must-read since.

This doesn’t even include the number of more personal blogs, whose addresses I won’t list here, that are geared to friends and family, yet contain wonderful and interesting posts by talented folks. There’s also a bevy of smaller blogs that have yet to break into the “big time,” for one reason or another, such as Journey to Deaf Identity. Yet they too are part of the Teeming Tens of Thousands (sorry, couldn’t resist! *grin*).

The Tent City Protest spawned countless blogs, some of which have served their purpose (Bay Area Perspective on Gally is one example), and others that will most likely inspire renewed purpose (such as Andrea Shettle’s ReunifyGally). It also gave birth to several vlogs– while most of you are already familiar with Joey Baer and his work (and Amy Cohen-Efron, who has continued her participation in such forums from her days as ABCDE at Gally to her fascinating vlogs), there’s also ToddE over at Triomphe L’oeil, and quite a few of you checked out Teri Sentelle’s postings at DeafDish, which I have since discovered. The proliferation of vlogs (and cartoonists! Dan McClintock is a great example) leads me to wonder if maybe DeafRead needs to spin off a sister page at some point, solely devoted to vlogs/cartoonists– it could be called DeafView. *grin*

The categories this year look good, and I’ve already submitted most of my nominations. I’ll miss some categories, though. I’m sure the folks at DeafRead thought it was best, but I was just waiting for the moment I could submit my nomination for the most Narcisstic blog, for example (and no, my nomination isn’t necessarily that obvious. Even at this point, it’s still a tossup!). But perhaps it’s for the best.

That’s not even the end of it. I could go on and on, but these and many other sites have conspired to keep me glued to my computer far more than I’ve ever planned. I’m looking forward to how this year’s awards turn out, and I’m sure by 2008 my reflections (and possibly my blogroll!) will have expanded even more, as more and more people join DeafBlogLand.