Hi everyone,
Longtime readers will know that as we round the corner of January and head into the homestretch of yet another long, cold, and mostly boring winter, it’s time once again for the start of the TOA awards. Over the next few weeks, I’ll cover what I considered the best of my 2018 in the usual categories of books, music, and podcasts (1).
Now, the careful observer among you might be wondering – but Tim, the 2018 TOA Book Award was handed out in December, so how can you talk about ‘awards season’ as if it’s some defined period of time in late winter? And my response is… well, I don’t really have a good response, except that I hope you trust me when I say that I hope to have the book award wrapped up a little earlier this year. My thought at the moment is to put up a ‘TOA Awards’ post once every seven to ten days or so, but as usual that hastily assembled schedule is subject to change.
My final thoughts for today address a pair of hypothetical questions. First, why start these in February? The obvious answer is that February is close to the end of last year, but then again, January is a little closer. I think the real answer here is that TOA kicked off just about three years ago on February 29, 2016, and therefore in a way February is the last month of the blog’s 'year'.
The second question is indirectly related – why not start doing an award or two just from this past year’s posts? Best post, worst post, that sort of thing? The answer to that one is a little tougher due purely to volume. We broke the 600 post barrier back in December and with no end in sight for the daily posting schedule the math wizards here at TOA HQ project the 1000th post for sometime early next year. It seems appropriate to maybe highlight a couple of the posts I’ve received the best feedback for around then, but again the volume is an obstacle. I’m open to suggestions here, or maybe even recommendations, if any loyal reader would like me to highlight any particularly memorable posts from TOA’s toddler years.
Footnotes
1. Food, drink, and…?
This year, I may also sprinkle in some miscellaneous items that might become their own award categories at this time next year, but let’s not make any promises now.
