Canadian Blog Awards

Yesterday someone left a comment on a recent article of mine. I get the occasional comment when my articles are posted to facebook but very rarely on the blog itself, so the fact that I got a comment at all was pretty cool. The comment said that the article was "brilliantly written", which is even more cool, but the next sentence blew me away:

I found you through the Canadian Blog Awards and no wonder you're up there!

Ummm, what? First off, I had never heard of the Canadian Blog Awards. That's fine, there are a zillion things on the internet that I am unaware of. But how would you find my blog on a blog awards site unless... no.

As it turns out, yes! Someone has nominated Cut The Chatter in the Best Personal Blog category. I am extremely flattered, honoured, and surprised by this. There are a few reasons I'm surprised:

• It's just me and my blog. I like to think that at times it's insightful and entertaining, but come on. It's just me. My wife doesn't even read it.
  
• I'm up against some other blogs with hundreds of regular readers. I have three members. Only one of my last ten articles has been viewed 100 times. More people read my stuff through facebook and RSS and I can't count those, but I'd bet that the average article I write here is read by less than 50 people total.
  
• My content is all over the map. Personal stories, lacrosse and other sports, skepticism, technology, music, whatever.
  
• Sometimes I write four posts in a week, sometimes four posts in a month. No consistency at all.

So that's why I'm surprised about the fact that I was nominated. But I'm also surprised about the nomination process itself:

• Whoever nominated me did not tell me they were nominating me. To the nominator: First off, thank you very much. Secondly, please don't feel pressured to reveal your identity to me. If you would prefer to remain anonymous, that's totally fine.
  
• The awards site itself did not contact me to tell me I was nominated.

That second one seems especially weird. The site itself (which is simply a blog with links to pages on a generic polling site) is obviously not updated very often – the 2010 award winners were announced last October, and there are only three articles since then. One of them says that the 2011 awards were delayed because of a lack of nominees. The About/Contact page talks about "this year (2010)". The Rules page talks about the 2010 awards as being in the future. It makes me wonder how many people actually vote on these awards – did the winner in a particular category get 50 votes? 500? 50,000? I have no idea. Oddly, there are also the Canadian Weblog Awards which seem to be unrelated to the Canadian Blog Awards.

Having said all that, regardless of whether these awards are voted on by 50 people or 50 thousand, it's a cliché but it's true – it's an honour just to be nominated. I'm truly flattered by this, and every time I've thought about it since I found out yesterday, I smile and just shake my head. Last week someone at work told me that he enjoys reading my facebook statuses and notes (i.e. blog posts), and that made my day. Then this past Monday, someone on twitter told me that I was her favourite lacrosse writer, and that also made my day. And now this.

I never wanted to be a writer, I never studied journalism, I never even liked creative writing in school, and I hated writing essays. I started this blog on a whim in April of 2005 and have been writing about whatever ever since. It's only in the last three years or so that I've discovered that I really love doing it, and to have people tell me they enjoy what I write is amazingly rewarding. To be nominated for this award and have people vote for me is just mind-blowing beyond words. Thank you so much to my secret admirer whoever nominated me and to everyone who's voted for me.

Well, what are you waiting for? Don't waste any more time listening to me gush.  Go vote!