Freshly Pressed: Round 2

I’ve had this blog for nine months and have been Freshly Pressed twice. I’ve had this blog for nine months and have been Freshly Pressed twice.

Sorry, I had to write that twice because I still can’t believe it.

Last Tuesday night I wrote a post about the Toronto Maple Leafs and how it’s not fun watching their games anymore. The entire post took me about 40 minutes to write and by 11PM it was posted on WordPress for the night readers to enjoy.

Fast forward 4 hours later to 3:19AM when everyone is asleep, except me. See, there are benefits to staying up late. I got an email from WordPress editor, Ben Huberman, saying that my post: Watching The Leafs Isn’t Fun Anymore was going to be Freshly Pressed.

Gee, how am I supposed to sleep now? I didn’t.

Thank you, Mr. Huberman, you have now restarted my heart, twice, since the beginning of September when you also Freshly Pressed: I Miss School, Already.

If you’ve never been Freshly Pressed before, then you may not understand the range of emotions you go through within a 5 second period of receiving the news. Excitement. Jubiliation. Shock. More excitement. And a general sense of, “Wow, they READ my post. They LIKED my post. They want more people to read MY post.” I would liken this feeling to winning the lottery, but I have never won the lottery (here’s hoping).

So it’s 3:30AM and what am I supposed to do? I can’t tell anyone. I can’t scream. I can’t do anything, but make sure I still have a pulse.

It’s weird, when I got Freshly Pressed the first time, my blog had been all about sports, until that post about missing school. Now, I get Freshly Pressed again about a sports topic, when my blog has mainly been about everything but sports lately. Just goes to show that good things happen when you least expect it.

Also, both posts took me under an hour to write. They all flowed freely off of my fingertips and onto the computer screen. Out of 71 posts, those 2 had a different feel to them while I wrote and I’m humbled to be recognized for them.

I didn’t know what kind of response I would get to my post about the Leafs. Were there many sports fans on WordPress? Would anyone care? How would people react? I was honestly worried that people would just say negative things to me about the Leafs. Instead, I got the opposite. I heard from sports fans of all kind. Fans who weren’t necessarily Leafs fans, but knew what I was going through. I appreciated that.

I also got comments saying that it sounds like I hate social media and should probably avoid it. This saddened me because it was not the message I was trying to get across. In fact, I love social media. I think it’s great. I was simply saying how it could be bothersome sometimes.

Also, I think some people didn’t read the entire post, or missed the message, before commenting. Some people thought I was giving up on the Leafs, or I had lost my passion for hockey. Just to clarify, I will never lose my passion for the Leafs, or hockey. I’m just tired of the extra noise, criticism, and jokes surrounding the team. I criticize the team as much as the next fan. It’s what fans do. But the constant media coverage about trivial things, is what I can do without.

To close, I just want to thank my readers, and welcome my new readers! Thank you for all the support and comments. Although this is my second time through this, it is still overwhelming.

To everyone at WordPress, especially Ben Huberman, thank you for featuring my blog. You have no idea how much it has meant to me. I am honoured and humbled by this recognition. Maybe one day I’ll receive a third heart stopping email from you.

Until then, I’ll continue to write about what’s on my mind and hopefully people will enjoy it, whether it’s a Freshly Pressed worthy post, or not.