A decade

Tonight, I have officially operated this blog for 10 full years.

Night Owl Cards began on Sept. 13, 2008 and I've been writing this blog for so long that it truly is difficult to imagine what I did before NOC existed.

I've never wanted to do anything more than write for a living. I knew as a youngster that I liked to write and still remember scrawling stories in pencil on lined loose leaf paper while I lay on my bed truly trying to write the great American novel according to a 12-year-old boy. Writing for me is the most natural thing in the world and for 10 years I've been able to write about something that I like a lot -- collecting cards.

When I grew older and I began to think about making a career out of writing, the road to that goal seemed almost unreachable. Even then, it wasn't easy to make a living as a writer. But I was fortunate enough to hook on with a newspaper out of college, writing about sports (can you believe it?), and I've never let go. When I'm not writing for this blog, I'm writing for a newspaper and have done so for 30 years.

But, actually, that has never been my preferred medium for writing.

My ultimate goal as a teenager was to write for Sports Illustrated. I loved the long-form articles and the in-depth profiles. I loved magazines. That was my kind of writing. I've even written some similar type stories for the newspaper but they've never felt right in a newspaper. It was almost like I was forcing the magazine style into newsprint.

But I gave up on the dream of writing for SI -- or a magazine in general -- a long time ago. And that dream of writing a story about baseball cards for a magazine, I don't think ever was a dream at any point. It was ludicrous to even think that way.

Except it's not.

I was contacted by Ryan Cracknell of Beckett Media while I was on vacation recently. As some of you know, Ryan is a former baseball card blogger, one of the few who has moved from his blog to bigger cardboard things. He said that Beckett's editorial director was interested in me writing an article for Beckett's Vintage Magazine.

Ludicrous dream meet reality.

I am now writing a piece for Beckett Vintage Magazine. It should appear at some point in October after the first of the year. (Don't bother asking me what it's about. I know magazines enough to know that they like their articles to be somewhat of a surprise to readers).

We'll see how this first article goes but if it goes well, I could be doing more in the future for them.

It's funny but now that almost nobody subscribes to magazines anymore that's when I finally get a magazine gig. But I don't care. I've respected magazines for so long, stood in front of so many magazine racks for so long and in so many different places and cities, that it's just about the coolest thing that I can think of as far as my writing career.

So, exactly 10 years into writing this blog, it's finally paid off in a magazine gig. Just hang in there for 10 years, guys!

Anyway, thanks for reading this thing all these years.

I will be celebrating the anniversary with a giveaway. I just have to figure out the particulars and I haven't had much time to do that lately. I do know that I want the giveaway to be for my regular readers and I am going to be restricting it to those who have commented on my blog posts for the last three months -- so that means from June 12 to Sept. 12 (and no retro commenting!). I can't determine every person who clicks on my blog, so commenting is what I have to go on.

I'll run a list of those who are eligible for the giveaway when I make the giveaway post next week, so stay tuned.

And stay tuned for the second decade of Night Owl Cards. We'll kick it off with a countdown of the 100 greatest cards of the 1980s in the next week or two and then who knows what's after that. The usual rubbish I suppose.

In the meantime, happy Ron Cey anniversary to me! Hey, Penguin, we made it!