PINM Turns One
Here is some of the best stuff of year 1
by Taylor Hruby
On December, 3rd, 2014, I was in Chicago and I had an idea for a website. I'm not going to go into it again, because I covered most of it in the introduction to the site. On February 25th, 2015, I finally finished “building” the site, had a few articles ready and made it viewable to everyone.
I am remarkably proud of what PINM accomplished in that year. Since then, we've had some awesome stuff, some weird stuff, some stuff that needed to be edited by someone much more talented than me and some dumb stuff (all of the dumb stuff has my name on it). We've had some popular stuff. We've had multiple contributors from around the country (6 states for sure!!!).
These aren't going to be ranked, but this is a PINM: Best of Year One, if you will. I wanted to bring some eyes to some of the better stuff you may have missed. It's all good, but these are my favorites. Of course, since I am writing it, these are the articles I liked, for reasons I liked them. Your response to them may vary. But they're worth your time.
Buy This Album by Ben – I definitely have a sort of soft spot for, “you know, son, you'll like that someday” sort of stories. Most of the time, when people have said that to me at least, they've been full of shit. But this one is great. This is one of Ben's articles from right around the time I could have changed the name of the site to pretenditsnotBenandTaylor.com.
Teeth City by Me – Yeah, I wrote this and I'm picking it for the “best of”. What of it? If that bothers you, you might want to skip this one. And the next one too. This is one of my favorite because I really laid it out there. That's what I wanted from PINM and this was my first 'big' attempt at it. I talked about my grandfather's death a little bit a week or two before, but I worked on this one for a while. I think it turned out okay. It's kind of one of those 'better in the moment' type things, for me, but I stand by it.
Night Crawlers by Me – Yeah, I wrote this one, too. Sorry. This was another pretty personal story. I've always been depressed and I thought I should tell people about it so they knew they weren't struggling alone. Once you read it, you'll notice that I mentioned doing a 'you're not alone' sort of theme run and it didn't happen. One thing I've found on this site is, generally, when I sit down to write about something specific, it's sucks. When I sit down to write, it flows better. I'm not going to say it's GOOD, but it flows easier for me.
I am America, and So Can You! by Ben – Ben tackles two things I think about often: 'Where we get our news' and 'the insane amount of money that athletes make'. Overall, I think it worked really well and could have sparked some good discussion if there were more people commenting. So comment? If you want? I'll be there!
Interview: Ben Leroy by Me – Yeah, yeah. Me again. But this one isn't about me, it's about Ben LeRoy. The dude is beyond interesting and the song in this article is incredible. I'd appreciate if you'd read my words, but, if you don't, listen to that song. It's worth it.
The Election – This is an easy one. I've loved all of our group collaborations, but this one really took on a life of it's own. Got a couple of new guys to write some stuff and it led to a wonderful interview with the president himself. Still pissed I didn't win the election on the website that I created, but Vice President Hruby sounds good too.
Openly Secular Day by Me – This was an important one for me. It's also EASILY the post I've gotten the most positive feedback on. Most of it was private, though, and that is exactly why I wrote this article and will write another one next year on this day. And another one after that. Come on out, fellow non-believers. The water is fine.
So that's that. Some real good stuff got left out (namely Nick's post about his ring and you can watch me lose my mind here) but I didn't want to write something for every article.
All in all, I'm very happy with the way this year played out. There were some people who really helped out. Namely, Benjamin Christopher and Nicholas Schlitt. They've helped with ideas, written stuff pretty consistently and haven't blocked my number when I text them over and over asking them to write. So give these dudes clicks. They deserve it. Thank you, guys.
More importantly, or perhaps as importantly, thank all of you for reading stuff. It really means a lot to me that this site didn't completely collapse into itself after a month. We're going strong into a second year. Hopefully some new good stuff will work out. I don't want to promise anything because I have teased stuff for a year and had a lot of it fall through, but there are some good ideas getting tossed around. We'll keep you updated. As is customary, I have to end this with...
WRITE SOMETHING!!! HELP OUT! I LOVE YOU!!!!!
and thank you so much.
- Taylor
© 2015 by Taylor Hruby