Several months ago I submitted a few articles to a writing contest called the Solas Awards. It’s sponsored by Travelers’ Tales, a publishing company that specializes in compilations of travel writing. There are 21 categories open to submission, each with gold, silver, and bronze awards, so that seemed auspicious. More categories means more opportunities to win, right?
For months there has been a little note on the Travelers’ Tales web site saying that Solas Awards winners will be announced “by March 1, 2007.” All this week I’ve been compulsively checking back to the site. Today’s’ the big day, so I checked in first thing this morning. Now there’s a note saying that winners will be posted “sometime Thursday, March 1, 2007.” (That doesn’t seem to be grammatically the same as “by March 1, 2007,” but I quibble.)
You can imagine how my morning has gone so far. Boot up computer, check Travelers' Tales site. Make coffee, check Travelers' Tales site. Eat cereal, check Travelers' Tales site. Bookmark Travelers' Tales site, check Travelers' Tales site. Repeat.
It’s silly, I know. Even though it’s the inaugural year of the competition, I’m sure they’re inundated with submissions and there’s no real reason to think I could have won something. My behavior makes about as much sense as someone compulsively pulling a slot-machine handle, saying each time, “This is the big one, I can feel it.” In fact, these behaviors are probably not unrelated. So there’s a sense in which I am secretly enjoying this torture. But I really do want it to be over so I can get my life back.
(And by “get my life back,” I of course mean that I want to return to punctuating my day by obsessively checking my regular fleet of time-wasting web sites. Enough with Travelers’ Tales.)
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