What It's like to Win One of the People's Media Awards at Associated Content

When I first learned that one of my articles had been nominated in the forums by Randy (a.k.a. the Barefoot) I was thrilled that he thought so highly of my work. He's such a well respected and talented member of the Associated Content community that I knew his nomination would get me extra pages views. It never occurred to me that I had any real chance of winning. AC is, after all, a haven for undiscovered talent and it's filled with many dedicated wordsmiths all trying to make a difference with their writing. The nomination gave me a two day, mile-wide grin and then it slipped off my radar screen, just a passing highlight in an otherwise dreary December.

A month later an e-mail came from Michael Street saying: "Congratulations, Jean Riva, you and your content on AC have won the Best of AC - Text in our 2007 People's Media Awards for your outstanding content: How My Husband's Stroke Changed My Life. We ask that you keep the winning of this award confidential until we officially announce the winners on our site on January 29."

Keep it confidential? "Okay, the skywriter can wait," I thought, "and the phone call to my high school English teacher." How silly it was for me to even assume the woman was still alive after all these years.

My next thought was that the e-mail from Mr. Street was a practical joke or a phishing cooked up by a Nigerian scam artist designed to wrangle social security numbers out of naive senior citizens. The article nominated in the forums and the content that supposedly won were not one and the same my Doubting Thomas persona had brought to my attention. But the e-mail proved to be on the up and up thus I'm sitting here writing an acceptance speech.