Mallory: Today is our six-month birthday. The months are “rattling inside us like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box.” Where has the time gone? (Into the past, presumably). Nicole, what were you doing last January 1st?
Nicole: Before we go ANY further, I want to make it clear that I will be truly celebrating this birthday tomorrow, as our actual launch day involved hackers and tears and being on hold with our hosting provider all day, but it’s amazing what time can do to erase trauma, is it not? Last January 1st (according to my records) I found our current, superb Kim-Kardashian-looking babysitter on Sittercity, purchased Claire Bloom’s Leaving a Doll’s House, and received an email from you saying that your New Year’s resolution was to quit your job. I had not yet thought about quitting my own, perfectly pleasant job, and I am sure I thought your plan to do so was very The Girl From Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken.
I also remember that I served as a job reference for you, and when the interviewer asked me if I had anything else to say, I said “you should hire her, but if I ever start my own site, I will immediately force her to quit and come work with me,” and then the interviewer and I chuckled warmly and ended the call. Okay, what have you learned over the last six months?
Mallory: I quit so many jobs in the last year! I quit the New Year’s Resolution one sometime last February. I quit one job three weeks in. Then I quit another job before I started it. I’m not really a Job Quitter; it was just like there were all these ice floes I had to hop over to get to the solid ground of Toast Safety. And I made it.
What have I learned. I’ve learned that working with you is exactly what I thought and hoped it would be (perfect, seamless, full of Daphne DuMaurier quotes). I’ve learned that starting a website isn’t that hard if you find other people who are good at making it for you and then explaining what they did very carefully in emails. I’ve learned that lots of brilliant people are very happy to write wonderful things for you if you pay them, even if it isn’t as much money as a Real Website can afford.
I’ve learned that I can drive to Texas in an ice storm. What’s been your favorite part of the last six months?
Nicole: I think, honestly, it’s been just doubling-down on doing whatever we want? With the site, I mean. I feel like we had this great “do exactly what we want to do, see if it makes money, then if it doesn’t, we can always regroup” strategy, and it has! We’re in the black! Not that people should stop reading and clicking and donating, or anything, but I’m happy that we just started out doing what we wanted, instead of starting out trying to be profitable. And people have just been really great and supportive of us, which I appreciate so much. And we’re good at bailing each other out! For every time you’ve texted to say you’re in a ditch in West Texas, can I do a 3pm, I’ve had a morning where I say “it’s a powder day, I don’t give a shit, you do it.” Oh. Your excuse is better, come to think of it.
Okay, top five favourite Toast posts, two of which HAVE to be ones you’ve written. Go.
Mallory: “IT’S A POWDER DAY.” Do rich people really say things like that? Good gravy, that’s wonderful. Oh, man. Top five, not overthinking this, in no particular order:
- The Comment Section For Every Article Ever Written About Intimate Grooming
- The Top Ten Writers Whose Success You’ll Resent This Year
- Any issue of Dad Magazine
- Anything by Jessie-Lane Metz, but particularly Ally-Phobia
- Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton friendship fan fiction
THEY’RE ALL SO GREAT, THOUGH. I just spent an hour slowly clicking through the archives, which I highly recommend. I forgot how much great stuff is in there! You guys write the best stuff.
I resolve to write more about Toby Keith in the coming year. And to continue to spam people with Wodehouse quotes rather than get involved in arguments on the internet. And to finish the Texts From Literary Characters book, I forget what title we landed on for that, I should ask my editor. Do you have any professional goals for the next year? Any big surprises from the last six months you didn’t expect?
Also:
Nicole: Hey, we all have to find a way to emotionally cope with living in Utah, you can only pretend to be Veronica Cartwright in Invasion of the Body Snatchers for so long; after that, it’s either skiing or finding a doctor to write you sketchy Percocet prescriptions or recreational polygamy.
Professional goals: to rest my feet on Bryan Goldberg.
Big surprises: how easy it is to start a professional website, really! It’s just hosting costs, which are very manageable, and then paying writers and…end of list. We paid a little for our WordPress template, but there are lots of free ones. I don’t want to encourage people to start their own sites instead of reading ours, but it’s actually incredibly fun and rewarding. Start your own blogs, everyone! Find your own Nick Pavich.
Well, this has been an enjoyable six month retrospective. What I’d like, really, is to hear what you love reading, and what you’d like to see more of. What things would you love to see made into recurring columns? Who are the dream writers you’d like to see on The Toast?
Thank you, too, readers. You’ve been so loyal and so noisy and so open to annoying your friends by bombarding your social media accounts with our work, and we appreciate it so much. Whether you show up at nine am and camp out all day, or just tune in on Fridays for Femslash, we love and value you. We look forward to a long and productive relationship.
Tags: birthdays, celebrate good times come on, meta, nicole and mallory, the toast
You guys are the best and this is my Actual Favorite site on the entire internet. To many more six month periods of time! (And a willing foe, and sea room?)
Nicole, what are your 5 favorite entries!?
Yesss tell us!
You know what, I’ll do a post with mine next week!
I am so pleased that The Toast exists and I am so proud that my writing exists on this great site amongst so many other fine writers.
Diiiiiitto. What a lovely space it is.
You guys are really the best and a highlight of my 2013. Here’s to many more months!
The Girl From Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken! That was our character-building, end-of-the-year-celebration movie in elementary school, but somehow most people I know have never heard of it. I was never a Horse Girl, but I was ob. sessed. with that girl and her dreams and her wild heart.
Well why not a space flower? Why do we always expect metal ships?!
I adore the Toast beyond measure. Beyond measure, I say!
Happy half-birthday!
Happy Toast Day! I can’t even deal with the thought that The Toast didn’t exist six months ago, how did we all live in such terrifyingly dark times?
Also, my toast hoodie arrived yesterday and I’ve worn it all day, so I have advertised you to the half dozen other shambling, dead-eyed hungover wrecks who were stumbling around my local shops today.
Happy happy birthday! This website feels like a verbalization of all my innermost thoughts. Since I can’t write like any of you, I’m so grateful you exist. Long may you reign.
My toast t-shirt is still on its way to me. Once I get it I hope to educate many others about the wonders of the sea.
Happy birthday Toast! I love you! I hope you never get mistakenly classified as “adult” by the work internet filters! Any thoughts of video game articles? I have a lot of thoughts about feminism in Halo, how Metroid Other M went back in time and ruined my life, and all my Mass Effect feels.
I am 1000000% here for writing about any and all video game feelings, especially about Bioware games (if you like ME for story stuff and haven’t played Dragon Age yet, I highly recommend it. Origins and DA2 are both great for different reasons)
I have played DA Origins and I… sort of petered out with it. I made it to Orzammar, which was just so endless, and when I finally finished that section I had lost all will to keep going.
I think my biggest problem (which is really more of an issue with my personality) is that I found the approval/disapproval system really stressful. I wanted everyone to be my friend, but being nice to Alastair meant Morrigan getting mad and vice versa. I am also having this problem with Walking Dead – I can only play for a few minutes at a time because EVERYONE IS MAD AT ME ALL THE TIME OH MY GOD.
I’ve been hearing good things about DA3 thought – if it ends up being as good as it looks I may go back and play through the series.
Fem!Shep slash Fridays
Jack/Miranda forever.
<3 <3 <3 Shep + Garrus <3 <3 <3
MASS EFFEEEECT
I will read anything Mass Effect-related the Toast ever might see fit to give us. I am THERE.
I love The Toast so much! I talk about it so much that I think people are starting to worry. Just keep on doing what you’re doing! Though I wouldn’t mind a post from Jane Marie! (And more tee shirts!)
Ahhh I was just thinking the other day how much I miss Jane’s posts. I would co-sign on that!
Happy birthday and long live The Revolution.
Happy Birthday! This is a great site!![]()
I forgot that one of the really amazing things that happened in 2013 was the Toast. I guess it wasn’t a completely horrible year after all.
Happy Birthday! I told everybody at the NY brunch today about you. Wishing you even greater success in 2014
I love this site and regularly berate my friends to read articles here. I got my husband to become a regular reader and make him read the comments because Toastons are the greatest commenters on the internet.
If there is one thing I got from this post it is ‘recreational polygomy’.
I’m very okay with that.
Best website on the whole damn planet. Love you guys.
Joyeux anniversaire!!! J’adore le Pain Grillé!
A toast to The Toast! Good heavens, I’m glad you’re here!
I’m just returning to the internet after the holidays and I am here to say that I love The Toast and am so happy to have found a writing home here. Mallory and Nicole, you are the best editors I could ask for, and thank you for letting me do things for you!
Happy Demi-Birthday, you guys! The Toast was indeed one of the bright spots in my 2013. As for suggestions for content, all I can tell you is the ever-unhelpful “keep doing what you’re doing.”
I just love this site and everyone here so much. I have to try to limit myself from sending around more than one Toast link per day. Please just keep writing it forever.
Happy half/unbirthday Toast! Long may you reign!
HAPPPPPPY BIRTHDAY!!! (said in the manner of Frosty the Snowman)
Happy Half Birthday! I laaaaahrrrve The Toast you guys, and it’s really hard for me not to share, like, 90% of the pieces I read here with facebook and the world, and my husband is used to me spouting off about the Toast like a mad woman. Also, this seems an appropriate place to say that once I got tipsay on NYE and sick of his goober friends, I announced that I am taking to the sea to found a colony of misandrist sea-witches. They said I was a penis witherer and I did not deny it, and they looked at me with genuine distrust. I asked my husband the next day if he minded me telling his friends they will all be culled once the matriarchy has taken over, and he said he didn’t, so I think 2014 will be cool! <3 you Toast!
MASS EFFEEEECT
I will read anything Mass Effect-related the Toast ever might see fit to give us. I am THERE.
Happy birthday to the Toast! I’m so glad this site exists, it’s pretty much the best site the internet has ever had.
Happy birthday to the Toast! I'm so glad this site exists, it's pretty much the best site the internet has ever had.
Happy effective half-birthday to this lovely site, and congratulations to its masters
Happy effective half-birthday to this lovely site, and congratulations to its masters
When I first discovered The Toast a month or two ago, I read every single article in the archive in like, two days. I love you guys.
The Toast is so smart and funny and warm that I’m generally too shy to comment, but happy half-birthday! This site is easily my favourite daily read.
That pubes article was the first one I read here, and never has there been a truer case of love at first sight. I am besotted with The Toast. The fact I have to go back to work Monday is less dismal than it might be thanks to the concurrent fact that I’ll be able to check in with The Toast more often now that I’m not, ya know, out living fun life on vacation and all.
Oh man, how did I miss Mallory’s Texas ice storm post the first time out? Oh wait, as I write that I know – I was stranded in the vast nothingness of west Texas in the same storm! So terrifying. My husband and I ended up stuck in Van Horn for two nights. Mallory, you are so so brave to have driven through so much of it, to have spun out and into a ditch and to have kept going – and you were farther north too! I found the whole thing terrifying! We came from California too, and I’m glad the trip back was nice so I could remember why I like road trips.
Also, you guys are great, and this site is great. Those six months went by fast! Happy birthday!
Oh man, how did I miss Mallory's Texas ice storm post the first time out? Oh wait, as I write that I know – I was stranded in the vast nothingness of west Texas in the same storm! So terrifying. My husband and I ended up stuck in Van Horn for two nights. Mallory, you are so so brave to have driven through so much of it, to have spun out and into a ditch and to have kept going – and you were farther north too! I found the whole thing terrifying! We came from California too, and I'm glad the trip back was nice so I could remember why I like road trips.
Also, you guys are great, and this site is great. Those six months went by fast! Happy birthday!