As of today, this blog is exactly one year old.

We’re genuinely appreciative of all your support.

The Human Resources department has requested a wellness check on each of our employees. So we’ve brought each of them in for a brief interview, which we will now share with you.

Anne

Anne is an incredibly valuable resource to the team. Her expansive knowledge of magic, and her being a woman, is a great help.

It has been one year of working with the blog, so as the token woman I thought it would be fun to share the average day working for the blog as a behind the scenes look for our readers.

Normally, we all wake up together when the Editor brings us breakfast. It may be unconventional, but a nice big bowl of instant noodles is a great way to start off the day. This is also a great time to discuss the agenda for the day. After breakfast it’s straight to work. There are a lot of things that need to happen in order to get these blog posts out on time with the quality we hope our readers have come to expect.

The team is busy responding to emails, reading through magic literature, editing upcoming posts, until eventually the Editor comes back with lunch. I assume it is about noon-ish, but the clock in the room doesn’t work anymore. Lunch is usually a nice filling bowl of instant noodles, and once we are filled up we have some more work to do. After all the Slack notifications are taken care of and all our work is done, it’s time for leisure. The Editor usually brings us books or lets us go online to various magic communities. Lots of the staff use this time to practice new routines.

Eventually the Editor collects all of our books, props and electronics and then we have dinner. A lukewarm bowl of instant noodles is a great way to close out a long day of work.

After dinner the Editor shuts off the lights and locks the door. We whisper amongst ourselves about what it means to be part of the blog.

For me, this year I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with a fantastic group of magicians. I feel immensely privileged to have been invited to the blog to talk about magic, to write about magic, and to work with such a passionate group of magicians. I have encountered so many fascinating ideas from this community, so many concepts that challenge how I view magic, so many unique perspectives on our shared art.

In the short lifetime of the blog it has made me feel like more of a member of the magic community, contributing more to the vast ecosystem of our beloved art than ever before.

I hope you have all enjoyed this little bit of insight into the everyday operations of the blog and what the average day in the life of a magic blogger is like. Thank you all so much for one year! It has been a pleasure.

Can this interview be over now? My noodles are getting cold.

Franklin

I’m not sure who let this guy in here. Several months in, he just showed up and started being always right. It’s really obnoxious.

What’s all this anniversary business? Who paid for all this cake? Have we even really earned the right to celebrate at all?

I certainly haven’t. I haven’t even been on board for 7 months. Although, I guess that is probably about a year in dealing-with-that-asshole-Jerry years. But as long as the Editor keeps the money coming, I’ll put up with it.

The hardest thing for me is all this secrecy and pseudonymity. I’m used to freely handing out ideas to all my magician friends or anyone who is interested. But now, anything that is good enough to be published here, I have to sit on for months while it works its way through the queue.

Hey, I’m sorry the publication rate has significantly slowed. I promise that isn’t the result of my influence. In fact, I seem to be wearing twice as many hats as I started with trying to generally up the quality of what we can provide. (And one of those original hats was the ten-gallon dealing-with-that-asshole-Jerry hat!) We’re sitting on a gold mine of content here, just lying there in the backlog, but it turns out gold mining is really labor-intensive. We surely could use another few pickaxes down there.

But here’s the hardest part: the really good, top-notch, super-cool, completely original stuff is going to be suppressed for a very long time indeed. It’s just too good for this medium. I’m left only imagining the future when the Editor finally decides to pull the trigger on us writing a book. I can’t even hint at the genius you’re missing for you to wonder about. The departure time for that hype train is so far in the future the tickets aren’t even for sale yet.

Okay, there is one thing I can bring up as it may be relevant much sooner than any of that. The Editor has elected to commission WEB APPS for EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES that you will soon be able to TRY YOURSELF.

Speaking of which, it’s time for me to crawl back down into the mines and start swinging. The rest of you can enjoy the cake without me.

Drew

Drew is a dear.

I was scouted to write for the Oval by the Editor, something that profoundly changed my life. It’s given me another output for my magic passion. I read somewhere that being a writer is like having homework every day. It is, but it’s homework that excites you. It’s homework in the same way that writing a letter to a crush is homework.

However, writing for the blog isn’t easy. When we come up with an idea, it doesn’t immediately go onto the blog. We experiment with it, perform it, and tweak it. When we’re eventually happy with the results, we begin to write it up. Then, once we’ve finished writing it, we edit the post multiple times and have it read by multiple people. They weigh in with their opinions and we reanalyze the post.

This process happens behind the scenes for every single post before it goes up. Any post of mine that you read on the blog is the way that it is because of the help of those amazing people. I’m grateful to them.

Collaborating on this blog has deepened my relationship with magic, creativity, and writing. I started writing for the Oval just after I finished my degree, so my writer’s voice at the time was academic and clunky. The Oval has given me an opportunity to improve my prose, and extend my style whimsically. I’m excited to grow it further, and to do it by sharing more nutty ideas with you lot.

The reason this blog exists is you, the person reading this sentence right now. Thank you for reading this blog, your support means everything.

I hope you stick around long enough to see the exciting projects we have in store come to fruition.

Here’s to one year at the Oval.

Jerry

Jerry is absolutely perfect in every way.

Thanks for the sarcasm, buddy. Where to start? It feels like my journey at this blog has been one long ordeal involving being spot on ten percent of the time and fucking up horribly the rest of the time.

Take this anniversary post, for instance. Whose stupid idea was that? Mine. My stupid idea. And now I have to write this blurb.

In spite of that, it’s been an absolute honor working with the people I’ve had the opportunity to meet as a result of this blog’s existence. I never would have imagined that I would find a group of magicians that I got along so well with. Nor did I imagine that anyone would be interested in my silly ideas about magic. But I did, and some of you are. As a result, this past year I’ve grown as a magician, I’ve grown as a person, and I’ve grown my balls. Thank you, everyone.

Except Gaha. Fuck you, Gaha.

Gaha McViolate

Gaha McViolate is Gaha McViolate.

Fuck you, Jerry.

The Editor

I already edit all these posts; you think I’m going to write a blurb too? Guess again. I’m too busy boiling the water for the noodles.

Going forward, we promise that you will continue to get your money’s worth.