Daily Delivery podcast one-year anniversary: A thank you to listeners

As someone who has had one primary employer, the Star Tribune, since before the start of this millennium — forever by today's job-wandering standards — I get asked fairly often how I have stayed in one place so long.

The simple answer, aside from the fact that it's a very good place to work: The employer has stayed the same, but the job has changed often enough to present new challenges and keep things fresh.

General assignment writing. Beat writing. Offbeat features. Stories big and small. Editing. Video. Digital writing. Those have been all or at least a part of my job duties in the last two-plus decades.

And, exactly one year ago, this one was added: daily sports podcast host.

We launched the "Daily Delivery" podcast on Feb. 1, 2021. The idea came before COVID was a thing. Much of the planning came during the pandemic. A year later, I'm still recording 95% of it in the basement of my house because, as you might have noticed, COVID is still very much a thing.

I remember doing test podcasts in the middle of the summer of 2020. I remember waking up the first morning to do the first real one and feeling sudden terror. It's one thing to conceive of a new project. It's another thing entirely to actually do it and release it to an audience.

I'm a writer. I don't … talk for a living. What was I thinking?

But here we are, a year later. The terror, which was always mingled with the giddiness of creating something new five times a week, has faded. I at least sort of know what I'm doing now, and the greatest teacher will always be trial and error anyway.

I'd love it if you would start listening, or keep listening, and maybe tell a friend (or even an enemy) if you like it. You can even go back and listen to any of the 260-plus episodes from Year 1, from which I pulled some clips for a special edition anniversary podcast.

But more than anything, a year into it I just wanted to say … thanks.

Thanks first and foremost to those of you who have listened in the last 365 days. You've given me great feedback — a lot of it positive, some it constructive, all of it welcome.

You've encouraged us to keep this endeavor going and to keep growing it, as download numbers continue to dwarf what we started out with a year ago.

Thanks to all the athletes, coaches and others who have given me their time as guests in the first year — and to the folks behind the scenes who have helped arrange those interviews, many of them over Zoom, as we adapted to remote work.

Thank you particularly to other members of the Star Tribune sports staff, many of whom are frequent guests on "Daily Delivery." In addition to wanting one spot to host a lot of our best content during the week, their expertise was a driving force behind creating this podcast.

Their willingness to cheerfully come on the show is topped only by their restraint in not rolling their eyes at some of my trade proposals involving the teams they cover.

As we constantly refine and think about "Daily Delivery" in new ways, undoubtedly there will be fresh features and wrinkles in the next year.

But at its core, it should remain the same: About 30 minutes, Monday through Friday, talking about the biggest stories in Minnesota sports.