I started
this blog as a 19 year old university kid for no reason other than to
eventually become a writer. In a way, I have accomplished that goal. I’ve
written over 200 articles on three different web sites about basketball and
have even made some money off of it. I’ve gotten to talk with people I would
have never met that live in different countries and across the world from me.
Writing about sports has given me more perspective on life than anything else
ever have.
To now be
nearly 28 and remember that it had all started back on this small blog that
absolutely got zero traction is mind blowing. Of course I never got attention
on this platform. My writing was weak, my blog design even weaker and I had no
idea how to get my ideas out there. I don’t expect that my writing on this site
again will gain any followers that may read things I write on other websites
and honestly I don’t care. Having started on this journey with a goal to write
so that others could see my words, I have decided that this place will be for
me and if anyone else wants to look at my inner thoughts, that’s great too.
Almost a
decade has gone by since I first wrote here and things have changed
drastically. I finished my studying, moved back to my hometown and had my first
child. My daughter, who is now 16 months, changed my life quicker than anybody
ever could have. The minute she was born, I stopped living selfishly and really
experienced living for another person for the first time ever. That isn’t to
say I haven’t considered other people in my life other than myself, of course I
have. The feeling that my daughter gave me when I first held her and she
squeezed my finger is something that I will never be able to explain but that
all parents understand.
So in the
time between her birth and now, I have become so much more introspective. When
I found this site I had started, the hopeful dreams of a wide-eyed teenager, I
began reading what I had written. Some of the stuff, I have left up as a memory
of what was before. Some of it I deleted because it was awful, stupid or
downright embarrassing to relive. All of it was an experience that threw me
back to that time when all I cared about was advancing in the world.
On a
personal level, I am at a great spot in my life. I have my daughter, a great
girlfriend and the everlasting support from my parents. I have a solid job that
helps provide stable income for my baby girl and a social network of great
friends and colleagues both in the world of writing and outside of it. There is
nothing I could ever complain about. And yet, reading the words of an exuberant
19 year old version of myself, I can’t help but feel like I let that guy down.
My writing
may not have been as polished or thorough back then but damn it, it had heart.
Not all of my jokes landed but all of them were certainly delivered with the
maximum effort and creativity. Some of them caught me by surprise and made me
chuckle. At a certain point, I forgot that I wanted to not only become a writer
but that I also wanted to make people laugh. I love sports, always have and
always will but the writing game was appealing to me because my original goal
was to become a comedian. At any level of that art form be it as a stand up,
screenwriter or other.
Eventually
the social pressure of getting a job and joining the real world helped me cast
those dreams aside. I still wrote but never to make people smile or laugh and
always to tell a story. I never wrote for the hell of writing. Among friends
and family, I still live to be the jokester but that side of me disappeared
from my writing and that’s saddening.
Writing on
this blog will be a way to rekindle what once was. Those creative juices of
random words I would put together in hopes of finding a good joke in the
rubble. The willingness to put my neck out there for a joke that may not even
be funny. Writing simply to write because it is a passion of mine. These are
all things that I stopped doing the minute I found my first paid writing job (which
let’s admit was not even a minimum wage kind of operation). Allow me to bring
it back on here. If only for myself. If I am able to look at what I post on
this dumb, no frills blog, in another decade and laugh at some of the words I
wrote on here, this will have all been worth it. Even if no other pairs of eyes
(or a single eye should a cyclops stumble upon this page) graces my writings I
will be happy knowing that at least I made myself laugh.
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