An Update
Hello from the cubicle, to say life has been a little bit crazy over the past few months would be an absolute understatement.
In December I left my job as a humble sports radio producer and jumped into the world of higher education for a moment. Why? I have absolutely no clue. Mainly the hours were better and I didn’t have to be locked up alone in a radio booth until 1 in the morning. I was kind of done with that after four years.
Maybe that’s a blog coming later in the off-season, I started sort of writing this radio manifesto that’s quite something about what I learned about myself and the sports media profession while grinding for four years in the dying art of terrestrial radio.
What now though, as you noticed I took my typical month off after the Super Bowl, it’s time to get back at it though. Time to blog again.
If you’re looking for regular off-season football content most of that is going to come from Football Breakdowns, a new football site I have the pleasure to work on.
You can check that out, it’s mostly my writing right now and I occasionally hop on a podcast with my good friend Bryan Brown to discuss such topics of football.
I do love this time of year though for sports. I want to put out hockey and basketball content as things develop in those worlds. So at some point soon the night before is coming back, the issue is finding times to write it.
An Update continued
I work a desk job now, so I have downtime from moment to moment but obviously don’t really want to blog at work. I’m still figuring it all out.
I’m still not getting bites for media jobs, still not really getting noticed on the internet and that’s fine. Blogging has become more of a hobby at this point anyways, but at some point I am just hoping this all pays off.
The buttoned-down, pro-journalist approach has not worked. It just has not. The strategy needs to change.
I get comments that some of my best writing comes outside of sports, so maybe I need to give that a try. A column is something I want to give a try. Calling it the Drama Dojo, which is an insanely stupid name I know, makes some sense. Maybe not weekly but bi-weekly, is this the first edition? Who knows, maybe.
I just knew I needed to post something, about the direction this now goes in the off-season. The direction it always goes, is fierce dedication for a month and a half followed by month breaks. It’s hard to stay motivated when you’re going nowhere.
So I’m doing what my dad has suggested for a long time, I’m putting myself out there. If you have a mid level media job, something where I can have my own byline and be front-facing let me know. I am done namelessly pressing buttons in studios though. Respectfully I have too much work out there and have spent too much time paying dues at the bottom of the food chain to do that anymore.
I have college degrees, I have over five years of field experience, and I shouldn’t be mindlessly pressing buttons for G league games anymore. (Don’t get me wrong I’m grateful for those opportunities, and I enjoyed my time with The Zone they were great to me, but it is time to move past that)
Until then, I’ll just keep blogging like this, month on, month off, at some point hopefully, it all pays off.
Best
Rick
P.S. I write an irreverent fantasy column for the league I play in, they beg me to post it each year, I’m not so sure it’s a little crass and definitely not journalism. That said, things just clearly are not working out the way I keep attacking them. I will be editing some of these columns and posting them on the website. Next year, these columns will also be published on this website.
The league thinks it’s great writing and funny, I am not so sure, I need to give something new a try though. Already nobody takes me seriously, might as well lean into it. Come get me Barstool.