Learning to Write Again

I love sports.

Actually, let me re-phrase that. I did love sports.

Don’t get me wrong, I will sit and watch college football or baseball or even a college basketball game now and again but my passion for sports in general has definitely faded over the last four to five years.

There’s really no reason for it, it’s just the way it happened. I used to use every weekend during college football season as the day I just sat and watched game after game after game after game. I love the sport and I love the college atmosphere no matter what sport it is and I prefer the college game over the professional with exception to baseball (Go Padres!)

But with being married almost ten years, come May 1 of this year, and two kids who are a blast to be around every day because of how different they both are, I find myself watching more of what the kids want to watch or doing what the kids want to do. By the end of the day both my wife and I are exhausted and we use the last two hours of the night getting ready for the next day whether that’s putting clothes out for the kids for the next day or pouring their milk for the next morning.

It’s hard to get back into the swing of what you used to be passionate about. Often times it’s hard to find the energy to pull out the laptop and come up with an original idea that’s in your head or one that you really want to talk about.

However, I don’t want this to be a post that’s all about sports, I wanted this to be all about learning how to write again after being away from doing so for so long, especially writing about the topic I’ve spent most of this post talking about.

If you give it a chance, read through the blog posts that I’ve done in the past. Most of them are over four years old but, at this point, I don’t feel any differently than I did four years ago. I still believe the same things, I still want the same things, and my faith is still exactly where it was then.

One thing has changed, though.

Being a parent makes you re-think all of the things you used to believe. I’m not talking about faith or your relationship with God, but things you used to believe about life in general.

You know those times, before you had kids, and you told people that you wouldn’t do it that way or you would do it this way or you want things done that way instead of this way?

While I’m proud that my wife and I have done most of what we said we wanted to do with our kids we have definitely let other things slide. Why? Because sometimes the things that you think are serious don’t seem all that serious or not all that big of a deal later on down the road. They’re still important, but they’re not as big as you once made them.

I wanted to re-learn how to write about the things that are important to me and important to our family. I wanted to re-learn how to write about what was in my head and what people could relate to.

The one thing I hated about writing about sports, it was all opinion based and while facts could play into that opinion you never got into something that people could relate to. Talking about the Dallas Cowboys, especially negatively, will irritate people quicker than calling them a name to their face. How is that relatable or how do you stay passionate about something like that?

I remember facing something while being a “sports writer.”

Let me take a quick step back and give you some perspective on what I wanted to do with my life about the time my wife and I got married.

I wanted to be in sports radio. It was my dream job. If there was one thing I wanted to do it was that and no matter how many people asked me the question of what my dream job was I always had the same answer.

But one moment changed all of that.

Someone on Twitter decided they didn’t like what I wrote about a specific sports topic so they decided not only to come after me but they wanted to take personal shots at my wife and, at the time, our four-month old daughter because we all know how well four-month old babies can defend themselves.

That was one of the reasons I stopped being passionate about sports and my dream job started to fade and become less and less important to me in the grand scheme of things.

I grew up as a fan who loved the game. I grew up whooping and hollering at every touchdown, every home run, I walked out of stadiums mad or frustrated with every loss and wondering how that could have happened like it did.

I miss that part of sports. I miss being a fan. I miss the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Having been in the sports media world for a few years, I went from being that fan to being the guy who watched a game in complete silence.

To the point it drove my mom, and some friends I grew up with, crazy.

I didn’t jump off the chair I was in when a big play happened, I didn’t yell at the television on a bad call, I didn’t shed a tear when my team lost a big game. I just stared at the television in silence and was always lost in thought, mostly about what happened to me that I would turn into someone so different.

Then I remembered, the change happened when I became a parent and I realized there were so many other important things in life than who won and who lost. There were more important things in my own life than talking about what team did what and why they can’t get a win to save their lives and why they should trade this guy or fire that guy.

Sports was no longer fun because what made me smile was the people who truly made me smile were those I came home to every day. It was my wife and it was, at the time, our daughter. Now, adding as second child to the mix, life became even more hectic and fun and scary and important and hard and rewarding.

I say all of this to tell you that I hope you can be patient with me as I figure out how to write again. I say all this to tell you that I hope you can relate to the things that I’m writing about or find something in your own life that some of these posts speak to. I also hope that you enjoy what’s here and you enjoy reading the thoughts that come out of my head.

They may not always make sense and, often times, they might seem ridiculous. But, at the end of the day, you continue to learn things every day. While you might forget how to ride a bike all you have to do is get on one again and it all comes back to you at one time.

It might seem clumsy at first, but eventually you’ll get there. So will I.