A daunting first step

Sometimes you need to take a leap of faith and hope for the best

The part about media in the modern era that stinks is… well, look around the scene and you can pick from just about anything to be angry or fearful about whether you work in it or consume it. After roughly 10 years of a mix of freelance and full-time opportunities that either ended or I moved on from and a year of (essentially) being on the shelf it was time to get things figured out.

I was presented with various opportunities and there were others I pursued that either weren’t the right fit for myself, or I wasn’t for them. The environment in which to support yourself through your work is terrifying -- what with newsrooms shrinking or venture capitalists gutting whole outlets and taking advice from algorithms rather than what consumers really want. Frankly, it sucks ferociously for everyone involved. Yeah, everyone wants to make money but there’s a love of this too that gets lost in modern day media.

That’s why I’m trying something new and it’s equal parts exhilarating and frightening.

I’m going to write about hockey here. Hockey of all kinds. I’m going to dig into stories I want to tell and share, reconnect with the side of the sport I’ve grown to love in my time going from a hack-about blogger too sarcastic and cynical for my own good to a more polished and sensible storyteller. Yes, there will be plenty of talk here about the Buffalo Sabres because being in Buffalo makes that possible to do and with a team in tumult and turnover like the Sabres, there are plenty of things to say about them.

But I also want to touch on other things that aren’t just about hockey on its own. There are other connections to other areas of life that can connect to the sport and there are offshoots from that in which I can draw from experience both lived and observed to connect with it and discuss. Hockey is life, but life is bigger than hockey but can still connect with it. Writing about those connections and more is what I want to do because I don’t feel I’m anywhere close to being done with this whole thing. It’s nutty to write that at age 42, but the media landscape is unforgiving sometimes (a lot of times?) and when other opportunities aren’t right or aren’t there at all, you must do something.

My hope is that those of you who have been there with me since Day One and those of you who have gotten to know me, or my work, more recently will want to join me on this adventure. There will be lots of writing, there will be podcasts, there may even be live video chats. And I will be winging it myself, a kind of return to where I began in my old blogging days but with hopes you enjoy my work enough to sign up and keep me involved in this even more.

The idea here is to at one point down the road have paid subscriptions here, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. For now… I want to inform, I want to entertain, and I want to do this for everyone. I do hope you’ll join me for the ride.