Here I am

Rock you like a hurrican. . . Yeah. I know. I know. But let's just pretend like I didn't totally punk out for the past couple of months and get down to business.

I'm still working part time, writing sports stories for the local paper. I have been getting more hours lately, and they finally gave me a key. But the hours are still nowhere near enough to live off of, and they didn't give me the password to the security system so I can really only use the key when there are people there. But you know, it's progress.

For the most part, the events I'm sent to are the ones that the boss doesn't want to go to. So I'm usually writing stories about blowouts or about competitive cheer meets (I may write about cheerleading at a later date). Occassionally, I'll get lucky, and two bad teams will face off, and I'll get to see a close game. But most of the time I consider any game that ends with fewer than twenty points between the teams to be a closely contested battle. But still, I'm enjoying it. I'm learning a bit more each time out, and I like everyone I've worked with both at the paper and at the schools we cover. I've actually started to get to the point where people in the local sports circle are recognizing me. Of course, half of them think I'm a talent scout. But you know, baby steps. . .

Speaking of baby steps. . . I'm pretty sure that's what this is. Instead of a bigass post filling in the past two monthes, I'm going to give you guys a bunch of melt-in-your-mouth-not-in-your-hand-sized chunks. If you chouldn't tell, this was the first chunk. . .

I'm glad to be back (20).

Work

Sorry about the nopost mania I've been through lately. I've been working a lot these past few days. Wait. Scratch that. I've been working more in these past few days. The problem is that I tend to blog at night. And my job, sports writing, usually happens at night because, well, that's when sports usually happen. Which means that on nights that I work, I often don't feel like blogging.

In the past week or so, the other new sports writer has been unavailable/unreachable, so I've been able to poach his hours for myself. On Thursday night I went to the game that the other guy was supposed to cover, and I was talking with my boss, who was at the game to take a few pictures. He told me that he was trying to get me more hours. Which is kind of really very awesome. He said that he really couldn't do much with me and the other guy when our hours are so limited, but that it was also difficult to get money that wasn't budgeted for the fiscal year. But he's working on it.

With this extra time working over the past few days, I've been getting a lot more ink, and that feels good. On Friday I had three articles, including two on the cover of sports. Today I had a story that was on the top left of sports. Small victories, man. Small victories.

I've also gotten a chance to get to know my boss a lot better. I'm starting to like him quite a bit. And he's a much better editor than I gave him credit for. He never piles on editorial suggestions. He tends to focus on one thing, and then tempers those suggestions/criticisms with complements. I've also recently recognized that, even though I often don't care for some of the changes he makes to the pieces I've written, his reasoning for making the changes is always solid.

I'm grateful for liking my job and for the possibility of more hours (20).