Shallow | Center

Farewell, But Most Certainly Not Goodbye

It's not you, it's me.

Look, you've been great, but I need something else right now. Writing about the Phillies and the shitty movies I see with brother-in-law can take a blogger only so far, you know? And, well, I just couldn't bring myself to do it anymore. I felt stale.

But now ... Now I've got something new in the works. Something more sharply focused. Something that makes me feel more comfortable articulating a voice and not simply droning on about ... well, all of the stuff I've droned on about with you.

Seriously, I've loved my time here. But it's time for something new. Take care of yourself, okay? | SC

Anybody Home?

Hey, guess who?

Hope to be back in the blogging fold soon, perhaps with some changes. Stay tuned ... S|C

A Spring in My Blog

So how's your pool?

Yeah, I could use the excuse that poring over the field for so long that I was able to pick seven of the potential Elite Eight teams is what's kept me from posting for all these weeks, but we all know how huge a whopper that would be.

Work, work, work.

Family, family, family.

The usual.

But, truth be told, I've missed being here. It's springtime, baseball is about to start, and the presidential primary is finally going to matter here in Pennsylvania. So I'm going to give it another go. Thanks for checking back. S|C

Quite Phrankly ...

Write What You Know? Well, Then, Hello There, Philadelphia

"If you're associated with the Philadelphia media or town, you look for negatives. I don't know if there's something about their upbringing or they have too many hoagies or too much cream cheese." -- Mike Schmidt

SCHMITTY WAS right.

We Philadelphians are a self-loathing bunch, perpetually convinced not only that we're going to fail but also that we deserve every bit of failure to come our way. We are more concerned with what we are not (New York) than with what we are. We tear down our heroes rather than celebrate them, and our civic ethos can be summarized in one contraction: can't. Our successes -- and they're there -- come in spite of ourselves.

It shouldn't be that way, and that's one reason I'm making an effort to recast the focus here on the city and region in which I live and that I love dearly, its many warts and all. I've mentioned before that finding the time to post here has become difficult given my professional commitments, but that's only part of it -- I've also gotten a little fried with writing about the same things for all of these years. So maybe finding some new subjects will revive my passion.

Will Write for Food

A Year In, Assessing the Big Professional Move and Recommitting to What I Want to Do

It was just about a year ago that I bade farewell to The Man and went into business for myself. It turned out to be a terrific decision both professionally and personally. I love my work, I've met awesome clients, I get to see more of my family than I ever have before, and being in charge of my own shit has been incredibly fulfilling.

I set a dollar goal in a business plan I had drawn up, and I've surpassed that goal by a fair amount. I'm never lacking for work. The downside is that most of my jobs are short-term, smaller projects, so I'm hoping that in the new year I can start successfully pitching stories to mainstream magazines. That kidn of larger-scale work will allow me to stretch as a reporter and writer and, I hope, give me even more flexibility to do the kinds of things I targeted when I started this enterprise in the first place. Things like writing a book. Blogging more. Getting my ass in shape. Being a better father and husband. 

Taking a Write-Off

For a Freelance Writer, It's Hard to Find Time to Write Stuff  You're Not Being Paid to Write

JUST TWO posts in the last three weeks may leave you with the impression that I've been rather too busy with paying jobs to find my way to write for my nonpaying gigs. That would be a correct impression. And so my ambitious drive to write a 50,000-word novel in one month will have to remain that for a while -- an ambition. No one's paying me to play Ian McEwan, so until I can figure out how to shoehorn that kind of stuff into an already packed schedule, fiction returns to the back burner.

But not permanently. I learned a lot in the two weeks or so I spent trying to crank out 1,666 and two-thirds words per day. I'd like to share some of that here in the near future, but the biggest takeaways are that (a) it's really hard work, and (b) it's a hell of a lot of fun. Too much fun to give up on. More later. S|C

Novel Ambitions

For the Next Month, Finding a New Dream to Chase

WRITERS WRITE, I posted early this year, and the freelance career I launched with that axiom in mind has gone better than I had hoped. Like so many of us who put fingertips to keyboard, though, I have a loftier goal in mind; more a dream, really. I can't say I have the Great American Novel clattering around in my brain somewhere, but for years I've harbored the desire to get some fiction published. Life has consistently gotten in the way, but more than that, I've never committed myself to the kind of discipline it takes, and there's probably been a fair share of fearing failure mixed in there.

Well, enough is enough.

Shameless Self-Promotion

THIS WEEK'S issue of Philadelphia Weekly includes a piece by staffer and Philadelphia Will Do blogger Dan McQuade on the Phillies' pending 10,000th loss. To accompany his story, he asked some Phillies bloggers to contribute their favorite bad Phils moment, and you can find those musings, including mine, at the bottom of the page. Happy reading.

A Philosophical Question

IF A blog fell in the forest and stayed fallen for a few weeks because the guy who wrote it was completely disenchanted with the way his favorite baseball team -- the inspiration for the majority of his posts -- was playing, would anyone hear it?

Today Is the First Day of the Rest of My Career

NEW YEAR, new beginnings.

New job.

Writers write, yet as my career in higher education administration advanced, I found myself doing less writing and more, well, administering. Last summer, seeking to shake myself up, I left higher ed to take a job doing marketing and media relations for a law firm. As different as that scratch was, the itch remained. I came to realize that an even bigger change was necessary, and so at the end of 2006 I resigned my position to do something I had dreamed of for years.