Oh yes, please do look right into the flash as it goes off, David. That’s super smart, that is…
My fingers are ready for their close-up, Mr. DeMille.
We’re at a crossroads.
Admittedly, one of my own making, but still a crossroads.
We’re 33 months into the experiment that is Coupeville Sports (the three-year anniversary would be Aug. 15), which is a good sign, since #33 was the number worn by the greatest clutch athlete in the history of all known sporting events, one Larry Bird.
In that time, I have produced 3,148 articles (no, seriously), made a lot of people happy, pissed a few others off and revived my own interest in journalism (or whatever you want to call this here thing I’m doing now).
I have toned down (a bit) the anti-Canadian Evil Empire rhetoric and found (most days) a middle ground where we can ardently support Cow Town while not branding every other town’s school as the Antichrist.
As I see it, the Whidbey News-Times, Whidbey Examiner and South Whidbey Record (and their Canuck financiers) are the old-school dad in the comfortable chair, peering over the top of their print edition of the newspaper and calmly giving you the news, when it suits them to do so.
Myself?
I’m the hyperventilating, jacked-out-of-his-gourd-on-sugar kid who has crawled to the top of the fence and is screaming “Hey, guess what just happened?!?!?” at all hours of the day and night.
I have no deadlines and unlimited space (I just paid $79 to upgrade my storage capabilities, thank you) and I’m quite willing to write at 2:17 in the AM.
The response was been electrifying, far beyond anything that I ever received during my days at those aforementioned newspapers.
My readership numbers have far surpassed what I expected, and the interaction has made a huge difference in my life.
But this is where the crossroads comes in.
I am not funded by David Black, a kajillionaire who owns 300+ papers and (probably) 17 yachts, like the Whidbey newspapers are.
Though, if he’s interested, I’m not that hard to contact, I come fairly cheap and I’ve mellowed (a bit).
During the entire run of Coupeville Sports I have been working as a dishwasher/onion slicer at Christopher’s on Whidbey to pay my limited bills.
That means I write around my real job, and, thankfully, owner/chef Andreas Wurzrainer has been incredibly good about making it possible for me to cover as many home events in person as possible.
But now, as of the end of this month, I am leaving that job. For real, this time.
There are many reasons why, but the primary reason has nothing to do with the particular restaurant and all to do with the type of job itself.
Having turned 44 a week-and-a-half ago, I can’t keep doing a job that leaves me feeling 10 years older every morning.
My one semi-marketable talent — writing — is being made harder by the daily beating my body, primarily my fingers, is taking.
The buzz in my hands, the pinched nerves, the mussel shell slashes that are an accepted part of working with shellfish — they all went away when I took a two-month break last summer, and I’m hoping for an encore.
I’m not 17 anymore, and there are a lot of 17-year-olds who would probably be quite happy to show off their indestructible digits by taking my job. Go for it — they’ll pay you and feed you and keep you toasty warm all summer.
You’ll never be cold in a professional kitchen, that’s for sure.
And what of me, as my fingers come back to life (we hope)?
I either go one of two ways — get a different “real” job and continue to juggle things while still writing or simply do Coupeville Sports and nothing else.
A “real” job has more stability, but there is the very real possibility that a new employer would not be as accommodating as Andreas has been.
It might become much harder to cover things in person, and when I can do that, I can drop in stuff like Carson Risner’s mom holding him down and feeding him breakfast burritos before his baseball playoff game or Wolf softball coach Deanna Rafferty offering her players free candy if they could get a 1-2-3 inning.
Those little details, and my (often) shameless willingness to sprinkle them willy-nilly through my articles, is a huge part of what sets me apart from the newspapers.
You can get the scores from both of us.
Because I can obsess over small stuff, run a trillion photos with often less-than-factual cut-lines and write endless features on the last kid on the JV bench (cause, dangnab it, they deserve a story too!), I can weave a town-wide tapestry for which the newspapers simply don’t have the time, space or desire.
A new “real” job may make that much harder.
The other option is for me to make just enough to cover basic bills like rent.
I don’t have (or want) a cell phone, Netflix, fancy car or any costly booze ‘n cigs ‘n uncut heroin addictions to fund.
If a healthy amount of my readers were willing to forgo one Starbucks coffee and use the Donate button on the top right side of this page to pledge $5 to keep it going, we’d be set.
Not that you have to limit yourself to $5, heavens no…
So, we’ll see what happens. My intentions are to keep Coupeville Sports going strong, but I need to save my fingers as well.
I’d like to be able to still type when I’m 45.
I am in it for the long haul and will never, EVER put up a pay wall like the newspapers have, but, going forward, you, my readers, will have a large say in how I am able to run my renegade blog.
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