Young David learned some days it’s a hard-knock life.
Elon Musk is a trillionaire and I’m riding the free bus.
Maybe taking ’80s era high school classes centered around science fiction, death, and the proper weeding of plant life in a greenhouse didn’t set me up for the caviar lifestyle…
While my sister learned the right lessons from our somewhat hardscrabble childhood and has made all the right financial decisions, I’ve been over here, hammering my head against the wall for years, ever surprised that I’m never getting my indoor/outdoor swimming pool with a waterfall in the middle.
For the past 14 years, I’ve devoted most of my time to keeping alive the sometimes-deluded dream of obsessively documenting the sport lives of (primarily) kids living on a prairie in the middle of a rock buried deep in the Pacific Northwest.
I’ve produced 12,703 articles, as of this one, and pulled in almost three million page views.
Which is not going to scare the folks at Sports Illustrated, maybe, but is a heck of a lot more readership than you might expect from a blog which devotes a fair amount of space to middle school track and field in a town most of the world doesn’t know.
It’s also 12,701 more articles than my brief rival, South Whidbey Sports, managed to put out, cause Cow Town doesn’t produce quitters.
As with any one-man mission, there have been bumps along the way.
I started the blog in anger after the Coupeville Examiner was sold, and the new corporate owners stripped hundreds of bylines off my stories before tossing the paper itself in the trash.
It’s morphed into something much different (most days), and expanded to often include non-sports stories, even occasionally venturing to the other ends of the island, defying the very name of the blog itself.
I’ve quit a couple of times, and reversed course.
The pandemic seemingly sent me to the door, then brought me back.
And there was the 10 weeks last year where I couch surfed at my sisters in West Virginia before I hurt my foot clearing land, got an infection, and came back to Coupeville to take advantage of Washington state health care.
As I’ve slowly plowed through the recovery process, I’ve been restricted from doing the back-busting side gigs (lawn care, etc.) which have helped keep me financially afloat during the blogging years.
But I keep my bills low (rent, basic internet service, a low-rent phone), and the one advantage of not owning a vehicle since I returned to town has been the opportunity to not pay inflated gas prices.
Still, as we head into summer, I am stretched as thin as I can go, and for not the first time in the past 14 years, am in a place where the existence of Coupeville Sports is in question.
The blog has survived thanks to the unceasing support and generosity of my readers, and every time I’ve just about toppled over into the abyss, I’ve been pulled back.
Parents, coaches, boosters, alumni, administrators — up to and including a superintendent or two acting as a civilian — even one athlete from a rival school while they were still playing against the Wolves.
The support has been staggering, always timely, and greatly appreciated.
And no, despite what some might think, the school district itself has never given me a penny. Though there’s nothing to say we can’t break 14 years of precedent at some point.
There are days where I question whether I can go on, and days when I think, “I can hit 25,000 articles!”
My brain, full of cobwebs and contradictions.
So, where does this leave us?
Those three bills I mentioned (rent, basic internet and phone service) come out to a hair under $700 per month.
In mid-July, WordPress is going to want $19 plus tax for another year of my domain, then $300 plus tax in September to keep the blog alive for another 12 months.
I don’t have the $300, but I also don’t have the $19, so that’s food for thought.
In the early days of Coupeville Sports, that $300 was $0, but you produce 12,703 articles and use thousands of photos, and eventually you have to pay to preserve what has come before, so that it doesn’t get scrubbed off the internet with a keystroke.
There are many who love what I do, and some who don’t, and either way they’ve never had to pay a penny to read the words I published. Never been a pay wall, never will be, and that’s the hill I’ll die on.
I’d like to be working outdoors on the side, which would ease my financial crush, and improve my mental health.
But I know I need to (mostly) listen to my wound care doctor, who would prefer I sat quietly in a chair 24/7/365 until the (hopefully soon) moment when everything is healed.
So, while I wait for an unexpected family inheritance — not likely — or a lottery windfall — hard when you don’t actually buy tickets — I write on and watch way too many ’70s movies for free on Tubi and Kanopy, the unsung heroes of the streaming world.
This is the moment where I feel like a TV preacher, slicking back my not-really-there hair to ask you to look deep into your soul (and between the cushions of the couch) and see if you can’t scrape up some loose change.
Coupeville Sports doesn’t last 14 years without a truly amazing support system. I’d like to keep that going with your help.
To fuel my 2 AM ramblings:
PayPal:
https://paypal.me/DavidSvien?locale.x=en_US&country.x=US
Venmo:
David-Svien
**If the vintage photo is of me in a red Coupeville hoodie, with my younger nephews in South Whidbey blue, you’re at the right place.**
Snail Mail:
1722 Whales Run Place
Coupeville, WA 98239
Coupeville Sports 