I am at a crossroad with my career. My short stint as an attorney has given me nothing but job insecurity and lots of debt. I don’t even like it that much. You know what I do like though? You got it. Writing this blog.
So, the most logical thing to do at this point is figure out what I love to do and figure out how to make a living doing it. Sounds so simple. Why can’t I break into the wonderful world of sports writing? Other than the fact that I have the miraculous inability to ever get anything grammaticallycorrect and I resist spell check because I feel like you’re brokering a deal with the devil of technology when you use it, I’m a decent writer. And I love sports. I would never choose a team because someone was hot, or because of uniform colors. I’m totally legit. So what’s stopping me? A couple things. Journalism is a dying breed. Casual bloggers (like myself) and the instant exchange of information via internet has made traditional journalism nearly obsolete. It’s hard enough to get people to read your blog when you’re doing it for free. Not sure someone would pay me to write all this crap. Second, females in sports media fall into three categories: 1) ex-athletes, 2) legacy (father or someone in their family was an athlete) and 3) hot, tall, skinny models. I suppose Linda Cohn would be an exception (and she’s actually one of the best, so just goes to show you how f-ed up the criteria is). I’m not any of those. I’m just a girl who loves writing and who loves sports and would love the chance to combine those two into something that might pay rent.
And I totally understand that good sports writing is going to take more than just a few fluffy pieces about how much I talk during football games or me running a fantasy league. But I am up for the challenge. This blog was my experiment, to make sports stuff interesting to women. In a way, I am always trying to broaden the audience because I feel that sports have so much to offer and women are just often intimidated by the concept of it as a “man’s” hobby. I am trying to make sports familiar and less scary to women, so that they will participate in more things, teach their daughters how to run a button hook pattern in football or the difference between a slider and a change up. Hopefully those of you who do read it are entertained. I like entertaining. But I am not just a one trick pony. I can actually write real pieces about real sports with real facts. I know I can do it.
Here’s the tricky part though. I never took one journalism or communications class in college. I know very few people in the field, and it seems to be one of those things where you have to be an unpaid intern for a while and work your way from the ground up. If this is something I’m serious about, I might consider doing it. Maybe taking a course at a community college. Maybe someone might take me seriously one day. Or maybe I’ll realize that writing this blog gives me enjoyment because it’s not something I have to do, it’s something I want to do. And maybe that’s the trick in keeping sane….to always have something you love as a refuge from the things you have to do in order to make a living. Because the worst thing that could come out of this is developing some sort of resentment towards sports writing because it’s something I have to do each day in order to survive and not something I do because I love it.
Maybe things are just going to turn out the way they are meant to. And maybe I was meant for sports writing greatness. But if I was just meant to write this sports blog and love sports and be a lawyer, maybe that’s not so bad either.
Chicks Like Sports Too 