I'd Like To Thank You All

"You don't have friends. You have associates." - An associate at my poker game last week

You may want to skip this post, as it's going to be Not Sports and long and not useful. Like a fair number of things I write, it will be for me, not you.

Twenty-plus years ago, when I was a teenager, I started planning events. The first was street hockey, and I'm not sure what prompted the behavior, but soon afterward, I was using my pocket money to buy sticks, a goalie mask, pads and nets, arranging transportation and times to play, and writing out over-the-top e-mails and flyers promoting games. Eventually, the hockey game took on a life of its own, with a standing Friday night game, and I didn't have to do much in terms of organizing it anymore.

I made the error of thinking I was good at planning events.

Hockey was fun and I was better at it than some; I'd play until I couldn't walk. While recovering from games, I'd look to fill up the time with all of my new friends, maybe with Strat-O-Matic hockey games or an offline fantasy league for the NHL. That league actually still exists today, again having taken on a life of its own. While away at school, I started a basketball fantasy league and played in two fantasy leagues for baseball with a couple of the guys from the hockey games.

In all of this, I made the tactical error of thinking that the people I was spending my time with were my friends. They weren't. They were associates -- happy to participate in the single activity, but more than that, no.

After college, I started a rock band and spent the better part of five years recruiting players, audiences, booking agents, club owners, radio DJs, lawyers, A&R and more, more, more to the cause.

Again, it was a simple transaction, but instead of buying into my team activity or my fantasy league, it was to be part of my music. Four studio projects and tens of thousands of dollars later, when it became apparent that the mission was hopeless from a commercial standpoint, I gave it up. People sometimes ask me if I miss it, but not very often now, because no one outside of my immediate family listens to it.

In the transition period between the rock band and having kids, I played golf. Again, there was the recruiting of other players, the sense (if not the reality) of friendship, and the hard cut-off where the activity ended. Once the kids arrived, I more or less put the clubs away under the sense that (a) I wasn't good enough at this to really enjoy it as much as I probably should, and (b) golf's too expensive for a father with bills to pay, especially in California.

For the six-plus years that my immediate family was in California, my work hours increased at busy start ups and my commute got longer. My event-planning more or less stopped, with the exception of trying to get people to go to the occasional Oakland A's game, or in 2004, to try to prevent the second Bush Administration.

I didn't have that much of a social life, partly because we moved three times to accommodate different jobs and locations, partly because I was focused on our growing family, and mostly because I didn't work at it.

Three years ago, I got an offer to come back East, and became the first person in the history of the world to move to New York City for more affordable housing.

I've tried to develop roots here. I started this blog, launched two new fantasy leagues with live drafts, and hosted a monthly poker game. All of it follows the same pattern as before. I recruit, people participate or not, but their commitment is single-event deep.

I'm useful.

Liked, in the Willy Loman sense.

Tomorrow, I turn 40.

It's time to make some changes.

This blog gets first attention. It's updated nearly every day, with what I'd like to think is some reasonably good work, but the marketplace begs otherwise. I don't know what to do about that. I keep thinking that there's got to be some kind of market for what I do, but there probably isn't. The traffic and site usage pattern usage bears that out; the world, for the most part, does not care what I think about the NBA, MLB and NFL.

I'm not quitting. Writers write or they explode. But I am saying that it's going to be different.

How, I'm not entirely sure. I don't need the money so much as to go down the titty image hole. But after 2,142 posts, it's crazy to think that doing more of the same is going to make anyone happy. It's also not as if the usage pattern of the blog is that it's anyone's first read.

So, no more sleep-deprived nights to fill the hole. No more micro-blogs of games. Labels for posts are going to take a walk, since they increase the scroll of the site and I'm not really interested in having that happen anymore.

In all likelihood, you'll get less work but more long pieces. Blogrolling links that have little to do with sports. Stuff that I write just to get out of my head, rather than to get the attention of some linking angel.

The pre-40 Shooter would welcome your comments and feedback on such matters, since you have many other choices to make in Blogfrican reads, and it's not like a writer really wants to antagonize the audience.

The post-40 Shooter?

He'll be turning off the comments (or, well, moderating them), because He. Could. Not. Give. A. Shit.

Play me out, boys.