Laughing Catholic

That was the first major, telecommunications and film. However, after one semester as an intern at the Fox-6 Birmingham morning show Good Day Alabama, I decided the whole TV thing wasn't really for me. 

Another important event was happening to me around the same time: I lived for two years in a dorm at the University of Alabama. As a result of this, I began to watch a ridiculous quantity of sporting events on television and drank a staggeringly large amount of inexpensive beer. These events, coupled with my disappointment in the world of television led me to decide that instead of a mega-star TV writer turned talk-show host, I would write Bud Light commercials and live in comfortable but hilarious obscurity. 

And, I'd still be writing. Or so I thought. The more classes I took in advertising, the more I realized how little writing and how much selling I would end up doing in the ad industry. Also, I began writing for Dateline Alabama, an on-campus news Web site run by the journalism department at UA. From there on out, it was journalism all the way. I got a degree in it, I wrote for Dateline and then the Crimson White. I wrote sports stuff and news stuff and funny stuff and things that got picked up here and there and things I doubt my father even read. I started this blog around the time John Paul II's health was declining, because the more I learned about him, the more I was inspired by what one little person could do on this giant planet of ours.

Then it was graduation, and off to a full-time job writing sports for a microscopic daily newspaper in Lumberton, North Carolina, a town that was so small it squeezed you down to fit inside it. I wrote for that rag for 19 months, and that was the only writing I did during that time. Nothing about my faith, nothing on the two novels I have perfectly laid out in my head, nothing but little Johnny's baseball game, little Jane's softball tournament and the 5" tumor growing in little Casey's brain as he ached to get back on the baseball diamond as soon as his head was small enough to fit in a batter's helmet again. They weren't all boring stories. Someday my third novel will be about the trials and tribulations of a small-town sports reporter. (As you may have noticed, I don't branch out too far into the unknown when looking for subject matter).

Most of the writing I did in my spare time in Lumberton came in the form of cover letters and resumes designed to get me out of Lumberton. One of those finally worked in March 2007, when I was hired to be a sports producer at al.com. The amount of writing I was to do changed yet again. My first responsibility at my new job is and always has been to work in HTML code and update the web site, promoting the stories written by our affiliate newspapers. I do have a blog that they let me keep on the site, but that's after all the other responsibilities are taken care of. Also, the blog is about Alabama football, which is religion enough for some, but for me news of the third-string running back's academic issues doesn't rank as earth-shattering. 

So here I am, a relatively stable and easy job in tow, with a much more reliable schedule than the daily newspaper allowed. I think that means it's time to write about more than just football or high school sports. I hadn't intended to make this entry so lengthy, but I'm not going to go back and delete it either. Just allow this to serve notice that I'm back, that I'm ready to give this thing another shot, and that I'll try to be more diligent about posting. I'm still a writer inside, where it matters, so it's time to stop planning and write. Let's hope I have it in me.