Those who have known me for a majority of my life would tell you I had two gifts growing up… drawing and writing. The last piece of art that I produced was completed in May of 1998 and hopefully still hangs on an old friend’s wall in Hoover. The last piece of composition that I produced that wasn’t a school assignment was July of 2000… That was until July of 2011 when I wrote my first “Tails From the Road” piece for a new blog I had started.
Looking back at it now, I find it hard to believe that I went eleven years without composing something of meaning or importance outside the classroom. It really makes me sad when I think about all the things I could have or should have written about. I might have to slowly start telling some of those stories over the next several months. As for the art, I still haven’t picked up the pencil and started drawing… I’m not sure I ever will.
Today’s challenge is staying regular when it comes to writing and blogging. I’m sure several of you opened this blog expecting something different because of my mother and her special tea… but that’s a story for another time. Last year, I composed all the material for the now defunct Tiger Tail Team website. Every week, I wrote a story about the prior weeks adventures as well as my weekly predictions. I pretty much did all the writing. However, they certainly wanted to read everything before I published it (which is understandable). What I did not appreciate was one of the particular people wanting to act as an editor on anything and everything I published.
The whole process got extremely exhausting. I was gone every weekend. I spent Sunday afternoons and Monday nights writing a 2000 -2500 word “Tails From the Road” piece. Then on Thursday, I would compose a 1500 – 2000 word politically incorrect prediction piece. Averaging 4000 words of composition a week for a hobby took its toll.
The first week of the tiger tail team website, it got a little over 200 hits on the pieces I produced. I got very excited. Two weeks later, that number was over 2000 hits. By the end of the season when I stopped, it was closer to 3000 hits a week. All told, the website got over 16,000 visitors in about a three month period. My stories ran concurrently on another website as well. That blog produced a staggering 60,000 hits last year.
By December, I was burned out. I had some amazing adventures, but those I was involved with did not share the same dream or vision for the venture that we had started together. We have since gone our separate ways. One day I will take the time and explain that story, but part of it is still playing out.
One of the best things to come out of the whole adventure/ordeal was that I had rekindled my passion for writing. I started this blog which you are reading shortly before the new year. The challenge has always been to find something that interested me enough to sit down and write. I’ve updated it on a very irregular basis, but I’ve kept it much more personal. I’m planning on keeping it that way…
This last summer, I decided I wanted to continue to still write about college football. Looking back through the old websites statistics, I discovered that the predictions part of the website were popular among people from other teams (“Tails From the Road” was very much an Auburn thing). They would read the “Tails From the Road” story that involved their team, but they would keep coming back for the weekly predictions. One of my goals was to write to a wider fan base than just the Auburn one. Writing a weekly predictions for all SEC teams would provide me with an avenue to do so. The predictions were one of my favorite things to write, hence www.jppredicts.com was born.
I can’t tell you the amount of time it takes that goes into the predictions every week (actually I can). It’s very time consuming and at times, there are a thousand other things I would rather be doing. The challenge is to produce something that is humorous, doesn’t cross too many invisible lines, and some how remains accurate. It’s not as easy as it sounds. I’ve picked up a couple of friends along the way to help me along this adventure (Ash and Honest Abe). I’m not sure where it is going, but it continues to grow. Many of you who read this post also read the politically incorrect predictions. The best thing you can do to help us is to like our Facebook page and “share” and “like” our posts and stories. It helps us grow and we want to keep growing. By doing so you can help us stay regular when it comes to posting new material.
Until next time…
Final Thoughts on a First Impression 