So, if you haven’t noticed, I found a new job recently.
It’s been a pretty weird transition the last few months. I love and enjoy my work, yet because of just how quick the transition from “learn during the lockout” to “oh crap, there’s a book out in three weeks!” has been, I feel like I’ve been paddling upstream while I learn how to do my duties to the best of my ability. That goes for many areas of my life right now. I recently decided I want to go back and finish the few credits I need for my B.A., and possibly pursue a Masters or join a Creative Writing program if the financial situation is right. I also am still dealing with the fallout of losing both of my parents, an utter and complete diet change, and a few other alterations to come depending on variables that are out of my control.
One side effect of having columns posted on ESPN and joining the crew of a prolific sports company is that you tend to attract a lot more attention. For instance, I had roughly 350 followers or so when I left SB Nation Houston to join Football Outsiders. That number is now hovering close to 600. The first time Aaron Schatz, my boss (this still feels weird to type), tweeted my Twitter handle, my e-mail inbox exploded.
Now obviously, I’m no stranger to criticism. I actually tend to enjoy it when it’s well-delivered and presented in a non-confrontational manner. I don’t take it personally if it’s not. What I find funny about this is: the more “popular” I become, the less time I really have to care about someone’s grievances with a piece. Not only is this because I have a lot more on my plate, but it’s also because the total volume of the reactions to my piece tend to skew in the negative ways that everything on the internet does, assuming it’s fed enough eyeballs. I find myself sympathizing more and more with … athletes.
I’m not saying that it’s exactly the same thing, because athletes put up with this on a much larger scale, but once you reach a certain amount of time expended and public eyeballs, it becomes really easy to stop giving a shit about who says what. I have a self-awareness about it … I want my work to continually improve after all, but once you’ve copy-edited a certain amount of words in a week on a minimal amount of sleep, there’s only so much of you that cares about it until you can recharge your batteries. If you’re following me, I’m sure you probably follow at least one athlete on Twitter who will tweet these pseudo-inspirational messages. “God is great, blessed,” could be one, or maybe the generic quote about how you can only achieve greatness with hard work. The deeper into this I get, the more these pithy quotes read like “haters gonna hate,” to me. I feel like I understand (even just the slightest bit) what it’s like to actually have a public “celebrity” about you.
For example, we recently did an interview with 18to88. At the end of the interview, Nate casually brings up the fact that an earlier ESPN piece I wrote on the Colts had a pretty regrettable phrase in it: that the Colts fall last year was due to an “aging core,” which has some negative connotations about the performances they put up last year despite the fact that they were mostly pretty good. ESPN pieces get sent up a few chains of command, so not only did that line get off of my desk, it also got past Aaron’s quick run of it and the ESPN editor’s take as well. Obviously, that was poorly phrased and I was more than happy to explain my reasoning behind the line. I’m more than happy to take responsibility for screwing things up: I botched my read of Eric Weddle’s chances of staying in San Diego, called Harry Douglas “Henry Douglas”, and will probably flub a few more times in the future as well while I’m becoming accustomed to the part of the job where I cover the entire NFL, rather than just one team. Great critique by Nate, and presented in a classy way.
Below that in the post comments, we get this: “I think the quality of the product at FO has declined inversely in relation to their attention from the mainstream sports press. It just seems that 5 years ago they would have never thrown out unproveable things like ‘the aging core’ without some rational statistics to back them up.”
That hit me in an interesting place as someone who used to be that guy. Someone who used to critique other sports sites and say some things that probably were a little too far. I don’t think you have to worry about FO’s decline, as it is run by a smart and well-reasoned individual who has a great idea about what he is doing. This McCown guy, on the other hand, he could probably stand to get his shit together a little bit, yeah. You guys didn’t even jump on him for the fact that he didn’t point out Jacob Tamme as a potential successor to Dallas Clark! Aaron should probably light him on fire and go dig up the number of one of those other very talented people that sent in assistant editor applications, as he does in all of my nightmares.
I guess what it comes down to is that when you’re actually trying to create, you really don’t have much time to be bothered by something like this anymore. I woke up at 3 a.m. after a relatively sleepless night, and I finished compiling the predictions post about an hour ago. On a typical day in the season, I’d likely be facing about three pieces to edit on-site that went for ~5,000 words. Instead, my next move is probably going to be to do the routine chores of FO — spam comment deleting, XP’ing interesting things, compiling for Week in Quotes, and checking the mailbag — before moving on to the next ESPN piece and trying to make sure that one comes out better. After that, I have to make some final preparations for a podcast, schedule some appointments, run an errand to the post office, and take care of those pesky normal human ideas like cooking, exercising, and bathing. This is a relatively slow day. Which is why I have time to look at a comment like that and think about it.
All of which is to say: it’s really interesting that becoming more “popular” actually means you interact with readers less and less. I’ll save myself the five minutes of coming up with a good inspirational quote for you via Google. Might still need it.
Posted in essay, this isn't livejournal anymore
