It started as an office rumor, grew into an eventuality — a matter of ‘when’ instead of ‘if’ — and then it was “OK, really … WHEN?”

At the behest of my editors, I doodled out some blog posts in April, but the new site wasn’t ready yet. For a while, we weren’t sure when it would be up and running. It’s not as easy as going to blogger.com, registering a kick-butt handle and getting all emo on the world. While our tech wizards laid a foundation, the JJC blog thing went back to being something we’d eventually do, but maybe not so soon.

Maybe August, they told us.

I relaxed. Not that I wouldn’t enjoy blogging, but I didn’t want the task of logging daily local sports content through June and July, when there’s too little of it going on. Here’s a sample of what I’d be reduced to writing about:

“The sprinkler system at the Jacksonville High football field seems to be working alright. I drove by the place this afternoon, and got to watch the water come on a few times. I kind of wanted to strip down to my shorts and go jumping through the sprinklers for a while. But thought better of it. Wouldn’t be professional. Wouldn’t be any fun explaining myself to coach Grounds if he caught me. Tomorrow, I’ll drive over to the JHS Bowl and check out all the available parking spaces.”

I definitely think blogging is the way forward, but I welcomed a summer reprieve.

So much for that. Suddenly, the new site’s up and our editors want blogs. They want blogs now. Do the readers want blogs? I hope so. Anyway, I’m giving myself a head start — just in case I need it.

“It doesn’t have to be much, Brian,” my sports editor Dennis Mathes once told me. “But try to write a few paragraphs every now and then. Anything you want — as long as it’s about local sports.”

As long as it is about LOCAL sports? The same stuff I write about in the newspaper for 10 months of the year? It’s not enough that I eat and sleep local sports? Now I have to start breathing it too? Fine. But I’m doing this my way.

So help me, this is not going to be your typical good-ol’-boy/sportswriter blog. No sir. I shall not come on every day and illuminate the world with pithy observations like, “Yeeeap, Pittsfield’s sure got some big ol’ boys this year,” or “Wow, that new gymnasium at North Greene sure can hold a lot of people.”

No, no, no.

What will I write? I’ve no idea. Yet.

But I betcha’ I’m gonna have one tomorrow.

Post from: World Wide Webster