I stepped away from education after thirty years in Oregon’s public school system. Although I have no regrets, things like the pandemic made it easy to collect my personal items and turn in the keys.
My lovely bride, Theresa, has been encouraging me to write a novel for years. But frankly, I didn’t have a concept that seemed to be… interesting. So I kept on teaching and broadcasting prep sports on the radio while enjoying the ride. Easy-peasy.
However, after dealing with the pandemic, the loss of both my parents, and my own COVID-19 experience—nine days in the hospital—I was left a bit rudderless. A retirement that began last June really didn’t seem real until late December. So how to spend my new free time?
And that is when I thought—why not write? I didn’t have a good answer to that question. After all, I am now retired. So I started sniffing around, but didn’t find any good opportunities until about a week ago.
I had heard about the substack website a couple of years ago, and then stumbled upon an avenue to write on their site just recently. It almost seemed perfect.
Truth: I already have more than a half dozen story ideas on my writing list. I know some of the subjects (people/events) fairly well, but don’t know the whole story behind their sports journeys. It seems interesting enough to spend time and effort on sharing those stories with all of you.
Truth #2: I am not making any dough for this work, at least to start. I have seen some brash young scribes rise rapidly above their peers. But being sixty years old, I have no delusions that I could be the first Grandma Moses or—better—Norman Maclean, who wrote his one and only novel—the “fishing and more” novel A River Runs Through It—at age 74.
So that’s it. Be ready to read some Oregon sports articles in coming weeks.