Why we sold Nugget to Amazon

Thoughts about things we get excited about.

As a college student, I remember driving home late at night after big football games, listening intently to the sometimes muffled post-game interview between the head coach and the local reporter. I would hang on every word, paying attention not only to the quality of the coach’s answers but especially to the quality of the reporter’s questions, since the reporter was me.

The football games were between high schools, the nights were Friday nights, and the interview had just been recorded at the 50-yard-line on a Zoom recorder, then AUX-corded into my minivan’s speaker system so I could pick out quotes on the way home.

The articles would be nearly complete by the time the scoreboard showed zeroes, but I would still need to get back to Wi-Fi soon, so I could insert quotes and email it in. Games always had the potential to go long, and one night, I got out of the stadium way too late. About to miss deadline and nowhere near home, I pulled over. I whipped out my laptop and resorted to the only option I had left: I dictated the entire article over the phone, word for word, comma by comma, to an editor back at the office. Like the 2012 telegram that it was.

The past few years, I haven’t written consistently. And when you’re not writing consistently, you sometimes wonder if you’re actually a writer, or just an imposter with a keyboard, an internet connection, and an inexcusable number of Moleskins. It helps if you remember a Friday night in college, pulled over in the middle of nowhere, doing a phone dictation of a high school football recap that’s going to be buried on page B8 and read by absolutely no one, for an amount of money that will barely cover the cost of transportation. It helps to be reminded that you loved writing in a way that didn’t make sense.

I wrote then, and I write now, because the challenge of wrestling thoughts into words and sentences never gets old. I write because I love the inescapability of a well-made argument, and the rhythm of a perfect final paragraph. I write because doing so leaves ripples that we don’t see, bread crumb trails that we then forget about but leave behind for others, or ourselves, to pick up later. I write most of all because, to borrow a well-worn phrase, I love the feeling of having written.

I hope you find something worthwhile on this site, and thanks for reading.