Why not just have fun?
I've made no secret of experiencing some angst the past couple of years as to the direction this company should take toward the future and, within that, how invigorated I'd feel myself about that direction. Yeah, that'll come across as a little selfish, but stick with me here because that's not my intent. It's just that I've always got to strive to set a standard here, and that's a tall task if one's operating at less than 100% energy/enthusiasm on any front. Which I was.
I feel like I can trust this readership enough to share that without blowback. Maybe it was the pandemic, the universal loss of one-on-one interviews, I don't know ... but I'm being honest in saying I wasn't at 100% on the energy/enthusiasm front.
Anyway, I think I've found the solution: Smile!
Be more like this nutcase late last night on Sixth Street, Downtown:
That was nothing more than a moment. I handed my iPhone to Dali and just asked her, with zero explanation, to keep the video rolling.
I want to have fun.
That's it. That's the goal. In the singular.
I'm 55. That's not really old, but it's also not really young. And the greatest thing I can still achieve in this job, which I hope I'm lucky enough to do forever, is to be happy. Anyone who knows me knows I'm not the money type. (Seven years later, I still don't draw a salary here. I just pour it all back into baseball, so to speak.) And they'd also know I never had my sights set higher career-wise than to be everything I could be in Pittsburgh. (There were all kinds of offers from national outlets when I was at newspapers and even a handful after starting this thing. I never once even granted an interview. No move, to me, is worth a broken heart.)
Don't misunderstand, please: I'm as driven as ever to grow the brand, to grow the written component, to grow the podcasts, all that stuff.
But what I'm determined to embrace now, more than ever, is how much fun I have in doing it.
I have fun, for example, when I spend an entire afternoon with Ramon Foster, as the two of us did yesterday. He makes me happy. He's a tour de force of positivity. Better yet, we spent some of that time talking about ways to keep expanding what we're doing here. I'm hopeful that we will.
I have fun when our staff succeeds collectively. That's a joy for me, actually, way more than anything I do here individually. When Taylor Haase slays an assignment the way she did the NHL All-Stars yesterday in Las Vegas, man, that's a point of pride. It really is. She deserves all the credit, of course, but she's one of us, and we've all watched her grow up right in front of our eyes. I got a big kick this week, as well, from Alex Stumpf finding ways, against all odds, to deliver dynamic, original material on the Pirates despite Major League Baseball being in lockout limbo. He's grown up in front of our eyes, too, in his own way.
Eddie Provident's mostly behind the scenes, but he's been instrumental in this. I'm not religious, but this young man's a practicing pastor who's just ... too good for his own good in some ways. But I'll take it. I value it. He's going to be a colossal part of this moving forward.
I could go on. (And don't think because I didn't mention someone else that I mean something surreptitious by it. That'd be weird.)
This business can beat us all up with negativity. Not just from the outside, either. The venture itself and issues within it can do that. Heck, one's own personality can do that, as I've proven to myself.
I'm just here to say, directly to you, that I'm approaching everything now with a goal of being happy. If I'm having extra fun with this team or that team, this content or that, I'm all in. If there's a project, like this bricks-and-mortar headquarters/shop we're building, one that both makes business sense and makes me happy, I'm all in.
Here's more from that nutcase, also late last night, but this time on Fifth Avenue, Downtown:
The amount of energy/enthusiasm that's about to be poured into this company in 2022, not just from me, will be unlike anything you'll have noticed. And you will notice it. You will see the difference. From all of us.
Sorry for this getting somewhat personal. Just got home from the above expeditions and felt motivated to put it all out here.
Hope you'll stay with me on the ride. The most satisfying chapters are yet to be written.
MOM'S ANNIVERSARY
On that upbeat note, I can contrast starkly by sharing that I'll take a little down time later in the coming week. Meaning after I get back from covering the Penguins' trip to Boston. Thursday will mark the one-year anniversary of my Mom's passing, and I'm braced to invest fully in that.
By the way, she'd have wholeheartedly approved of the above message. I'm sure of it.
WEEKLY APP TIPS
Ways to make the app experience even better:
• Use the menu! I know that'll seem obvious, but there's a lot there, and it's easy to tell from questions we get that it's being underused. Everything's neatly organized, easy to find. As is the menu itself: It's the hamburger-looking thing in the top right corner.
• With every game coverage file we offer, there's an accompanying collection of a boxscore, standings, scoreboard and much more. All are rooted in our software, and we love what all of them offer.
• We're in the process -- ran a test this week -- of replacing the bottom right button on the app with a direct route to our podcasts. That button now takes readers to our live Twitter feed, which will move to the horizontal blue bar across the home page.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page views for the past week were 384,511. Our most-read original piece was Dale's coverage of Larry Foote's possible availability to the Steelers, at 48,619. Broken down by team, articles on the Steelers brought 29.9% of our traffic, the Penguins 21.3%, the Pirates 6.7%, Pitt 2.8%, and Penn State 2.3%.
• Our podcast downloads for the past week were 195,497.
• Our YouTube video views for the past week were 70,202.
• We're at 43,449 followers on Twitter, 37,612 on Facebook, 14,573 on Instagram, 10,825 on YouTube. These figures are just for our official company accounts on each of those platforms, not including any of our individual accounts.
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Anything you need, including lost/forgotten passwords, email: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com
