Saving a Lifetime of Work

Last week, I found out that one of the publications I wrote for early in my career would shortly be taken offline. 

It triggered a visceral reaction in my gut, one I hadn't experienced before. I've been writing on the web for 21 years, and in all that time, I guess I never considered what would happen if one of the places I'd written for just up and vanished one day. I never thought about the words I'd written just disappearing into the ether as though they were never there. And honestly, it sent me into a bit of a panic. The words in those stories are my life's work. The stories are how I provide for my family. If they were gone, then what did I have to show for all the work I've done? 

I've been fortunate to have the career I have. I know this. But I also know how long it took to get here. I spent the early days trying to get noticed, writing hundreds of news stories, recaps and play by play stories for free, which led to a job with Heavy. There, I wrote from morning until night at my home in Las Vegas, traveled from one city to the next while knocking out mountains of fight card coverage late into the night, sometimes only stopping to go to the airport for my flight to the next fight week. 

And all of that led me to my current role with Bleacher Report in 2012. Aside from a brief period of time when I made a poor decision to overlook my passion for a huge salary and a management role with a company here in Austin, I've been with BR ever since. My job has evolved over time, but it's now at a point where I am incredibly lucky to have a role that allows me to focus on chasing deeper stories that take weeks (or months) of reporting and conversations. This kind of role is rare in the sports world; in mixed martial arts, it's a unicorn. An impossibility. 

And I've also been the combat sports beat writer for my hometown paper, the Houston Chronicle, since 2008. I read the Chronicle and the old Houston Post daily growing up; it's still wild to me that I get to work there. 

I know how lucky I am to be here. But I also know how hard I worked. This wasn't an accident; I'm where I am now because I worked my ass off to get here.

And I started thinking that I needed to have some kind of record of the work I put in. Something tangible. Something to show my kids someday when they ask what I do for a living. 

The end result is this portfolio. I'm going back to the very start of my career and capturing as many of my published stories as I can. Some are still available and are easy to save. But some, like the pro wrestling stuff I used to do for WrestleLine.com, aren't as easy. Thankfully, I have the fantastic Wayback Machine to help me out, but it's a time-consuming process. 

I was able to save everything of mine from the publication that will soon be taken offline. I've imported all the stuff I wrote when I kicked off my MMA reporting career back in 2006. I have all the stories I wrote when I wrote about music starting in 2004. All of these pieces are archived here, divided by subject (currently MMA and music). Those archives will continue to grow, and I'll be adding all the pro wrestling writing I've dating back to 1997 as well. 

But I've also started curating lists of some of my personal favorite stories. The first is a collection of profiles I've written on athletes dating back to 2008. I'll have new collections eventually for opinion pieces, news and other stories. And I plan on creating a list of the stuff that I consider to be my absolute best work.

For now, feel free to check out the stuff I've already archived here. All I ask is that, if you're reading the stuff from the earliest days, you keep in mind that you're seeing a writer who was still finding a voice and trying to be the best writer he could be. That's my way of saying that, as a writer, I had a long way to go back when I started. Hell, I have a long way to go today, 21 years later. But I hope you'll forgive the arrogant jerk who seems like he knew everything about everything back then.