This is kind of a neat setting to start out. You know, people go to journalism school in order to "change the world"; well, I decided this blog was a good place for my effort to do so.
Now I know next to nothing about blogging. The way I understand it, it's a lot like keeping a diary except you get other peoples' comments on it if you wish. I'm not particularly thin-skinned so I can accept constructive criticism.
I have a goal, well, maybe it's more of a hobby of mine. But I have many passions in life. Two of them are writing and politics. I cover the writing on everything from my "real" job (part of which involves writing specifications for architectural projects, a thing I really don't mind doing), to the frequent posting I do on the Detroit Tigers Fan Forum site (www.detroittigers.com). Baseball is another of my passions, particularly the Tigers and my old hometown Toledo Mud Hens.
But in an effort to "make a difference", for the last dozen or so years I would consider myself one of the more politically active people around. I used to be in the Toledo Metro Young Republican Club, even did a year as the president. I worked on I-don't-know-how-many campaigns, usually doing the grunt work like lit drops or getting petitions signed. I was a Central Committeeman for 4 years, which was a nice job for me.
If everything played out for me in a perfect world, I would make a living at this kind of stuff. Now if there's one thing I can do, it's write a lot. And people who know me certainly know I'm very opinionated, and I don't see a lot of gray except in my goatee.
Just for those who are curious, I moved from Ohio to Maryland this past fall for several personal reasons, not the least of which was being downsized out of my job. With that and the other changes in my life I decided to put my resume on Monster.com and move south or west. South won after I visited the Delmarva area and, if not fell in love with it, developed a strong case of like. It reminds me of northwest Ohio in that it's flat, rural with a lot of little towns, by a large body of water, and relatively conservative. It was either that or Arizona and I wasn't certain I wanted to move that far.
As far as a writing resume, I have managed to get a few letters to the editor published, most recently in the Salisbury Daily Times and the Baltimore Sun. But that's way too restricting to me - some papers only take one letter a month from a reader, and I have had the experience of half my letter finding file 13 as it were. I've also submitted what I thought was a great op-ed to gopusa.com but that hasn't seen the light of day. I think I'll post it after I finish this.
So here I am, now I can place a lot of words to screen and share as many opinions as I wish. And who knows, maybe someone is looking for the next Ann Coulter or Mark Steyn. I work relatively cheap...
