No More Limousines

No More Limousines

And thus it ends.  I tendered my resignation to Around the Foghorn this morning at 3:58AM, after laboring for an eternity on it.  Well, actually, it was closer to fifteen minutes.   The time-frame may hint as to why I will no longer sport the mantle of intrepid sportster for a glitzy sports rag.  I haven’t been getting much sleep anyway, it being spring and I, of course, being mired in March Mania.  But this non-paying gig is taking my insomnia to a whole new level.

It goes without saying that I will miss the limousines and the flashbulbs, and of course, hobnobbing with my pals Timmy, Hunter, The Buster and all the rest, but I figure I’ll see them on the tube, up close and personal, and isn’t that about the same thing?  

It’s no one’s fault.  I simply cannot access the technology, even though I gave it my best shot.  I invested more than a thousand bones to take a road-trip to Redding so as to learn from the master, Jack Thomas.  He hooked a brother up and we went through all of the components and I took the test.  Great success!  I passed it and thought I was in like Flynn.

The one thing I still can not do is gain access to word-press.  It’s all about those user names and passwords, the bane of my  existence. I struggled prior to going to Redding, to even gain access to the fansided site, which is the umbrella site for Around the Foghorn and 251 other cyber publications.  I finally asked the editor how she accessed it and she gave me my user name, markoneill, and that was that.  So simple.

I had tried upper-case M and O, spaces, apostrophe and then no apostrophe; I had tried a lot of things but to no avail.  It just does not come naturally.  So I am not surprised to be bailing out-just supremely disappointed.  There is just no one available to me, who can provide the tutoring I require.  Consider me a “special-needs” kind of guy, because that’s the closest assessment I can provide.

Now there is great excitement at ATF because the pageview numbers are way up.  Even a fellow who came on board after me sent out an email to this effect.  I just feel left out and it’s a disconcerting feeling.  I try to stay grounded on a day-to-day basis, so as not to get too far out there, and I’m pretty hyper-extended right now, so before I blow a head-gasket (much worse than the one under your car’s hood), I’m going to shut the engine down. 

In all fairness the editors have been very patient with me, including formatting my stuff so I could begin posting pieces of writing.  But writing is a funny thing-no matter how much I proof a draft, after it gets published, I almost always have to adjust something, and I can’t do that with ATF.  Or if it’s egregious, I can ask the editor to do it, but then it creates more work for her.

See, the editors both have regular jobs, and believe it or not, lives.  They actually do have better things to do with their time than fix my boo-boos.  So I sit and stew.  Stewing works well for tenderizing meat and potatoes, but not so well for a bipolar kind of guy who gets agitated when technology rears its ugly head.

The way I see it, words are words, no matter where they’re posted, so I’m just going to continue to blog.  I have posted more than a hundred pieces of writing on the Giants over the past two plus years on my blog and I will continue to do so.  “Mark’s Work” plus any title will take you to my blog, plus I will continue to comment on FaceBook so you will know when I have posted.  

Heck, it’s all in good fun anyway, so when I start to stress, I know something’s wrong.  Stress is for paying jobs, not for hobbies.  Writing is a hobby for me, and writing about the Giants is as good as it gets, because the Giants are as good as it gets.  So I’m stashing my anxieties in the locker room and returning to the field of play with a different tee-shirt, this one saying, “I’m giving up stress for Lent...”  lol.  

Besides, I was ready to bail anyway; I love ice cream and Hunter’s Paleo Diet won’t allow it, so this gets me off the hook.  See you on CSNBA.