The Future

The Future is dying, my friends, and that's not a euphemism.

The Future in this instance is the Central Florida Future and it's where I got my start...and seeing as how this is where I will end I doubt I will be asked to give any formal eulogies but hey, maybe some people better than me are double booked!

You see kids, the first newspaper I ever wrote for, my college paper, is being shut down by the man, and man, am I really starting to hate that guy!  This August the fourth shall be the last publication of the means to my voice and that really sucks for a whole huge amount of reasons but because I'm self-centered I'll only talk about why it affects me.

This newspaper spring-boarded me to other newspapers which in turn spring-boarded me to other newspapers and they in turn spring-boarded me into jobs I was clearly not ready for but I can bullshit with the best of them and this in turn led to my existential crisis and I freaked out and landed on a unicorn stud farm.  All of that is true except for the very last part.

I was a God with this paper if only for the fact that when I showed up to an event and someone would ask, "Who are you?" I got to answer, "I'm from the Future."  I would then wait for them to tremble in fear and then say something along the lines of, "You know, the newspaper, that's how I got down here."

And now for some qualifiers...

Okay, first off, this was about twelve years ago, secondly I was a sports reporter, and thirdish, the landscape of UCF athletics a decade ago was VASTLY different.  When I went to UCF they were national champions...in cheer-leading.  That's not a joke, stop laughing, you're the ones making this awkward!

My first beats were track and women's tennis.  Track...and women's tennis.  I didn't exactly leap into Pulitzer territory with those two but it did teach me to be creative.  Then came women's soccer and women's basketball.  If you're starting to think I went to an all girls' school, sadly I did not.  It just so happened that I got all the girl sports and I really didn't mind.  Wink, wink, of course I didn't mind...

It's not like that though.  At the time I was there the girls' teams were the ones you wanted to cover if you wanted to cover a winner.  I told you I wasn't joking about the cheer-leading thing.  And also, and this is entirely my personal opinion from my experience so please don't picket my house, but the female athletes I encountered were more willing to actually talk about the game/match/meet instead of themselves...like most of the male athletes I encountered.

The better story in sports has and always will be what was accomplished by all and not by one and I think women get this a Hell of a lot better than men do.

My writing career, and everything ever after, including this blog, owes a great deal to the Central Florida Future and the fact that it won't be around to see me turn 31 means that I'll just have to go a present short this year.  DO YOU SEE HOW I COPE WITH PAIN?!  

It was fun to reminisce with you kids about the old days one last time...I guess I'll get back to shoveling unicorn poop into a large mound unto a vastly smaller wheelbarrow that's just begging for trouble...sigh...