Stay Tuned

Stay tuned. There's going to be some newness around here in the coming weeks.

I should be all out prepping for the NFL Draft. The home stretch nears, to unfurl the sports clichés. Thrusts and feints abound. Risers and sliders rise and slide.

I should be plowing through my Know Your War Room series. It's difficult and intense work pouring through past drafts seeking common themes, themes that match a team's successful or failed bid for identity.

And while difficult that work is ultimately rewarding and, more importantly, I believe, worthwhile.

But my mind is setting course for different destinations, not bobbing to the murmuring rhythms of pro football's offseason.

I think a lot about this format and this forum I've labored in, sometimes lovingly, sometimes not, for close to two years. (Christ, has it really been two years?)

Often I've surprised myself, no so much with the substance of my beliefs but the conviction of some or the lack thereof of others.

There is something alternately harrowing and cathartic about turning inward and prodding the head and heart critically for the true measure of your ideas and dreams and nightmares. So you love football – but why? So you think “x” - but “z”?

For me, the process of blogging has been as much about clarifying my ideas on the game as it has been about the game itself. This clarification is a minor subplot – not the dominant narrative. When I first tepidly began Fuhbaw I often joked that it comprised my coursework. The joke continued on a muted level until today with repeated metaphors to basic math or references to school supplies (the Notebook posts, for instance).

In every sense, Fuhbaw has always been a training ground, my own exclusive academy. I've found that focus useful, rewarding, but ultimately a little too exclusive, a little too inward looking.

When I first gave myself over to the internet (trust me, very late for a person of my generation) I sensed a thrilling but obscure glut of possibilities. My first internet love was the Spark. Does anyone remember the Spark, its true content now relegated to the internet wayback machine? One of those weird shining lights that simply wrote its own rules in the service of pointless absurdity (“breathable, deadly: pantaloons”).

I've never really done the whole two feet at once into the future thing. I'm a cautious and deliberate sort (note the use of both “cautious” and “deliberate” in that sentence). I think. I consider. I set aside. I obsess. I mull. I agonize. And I try not to subject the people in my life to this process.

So is it with blogging and me. Me as a blogger is me cast against type. I continue to be truly amazed at how rigid the format is. Take even the liberation theology/revolutionary manifesto/prophetic wail of Free Darko: formality abounds.

Boundaries are a virtue. They create space for inspiration to flourish. But not every boundary is suited for every inspiration.

Does this read like a letter of resignation? A middle-school break-up note passed in-between classes? A eulogy for a miscarriage?

This is none of those things.

This is a new beginning (there's those clichés again).

I don't want to say too much just yet as I'm in the early stages of this revolution (think “cycle” not “Bolshevik”). Suffice to say, what I will offer will be sportswriting fuller in concept, in content, and in completion. This isn't merely good intentions. This is a promise, more to you than to myself. Thus far, the promises have primarily been to myself. It's time to change that up.

Okay, Fuhbaw will be back all over the Draft beat shortly. Apologies for the blip in the feed. But the outcome should more than make up for the brief broadcast interruption.