My life
Earlier this month, I bought another year on this domain and began a third year posting here. Back in February, I had my 500th post and am just shy of my 700th now. In July, I launched the self-hosted version of this site, which has left quite a bit of Google juice over at the free version here.
Anniversaries abound, so why not celebrate the end of another calendar year by noting the 10 best read posts I had of the past 12 months.
If the theme of my 2009 was slow start, the theme for 2010 needs to be next steps.
This past year wasn’t a great one.
I was blessed with so much (some of which I will be sharing soon), but my first year of freelancing was a struggle (though I remain excited about the freedom). I made less than $20,000 and don’t have enough saved for the taxes I need to pay.
While I think I got some great clips this year, launched a promising technology community blog and was part of a new hyperlocal news site, it’s clear none of those projects are on the verge of keeping me from being tax delinquent or getting into debt.
This year was all about a start.
I started a lot of projects. I learned a lot and wrote a lot. But it certainly all moved slowly.
2010 is going to be a much better year, to be sure. It just needs to be focused on bolstering these opportunities and others. My resolutions reflect just that.
Here’s to 2010.
Updated h/t
He was an ogre of man, slimy, rat-toothed and overbearing, with day old five o’clock shadow and a crunch of black hair falling out of a sun-weathered red trucker hat.
This man, maybe 45, was propped up on the aged bar of Quinn’s Irish Pub II, a neighborhood drinking establishment with so colorful a stable of regulars that they made this second one just up Frankford Avenue here in Philadelphia from the first. It was passed closing time, the lights were low and the rumble of the adjacently-running elevated train dutifully making its way back home to the Frankford terminal ended hours ago.
The bar maid, fair-skinned, with light-brown hair in a pony tail and a stain or two on a white t-shirt, had taken a seat and served another round on the house. She, the man, two other patrons, a buddy and I had fallen into a conversation of seeming interest to all those involved.
What do you do with Frankford?
Update: Today, Dec. 19, 2010, I’ve gone back and looked at my goals. It’s interesting to see a split and failure to finish most of these. Three of these resolutions I succeeded in meeting definitively and met in spirit a fourth; I outright failed at three, and two became un-applicable as the year wore on.
I also created personal resolutions and goals to manage on my new home in 2010, but with a new year, I want to set goals for my professional self in 2010.
After all, 2009 was a brutal year, so 2010 should be plenty better.
I closed on my first home: a worn, 1,110-square foot, three-bedroom rowhome in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia.
Today, with my father (and my real estate agent Mike Johnston) by my side, I closed on my first home.
Update 11/22/09 @ 12:06 p.m.: Signs of this enforcement from Philebrity and the Inquirer.
Philadelphia police are introducing a bicycle enforcement campaign beginning tomorrow in Center City.
Forgive the lack of a direct focus on journalism, the future of news and my clips on this, but, as someone who uses bicycling transport fairly regularly (to save money and get exercise, something any freelancer would understand the value of making habit), it’s an issue I take seriously.
If you’re down, read some of my perspective and watch a video about police officers in another city using “discretion” with such bicycle street-law enforcement.
Continue reading Bicycle enforcement campaign launched by Philadelphia police
It was sometime this month two years ago that, while still an undergraduate at Temple University, I started tossing around what I hoped to be a new tagline for The Temple News, the college newspaper on North Broad Street.
Weekly in Print. Daily online, I suggested.
I wrote it on a piece of paper and posted it in my cubicle, as editorial page editor. In the mid-1990s, our newspaper staff rather presciently decided to move from printing three days a week to just once, having already dropped from a daily a few years earlier.
The intent, a front-page story read at the time, was to reduce costs at a time when the Internet would soon be the source of all news. Gosh, they were a bit too early, but dead on. So, they’d update daily online and follow-up with the biggest stories weekly.
Continue reading Weekly in print, daily online: the new slogan of The Temple News
Every Election Day since November 2004, with an occasional exception, I’ve worked with the Committee of Seventy, a more than century-old political oversight nonprofit in Philadelphia.
I always come away with stories.
As I did in last April’s primary, below, I’ll share some of the best from last Tuesday’s election, a relatively low-profile affair, including just a couple citywide offices and a dozen state and municipal judicial positions.
Continue reading Committee of Seventy: Highlights of November 2009 Philadelphia election
Some great music associated with Philly sports teams.
1-2-3-4-5 Sixers played during 76ers basketball games.
“Going Back to Philadelphia” by Bobby Burnett played after Phillies wins.
Ill State of Mind by Neeko ft. Deanie Marie came about during this fall’s Phillies World Series run
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When my reporting career starts intersecting with World Series baseball — twice — why wouldn’t I keep coming across Phillies theme songs?
Ill State of Mind by NeeKo ft. Deanie Marie, as I previously shared.
Goin’ Back to Philadelphia, PA- A Tribute to the Phillies by Bobby Burnett
This is played in the ballpark after a Phillies home win
Fightin’ Phils by Richie Rosati 2008
Fightin Phils Anthem – Tone Love
Parading Down Broad Street
“Phillies Go Hard” by Jakk Frost
Others listed here.
