Justin Jacobs

It may only be a week since I came back to WordPress after a rather long layoff, but I was shocked when I got a notification while working under-the-hood on the site that today is my 16th anniversary blogging here!

My first post all those years ago was about Roger Clemens lying about his steroids use. Looking back at that post now is like hopping into an internet time machine. Just look at those tastefully rounded corners on the border of the content. Look at those beautiful hypertext links, including a dead link that, presumably, went to Bill Simmons ESPN Page 2 column. Just seeing an RSS button in 2024 is enough to bring a tear to my eye.

In the decades since that first post I went on to write hundreds of blogs with an old high school friend, mostly sticking to sports. We had a fair amount of success with Grind It Out Sports, getting posts we wrote to show up in USA Today’s sports blog as well as SI.com’s Extra Mustard (their version of ESPN’s Page 2 at the time). I believe we even made a few bucks in advertising money, back when even small sites like ours could manage that sort of thing. It’s been fun seeing so many of writers that had their own small blogs at the time make the jump to head writing positions at places like ESPN and The Ringer.

In the decade since I stopped writing about sports my time on WordPress has been spent mostly writing book reviews, talking about culture, and even penning the odd short story that I have locked in a dungeon for fear that exposure would result in death by cringe. In an essay I penned at the ripe old age of 29, I talked about my fear of getting older and losing my love for creative work:

I desperately want to make a connection to the world through my writing in the same way that most people are desperate to find that sort of connection in a significant other. It’s been years since I could say that I had a zealous passion for anything, and the only thing I can think about is the process of writing, because I am terrified that the even the slightest distraction will extinguish this newly kindled lust for life. Maybe someday I will meet a girl who inspires the same kind of feelings that I have for the written word, but until that day comes I am going to keep my head down and continue the hone the craft that I feel I was put on this Earth to do.  You can call it a fools love, but it burns with the same ferocity of any Shakespearean romance.

This was a person who was definitely not getting laid. Six months later I would meet the love of my life and start a life that did in fact take me away from writing. In the decade since that post I’ve learned that the meaning of true love cannot be found in any number sonnets, Shakespeare or otherwise. Little did I know that I would meet someone who could pull me kicking and screaming through the Trump Years, a pandemic, losing loved ones, the Biden Years and raising a child. The grace with which she dances through my endless hurricane of anxiety and orneriness is more impressive than anything I read during all those years alone.

To be fair to the old me, I haven’t kept up with writing, especially in the years since the pandemic. When lockdown started I thought it would leave me time to read all of the great American novels and at long last pen that manuscript that would for once-and-for-all prove that I was a capital-W writer. Turns out that when shit hit the fan I did what most people did: gained some weight, played a bunch of great video games, and held on for dear life. Those home made meals and nights playing Fall Guys with my wife sustained me.

Which pretty much brings us to the present day. What brought me back wasn’t so much some great longing to prove my old self wrong. I’ve lost any illusions of being the next Lauren Groff or Colson Whitehead a long time ago. Honestly I came back because I miss the act of writing. I hate how often I find myself mindlessly consuming content, whether it be on social media or otherwise. There’s something about taking an hour or two to hold an idea in my mind – whether it be a book, a movie, or some thought I had while walking with my kid – that is completely satisfying and restorative. That’s what writing does for me. It’s sustenance for the soul. I’m forced to live in a moment for more than a few seconds, and I have to reckon with it. There was a time, not so long ago, that the very idea of trying to examine any moment of my life for more than a second or two would have been a fate worse than death… but those clouds have passed.

I’m honestly not sure what this blog will focus on going into the future. I’m keen to read more in 2024, but who isn’t? I told my wife that I planned on trying to read more books this year than I did back in 2014. She laughed when I told her how many books that was (54). We will see. I have found myself with a renewed vigor for seeking out new movies and music, if only as an allergic reaction to my calcifying taste. So yes, I’ll probably talk a good bit about art, and life, and I apologize ahead of time but politics will probably worm its way into the conversation as well. Much like life these days the not knowing is harrowing and life affirming in equal measure.

So here’s to 16 years of writing, and the chance for many more.