Almost another year has passed and I'm finally returning to my little blog. I decided to get an early jump on New Year's resolutions and make yet another sincere effort to write as close to daily as possible. Lest anyone thinks I haven't put thought to keyboard in a while ("pen to paper" is OH SO last century), I got an actual writing gig this past spring, and although it's not paying any bills yet (actually, it's not paying ANYTHING yet), I'm beginning to get my name out there a little bit. How it all came about is rather interesting, so I'll recount it here.

For anyone who doesn't know me, let me just enlighten you to the fact that I LOVE sports, but am most particularly a fan of women's college basketball. I have been a die-hard fan of Vanderbilt athletics since childhood, and they happen to have one of the more talented women's basketball teams in the country. They compete in the very best conference in the nation (the Southeastern Conference, of course) and I spent many years attending every home game and quite a few games on the road. I wound up becoming best buds with two of Vandy's best players ever, and the late 80's through about 2000 were consumed with all things hardwood. Alas, I became disenfranchised with their jerk of a coach and the way he treated his players, so my admiration waned and I began to pursue other interests. Although I let my season tickets lapse, I continued to attend the SEC tournament each March. With the caliber of teams competing in this league (each season, anywhere from 5 to 7 of the 12 schools are chosen to play in the NCAA Tournament), the SEC tourney offers some of the best basketball to be seen anywhere in the country. I get to OD on 11 games played over a four day period and I LOVE IT!

So even though I didn't get to attend a single home game this past season, I watched Vandy anytime they were on tv and happily made my way to Atlanta for the SEC tourney the first week of March this year. The fact that I got to spend time with my best friend who moved there in January, along with renewing ties to friends who support the South Carolina Gamecocks (no tasteless jokes from ME... nope, not a one) were just added bonuses to four days of basketball bliss. Because I had started blogging here, I had also begun to write a few things on myspace as well, and I decided to compose a few thoughts about the tournament and post them on my myspace since I had better traffic there (because, yes... at heart, all writers want to be READ.)

Upon returning home, I had to drive my 80-year-old mom to her dentist's appointment (mom gave up driving about 2 years ago, and all of Nashvegas' roads, intersections, parking lots and sidewalks are much safer because of it), and because I was tired from the trip home that morning, I just snoozed in the Jeep while she got cleaned and polished. About an hour later, Mom climbed in and said, "Dr. Lancaster asked about you," which was not at all surprising, since A) he's my dentist too and B) I haven't been to see him in about two years. (Yeah, I know... the Tooth Fairy is somewhere greedily rubbing her hands together at the prospect of having an adult victim to call on in the near future...) I assumed he wanted to see me ASAP and I muttered something about being busy when mom surprised me with "No, he asked me if you still hate your job." OKAY.... Let's just say that it hit me like a ton of dental floss that the ONE THING my DENTIST, whom I haven't seen in TWO YEARS, remembers about me is that I HATE MY JOB. Is it possible that maybe -- just maybe -- I've complained a little too vociferously about my own little personal postal hell if that is what people remember about me? Not my charming personality or my quick wit or my stunning intelligence or my ability to be conversational on a wide array of subjects... NOOOOOOO..... I'm the chick who HATES HER JOB. I tried to laugh it off, but moms have a way of recognizing whether a chuckle is truly sincere or just a cover for irritation. Needless to say my little titter was certainly the latter and not the former, and mom, in her infinite wisdom, recognized this immediately. Of course, mom herself has been badgering me for YEARS to either get out of this job or manufacture some coping mechanisms, so I chalked it up to her predictability that she asked, "If you could walk away from the post office right now and choose any job in the world, what would it be?". What WASN'T so predictable was my answer: before I even had a nanosecond to process my response, I blurted, "I'd be a women's basketball sportswriter." And while I glanced in the back seat to see WHO had actually burst forth with that little verbal fart, I realized that it had escaped my own lips. And I also quickly realized that any response that exited my mouth that rapidly without being spot-checked by my brain was probably straight from my heart. And why not? It combined two of my greatest loves: women's basketball and writing.

So, after returning home and contemplating a return to hell/work after 5 glorious days off, I seized upon a novel idea: my brain had been so firmly rooted in old-school ideas of newspaper and magazine sports coverage that it suddenly struck me that I could register a domain name and write about SEC women's basketball to my heart's content on the internet. I mean ... HELLO ... if hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of people log on daily to read about and discuss the trials and travails of motherhood or pet ownership or any other of a jillion different subjects, why couldn't I write about a subject I love so much and which is becoming ever more popular? So I set about choosing the most logical domain name which would garner the most hits (Repeat after me: writers write to be read), but there arose one itty-bitty problem: it was already taken. By a site that was trying to do what I wanted to do. Hmmm...what to do, what to do... In a Sopranos world, I'd buy 'em out or bump 'em off, but I don't think that type of logic works in cyberspace. So I did the next best thing: if you can't beat 'em, JOIN 'EM. I perused the site and had to admit it was structured very professionally, with a gorgeous design and intricate layout. It had so many levels I got lost, but the one thing I did seize on was the fact they appeared to be a little short on writers. To do a site such as this justice, the ideal situation would be to have "beat writers" for each of the 12 schools, and then have featured columnists tackle a variety of pertinent subjects. While wandering through the site I noticed a link to contact them, and on a lark, I sent an e-mail offering my expertise. After hitting the "send" button, I was immediately seized with a stomach cramp that was the result of that panic feeling, wondering "what the *#@! did I just do?!?" A day passed, and then another, and I had begun to breathe easier but yet admitted to myself that I was more than a little disappointed when the unthinkable happened: I got a response from the website owner, wanting to read some of my stuff. But before I could do my own idiotic version of a celebratory dance around the computer, I realized I didn't have anything to submit that was really for public consumption on a commercial website. The stuff I'd written on myspace was fun and fact-filled, but more a personal blog than true sports writing. I wound up exchanging numbers and phone calls with the owner/webmistress, and after much disclaiming, I told her how to navigate to myspace and read my SEC recaps/opinion pieces. When I didn't hear back from her after a coupla days, I figured she wasn't interested, and despite my growing disappointment, I had to give myself a congratulatory pat on the back for even putting myself out there like that, when voila: lightening struck twice. The owner got back to me, liked my style, and asked me to join her staff. The rest, as they say, is history.

In the past 8 or 9 months, I've written over 40 articles and am now the featured columnist at www.secwb.com in addition to being the Vanderbilt beat writer. Drop on by and give me a read if you'd like to see what I've been up to.