A new season of life begins

It’s 8:30 in the morning, and I’m sitting on my porch, reading an excellent book titled ‘Educated,’ a gift from Jon Mesko. This might not sound strange or all that different to you, but it is an odd time for me to be going through this phase of my morning routine.

Typically, I wake up between 5:30-6:15 in the morning. I make a gigantic mug of ginger-turmeric tea, which I drink while reading either three chapters of the Bible or Book of Mormon. Then I switch to coffee, which I’ll drink while journaling and reading, usually a Sports Illustrated or one of my dozen volumes of Best American Sportswriting of the year.

Then I’ll write and, ideally, I’ll have my first story finished and sent off to p1440 and VolleyballMag.com by 8 a.m.

That is a typical start to my day, though the phrase “typical day” is a bit of an oxymoron in this age of lockdowns, quarantines, and only-the-essentials. At some point, ideally not in the distant future, we will return to typical days, though for me those two words will have different meaning when strung together.

Yesterday was my last day as the writer and content manager for p1440.

Most have been surprised to hear that 1440 and I are parting ways. To be honest, I’ve long wondered how long the universe would let me continue hacking it in the blissful way that I have since I was hired, first as a freelancer in October then as a full-timer in January of 2019. For the past 13 or so months, I convinced myself that I had found some kind of hole – be it a loophole or blackhole or wormhole, whatever – that allowed me to write and podcast about and play beach volleyball for a living.

My life was, from start to finish, beach volleyball.

I’d write about beach volleyball until 8 a.m. I’d practice beach volleyball until 11 or so. I’d come home to my wife, whom I met playing beach volleyball, and eat lunch. Then I’d interview beach volleyball players, write more about beach volleyball, and go lift weights, in preparation to compete professionally as a beach volleyball player. In between all this, I’d watch beach volleyball on YouTube. Then I’d set up interviews and stories for the next day and we’d do it all over again, one hell of a beach volleyball Groundhog Day.

“Quite the life man,” Chris Austin wrote to me when he tried to set up a practice in late February. I was in Florida when I received that text, covering college beach volleyball, one of many indelible trips I was able to take on account of “work.” In my time at 1440, I had bylines from San Jose, Las Vegas, half the state of Florida, Hawai’i, every AVP city, Israel, China, Moscow, the Cook Islands, Mexico, Bonaire. I had only been to one country prior to signing on with 1440 as their content manager, an ambiguous title that basically meant: Create as much as you can on this beautiful sport. Then create some more.

That’s what I did, blissfully, hungrily, tirelessly. I was living in a garage when I accepted the job, one in which I was on salary for the first time since I was 24. 

The garage days, one could say, were over.

It was the first time in my life I hadn’t lived basically paycheck to paycheck. Writers do not make a ton of money early in their careers. Most don’t make much late in their careers. You do it because you love it, not because it will one day buy you a Tesla parked in your garage – a garage you do not live in – on the Strand. I was no different. I wasn’t too proud to write stories for 15 bucks a piece.

And yet, beginning with my first blog post prior to the Huntington Beach Open in 2017, I had stumbled upon an entirely untapped readership market. A little less than two years later, a startup co-founded by one of the most successful people in all of sport, Kerri Walsh-Jennings, also took note of that untapped market.

Beach volleyball, the single most popular sport at the Summer Olympics, didn’t have any writers.

It had, and still has, barely anything in terms of content, but it does have a booming readership that is vastly unsatiated. I know this because I’ve seen the numbers. In my time at VolleyballMag.com, which was acquired by p1440 this summer, the readership, both on the beach and indoors, increased by more than 100 percent. My podcast with Tri Bourne, SANDCAST, is hitting new download highs most months. The college beach game, which is covered mostly only by each school’s SID, was, and remains, a latent gold mine.

So while I might be leaving p1440, I can assure you that I am not leaving the game. I’ll operate in a freelance capacity with VolleyballMag, and I’ve begun corresponding with the FIVB in writing for them.

It may surprise you that, given my abundantly blessed life since I began working for p1440, that I’m quite excited about this new season of life. I now have the opportunity to slow down. Take a breath. Figure out where this next chapter will lead, with my incredible wife, Delaney.

Now that I won’t be writing multiple stories a day, six days a week, I’ll have the time to work on some other bigger projects I’ve been excited about but haven’t had the time to really dig into. I’ll get to make some improvements to SANDCAST I’ve long thought we could make.

Maybe, for the first time since I was 16 years old, writing won’t be my full-time job. It’s more than possible that it will, for the written word is the brick and mortar to my life’s foundation. I’ll never stop writing. But a week in Cabo for Volleyball Vacations illuminated to me just how much I love coaching. Interacting with people. Being outside. Enjoying this beautiful game.

I get to enjoy it in a different way now. Not just volleyball, but my life.

I’ll read on this porch as long as I want to. No deadlines to meet. No interviews to record or transcribe.

Just a book, a coffee, and my wife.

A good start to a new chapter of life.