The stories I write when I cannot sleep

For the majority of the past decade, my favorite Christmas present has been the same: The latest edition of the Best American Sports Writing series. The first one I received was from Bob Blubaugh, my editor at the Carroll County Times. I was a sophomore at the University of Maryland, interning at the Times, my magnificent local paper with a dedication to its eight local high schools and my beloved Terps that you don’t see much in print publications anymore.

I was stuck.

I was writing a feature on a man who was on some outdoors show as a crossbow hunter. Something like that, anyway. I had all the details, all the notes, all the pieces to the puzzle. I don’t think I have many extraordinary genetic gifts in life, but one that I do believe I possess is an ability for my brain to simply put together the puzzle pieces of a story, with little to no effort and conscious thinking on my part.

It just wasn’t happening for this one. So Mr. Blubaugh, as I called him, handed me a copy of the 2006 Best American Sports Writing.

“Take 30 minutes, read a story, then come back and see if you have any ideas,” he said. I did just as he ordered, reading one of the 25 stories that editor Glenn Stout and guest editor Michael Lewis chose for that year’s Best American Sports Writing.

I returned to my desk and, without thinking for an extra second about my story, the puzzle pieces came together.

It was the best feature I wrote that summer.

I still have that 2006 copy, and every year since, Santa has left the newest edition of the Best American Sports Writing for me under the tree.

This year there was an extra gift, one inside the book.

There was my name. And Eric Zaun’s.

On June 13, 2019, after two days of turning over and over one of the toughest moments our beach community has had to endure, the pieces had come together for me to write the most difficult story I’ve had to write, the one on Zaun, my good friend and roommate committing suicide. It came in the most unexpected of places: On a red-eye flight from LAX to Atlanta.

I tried to sleep but couldn’t. My mind continued to replay the memories — gosh, so many memories — I had with Zaun. The first time I toured his marvelous van. Living in his garage. Living off of canned tuna together, only for both of us to get mercury poisoning after we ate 20 or so combined cans in three days. Snow volleyball. Watching Dave Chappelle stand up, both of us passing out on the couch in the middle of it. Watching NBA playoffs, but watching none of it, instead peeling back the layers of our lives, talking about serious things, talking about funny things. Nights with Zaun and Katie Spieler.

I pulled out my laptop and began writing. I didn’t know where to begin, which is exactly how I began the story.

“I don’t know how to start this story. I’ve hemmed. Hawed. Started. Stopped. Written. Copied all, deleted. There were many potential beginnings.

“One was on a bus in Austria.”

And so I wrote.

I didn’t get a wink of sleep on that flight. When I landed in Atlanta, I put the laptop down, walked to the nearest Dunkin Donuts, took a few long, deep breaths, then ran the story on p1440 without looking at it again.

It was therapeutic, writing that piece. I wrote it mostly for selfish reasons. I needed to sleep at some point in my life, and if I didn’t write it, my brain, heart, soul wouldn’t be at ease until I did.

When I saw that story appear in this year’s edition of Best American Sports Writing, I froze. How long had I been reading these stories, from the legends of my craft, writers I could never get near or touch in terms of talent and ability? How long had I envisioned seeing my name in that book?

Was that really it, right there, just four names above J.R. Moehringer’s?

Better than any writer’s name I am near, it is most perfect that it is next to Zaun’s, whose spirit I continually try to embody and keep alive — backpacking in well-below-freezing weather, playing tournaments in countries that don’t appear on most maps, being me with the understanding that “me” won’t be for everyone, and that’s just fine.

It also helped me come to a realization: The best stories I write are the ones that keep me up at night, the ones where I cannot sleep, so I simply write at the hours I rarely keep.

My story on Eric came on a red-eye flight.

What I think to be my best story this year, on the enthusiasm of Midwest volleyball, came at 3 in the morning, next to a mountainous pile of McDonald’s, sitting at Chris Luers’ kitchen table.

My best works from a year ago came in the wee hours in China, and at a café in Israel after another red-eye, going on nearly 36 hours without sleep.

The first legitimately popular story that I wrote on this sport is what has come to be known as my “Man in the Arena” story, after I failed to qualify in Hermosa Beach in 2017. That came well past midnight, when the six or so people crammed into my studio apartment in Costa Mesa were asleep, and the only light came from the dim glow of my laptop.

The best stories I write are the ones that do not allow me to sleep.

The best stories are the ones I write when I am directly in the middle of them, feeling them, experiencing them, laughing or crying or smiling through them. Jackie MacMullan, the guest editor for the 2020 edition of this book, wrote in her introduction that “superb writing will live on, from inside a convent, a village in India, or maybe even a massage parlor in a Florida strip mall.”

Or a bus in Austria.

Stories need to be told.

I have a need to tell them.

Seeing my name in the Best American Sports Writing is a gift no money can buy. This year, writing has been, as you can imagine, slow. Without much volleyball, or sports in general, to write about, my income dipped to less than half what it was the year prior. I’m married now. Perhaps I should pivot, move into a more stable industry — marketing, maybe.

A good friend of mine, Jordan Cheng, once had a similar wrestling match with himself, not too long ago. Coaching beach volleyball is as difficult a profession to pay the bills as writing about it is. But he knows, with an unwavering faith, that this is what he is meant to do.

“If I’m going to go down,” he told me, “I’m going down for what I’m called to do.”

So, then, will I.

If I’m going to go down, it’s going to be from a smoggy town in China, a rainy island near New Zealand, a cafe in Israel, a bus in Austria, a ski lift in Italy, a sunset in Hermosa Beach, writing about the wonderful people in this sport.

It’ll be for the stories I write when I cannot sleep.