Grinding Now

Now I've reached the point of grinding along on the new paper. The easy part, for me, is all the writing. That stuff is in place. Now I have to gut out the stat stuff. That's the Jeffio stuff. He always found it easy to rack and crack the stats in, but writing and editing was the bane of his existence. Which is also a credit to him, because, as a writer, I always thought his stuff was great. I doubt, as a statistician, he'll ever think my stats are great.

But, as he said to me the other day, 90% of the stuff that people want is very easy to pick out. So maybe I'm overthinking it.

The only comfort I have in grinding out this particular part is that grinding is sort of a way of life for me. And it's something I admire in hockey players. To me, calling a guy a grinder is the ultimate compliment. A grinder doesn't have as much skill as other guys. He cannot dangle. He doesn't have the same innate sense for where the puck is going to be. He doesn't instinctively know where his linemates are going or going to be in 3 seconds. But the grinder has something else in his corner; the grinder always works hard and always shows more heart than everyone around him. The grinder is the guy who goes in the corners. The grinder loves standing right in front of the crease. The grinder knows how many shots he's blocked. The grinder pukes a lot.

To me, the ultimate compliment is to call a guy a grinder. So I'll grind out these parts of the paper. It's painful and (apparently) not profitable, but I love hockey and I love the Blues, so I'll see what I can do. I also love football and I love these Rams, so I'm definitely working on that, too.

I hope it ends up being worth it.