Hey folks…long time, no talk…or write…literally.
As some of you know, I left HawkeyeNation.com in late December of 2019. The primary reason was that I needed a break…and needed to focus on my day gig as I had a start up company with two partners and I could not take my eye off the ball.
That, and I just needed a break from what I was doing…the rut, the routine, I was just going through the motions…I needed a reset. And I had no idea how long that would be.
Then, COVID.
We all have a ‘then COVID’ story or two, I would imagine. After having spent two and a half months off of twitter (from posting, at least), the US went into COVID lockdown…and while I am not a super social person at this stage of my life, COVID took options off the table…and I found myself desiring online interactions with you all…well, many of you. Most of you.
During that short hiatus, which followed an embarrassing (in hindsight) ‘Goodbye’ series of pods, I knew that I would want to ‘come back’ some day…long form talk was just too much a part of who I had become to want to leave it forever…perhaps an addiction…perhaps a dash of narcissism, I will admit….but a narcissist wouldn’t be able to admit that, so I don’t believe I am too far gone.
Plus, I felt a desire to write and talk about things other than sports. Some of you have not liked that, where others seem to have received it well enough and most likely do not care…again, a narcissist wouldn’t write that, would he? Am I just trying to trick myself here? Possibly.
So I tweeted about things not related to sports a lot more than I ever had, during the summer of 2020…and frankly, there were things taking place that summer that had not been seen or experienced in this country since at least the 1960’s…I wasn’t tweeting about those things because I felt that I was important and that you had to consume my thoughts…I just had to get things out of my head. Had to. It’s how I process, synthesize and probably even cope with chaos in the world.
I am big on controlling the controllables…taking care of the things I can take care of…it’s those things I cannot control that can push me towards a degree of tilt…and my form of catharsis is writing and talking…I have done a LOT of writing these past two years…several hundred pages in fact, if I put the words into book form…sort of an online diary…but I have kept those words private, and likely will remain as such. They were a snapshot in time and words I needed to get out.
I have shared a few things on twitter…and that will likely continue. However, my challenge to myself is to say things more respectfully, debate more even handedly and make less attempts at trying to dunk on people when the window of opportunity is there….and frankly, it’s there a lot. However, I just don’t want to become an asshole…or rather, (if I am being honest, which I am), I’d like to become less of one. I know I am going to stumble along the way, so thanks for the grace.
I am not convinced that I will be able to eliminate all of the edginess that has taken hold in my gray matter, nor am I convinced that I want to eliminate it all. There are times when the nuclear option need be explored (such as when bigots and racists do bigoted and racist things on my timeline). But since most people don’t say such things, I don’t need to retweet and make example of @jimbosmamma428 who has 10 followers because they said something real stupid.
OK…that was a ramble…I have not just buried the lede here, I have covered it with ten meters of concrete.
I am changing my twitter handle from @hawkeyepodcast to @jondmiller. This is hardly newsworthy, but I just wanted to alert you when you see tweets on your timeline from @jondmiller, which you had not followed….you did follow @hawkeyepodcast, and I just ‘transferred’ that following list from one account to the next, as I don’t intend to do much differently over the next few years than what I have been doing.
I won’t likely be producing any content on this website any more, and will probably release just one more podcast on the hawkeyepodcast rss feed, in the coming weeks and before football begins, which will be a verbal version of what I have written here…
However, I am not done podcasting. I am going to be podcasting this fall (at a minimum and likely the winter), and the majority of it (80% at least if not more) will be related to sports….there will be a reaction podcast after each game, just maybe not instant. I may record them on Sunday nights before your Monday commute. Two reasons for that:
- It will allow me more time to think about what I saw and provide (I hope) better analysis and reduce the risk of stupid, instantly emotion snap judgements. While that can be entertaining, those judgements are not always correct or on point.
- I don’t want to be obligated to watch games live on Saturdays. I love golf…like, a lot. And Saturday’s in the fall in KC can be fantastic….and my youngest daughter is also taking up the game….so I want to reserve the option of time-shifting my Iowa football viewings…the reality will likely be that I still watch and tweet the games live….but…I just want that out.
I will also record an episode late in the week and before the next game. More on this later on…so a couple of pieces of content per week.
Then, at least once a month, I plan to be a part of something that is probably outside the scope of sports. You’ll be able to decide if that stuff has any value to you….or if any of this has any value to you….if it does, great and I appreciate your listening. If it doesn’t, no worries…we all have different tastes…and some of you may have simply grown tired of me after all these years. I can accept that, such is the way of things.
I haven’t grown tired of it…and again, being transparent here, my present desire is that when I begin my final act of….whatever it is I do with words…when I begin that final act, in earnest, at some point in the next five to ten years, after I retire from the day job….my final act will still involve podcast and writing, but I will not be just sticking to sports. I imagine that talking about the Hawkeyes is always going to be something I have a desire to do….I just believe that other topics are going to become important to and for me. But such things will wait for me to grow into the better human I aspire to be before I truly wade into those waters…or at least, a human who is better at agreeing to disagree as opposed to going nuclear….but again….I will still be in possession of those codes, should the need arise.
Temet Nosce.
See you @jondmiller, and more info on what is to come will be shared over the next month….if any of this stuff makes you think ‘I’d rather tap out, Miller. I have had my fill of you’, be sure to unfollow @jondmiller on twitter. It won’t hurt my feelings because after all, I’ve unfollowed some of you. The volume of my tweets will still be considerably less than they were before my first ‘retirement’ in 2019. The day gig is still priority one for me, and twitter is an escape…but I believe I have found a proper balance, where I can enjoy the escapism from twitter on my terms, and it not take away from priority one. Thanks for reading this take care.
