What I’m doing; what I’ve done

After 10 years, 4 months and a few days, I left USA TODAY at the end of March 2010. In my time there, I wrote about soccer, mixed martial arts and Olympic sports. I edited the online sections for soccer, boxing/MMA, Olympics, golf, hockey, high school sports and horse racing. (Not all at the same time, but many at the same time.) I dug into the technical side to help with IT work on our automated stats and scores. And I was a guinea pig on blogs, backpack journalism (with video), Twitter and some other things I’ve probably blocked from my memory.

I learned plenty and met people I’ll never forget, but it was a good time to go. I left after the Vancouver Games, for which I was the Nordic/biathlon beat writer after being called in to take over the online prep work with three months to go. I have other projects I want to pursue, and I hope to continue the most enjoyable part of my job — writing — as a freelancer.

The rest of my agenda, in no particular order:

My new blog, sportsmyriad.com
More family time
Promoting my book, Long-Range Goals, The Success Story of Major League Soccer
Working on another book, likely comparing sports fans across cultures and generations
Starting a blog not related to sports. Details tba and tentative
Freelancing elsewhere

If you want to hire me as a freelancer but failed to catch any of my writing for the national newspaper and its Web site, you might want to check out my work portfolio.

A few highlights, not necessarily the very best of my work (others can judge that) but offering a wide sampling: