From the Desk of Damo

Growing up on 30 acres of open country in southwestern Michigan, and spending most days and nights either playing or watching sports, I quickly learned that having dreams would get me nowhere unless I was willing to work for it. There was never a dream of being an athlete to make a living, but a combined knowledge of sports and an awe of the local newsies made things pretty clear and gave me a direction to follow.

With that in mind, I took my dreams a few hundred miles south down I-69 to Butler University in Indianapolis, determined to learn all that I could and eventually work my way into the media biz. I learned plenty, and after a few gigs at local television stations in the Hoosier state, I also learned that the traditional media just wasn’t for me. Sports however, were still the object of my affection.

At the lowest of lows personally, and just when I was ready to start over and try a different path professionally, a former professor at Butler University came calling…offering a tweak to my professional path. It was a leap of faith, but the nerves were tempered by confidence in knowing the person I was going to work for. I’m still working there today.

April 2009 - Las Vegas, NV

At WebStream Productions, I’m currently serving as the Managing Editor of the Horizon League Network. What does that mean exactly? Well…it means a lot of things. I attend a wide variety of athletic events for the Horizon League and typically relay the “who,” “what,” and “where” via video, to their website. Sometimes I appear in the work, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I’m calling the action live at these events, or I’m interviewing the big names from both on and off the field. I do a little of this for the NCAA at their championship events as well, but much less frequently. The opportunity to blog for, and about, the Horizon League presented itself in late 2008. Writing for print, so to speak, wasn’t something I had done in quite awhile…but I jumped at the opportunity anyway.

It seems that some people took a liking to what I had to say via text, as opposed to what I had grown accustomed to saying via spoken word. I think, in some ways, I blur the line between those to schools of thought…and perhaps that’s why my writing can be enjoyable.

Either way, in November 2009 I began writing for The Mid-Majority.  Great opportunities were mixed with great challenges as I tried to juggle both these duties with those expected of me at WebStream Productions.  Unfortunately, my time was cut short at The Mid-Majority.  I was relieved of my duties on January 30, 2010.

This site was created in July 2009, hatched from an idea that if others enjoyed what I had to say about college basketball, maybe I could improve my own state of being by writing about things surrounding my simple life. It’s been a tough realization, but I really don’t have much of a life outside of work…other than consuming my fair share of frosty cold beverages with an array of friends from time to time. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, but between bar-hopping every now and then, and living for the Detroit Tigers…there isn’t a whole lot in between.

I have sleeping patterns that perplex most who know me…a cycle of lying awake at night and not rising until I’ve completed several hours of hitting the snooze button. This is just one of several habits I hope to remedy by making the things that make me “tick” available for public consumption. From the Desk of Damo is a metaphor for the things I see, hear, and feel…and I hope you’ll be willing to share your stories as well.