Building something

Hi.

Um, it's possible that some people reading this know that I not too long ago moved from Los Angeles to Chicago to take on a new professional challenge. I also wanted to shake my personal life up a bit (10 years in LA is a long time for a NY'er), but the main thrust was to go to Chicago and help build a new television entity.

It's not too often in your career that you get to work for a start up. And I figured that while I was still fairly young and energetic, I might as well seize the opportunity. And, after tossing my hat in the ring, and some protracted negotiations, I did land the job and gleefully accepted.

The cons - I left 10 years worth of friends of behind. Not just friends, really, but my new family. I moved to LA at age 26, leaving all my old friends and family behind, and it was hard, but it was an adventure, and I ended up forging some really strong bonds with some amazing people. This time, though, it will not be as easy...I'm 36, people my age are mostly married, have kids, etc....they barely see their own friends, let alone seek to make new ones. So, I've made a few friends here, and I'm grateful for that, but I left people I love dearly behind and it's impacte me 10x more than I ever thought it would. But, that's life, nobody made me take this job, etc.

The pros - Well, Chicago is a great city. I missed living in a real city enviromnent. I loved my time in LA, but I'm an urban kid at heart; I like hustle and bustle and people on the streets and restaurants and bars that are open late and trains and cabs, etc. Chicago feels a lot more familiar to me than a new city should. I got here at the right time, too...the weather had just started to get more Spring like, and all of the fairs and festivals that Chicago has began. So, from May-the end of June, I got to do a lot of cool things out here. Once July hit, I more or less spent most of my time here at the job.

But, the real pro is what went on last week. At 8:00pm ET on Thursday, we launched our new network. At 7:59pm, my network did not exist, then a minute later we're on the air. I've rarely felt such a combination of emotions on the same day....giddiness, excitement, fear, pride, anxiousness, fatigue, etc. I am so fucking proud of my coworkers.....many of us have not had a day off weeks but we're plugging away, building something we all can be proud of. And, sure, it's just TV, we're not saving lives, hell, not even close, but, this is our chosen profession and we take pride in it despite being realistic about it all. And it's fun. Televising sports is a joke, really, because we're getting paid to watch, produce, program, publicize, market, etc, a product we all love.

Then on Saturday we had a fairly amazing moment occur on our air, and it lead to our network getting a ton of airplay on major carriers. That's pure luck, really (or great programming, or so I'd like to believe) So, again, we had this rush of joy and pride at what we had accomplished and captured less than 48 hours after launch.

And now, we're on the air for a whole week and we're finding new glitches and issues daily, but we fix them too. Every time we debut a new show we're excited all over again. This Saturday, we have the busiest day of my professional career ahead of us, but we're psyched for it all........It's been a crazy ride up until now, and, I'll take my memories and feelings from this week to the grave.