Thanks for Reading (For 5 Years)

10/29/2024 08:00 AM

This will be my last official post at VEB.

Viva El Birdos is one of those great sites on the internet where you don't just consume. You think, you engage, and you actually get smarter. That's what's made it a cornerstone of the Cardinals blogging community and it's the first thing I noticed about it.

There are places to consume news, there are places to get stats, and there are places to get click-baity headlines, but if you want intelligent, thoughtful, analytical, well-articulated commentary on the Cardinals, there's no better place to get it.

So when I emailed former site manager Josey Curtis back in 2019, I didn't quite know just how in-over-my-head I was about to be. I was a college freshman at the time who was dabbling in baseball statistics and had all the writing tone of a cardboard box. In fact, these flaws were pointed out quite often at the beginning of my tenure.

I can't complain. That was for good reason. As I mentioned earlier, this isn't just any old baseball site. It took time...a lot of time...but I'd like to say that I got better from the first piece I wrote.

However, I'll let you be the judge of that.

Examining the Statistical Anomaly That is Dakota Hudson

This first article came out on September 8th, 2019. I had no experience with published writing and the only audience I had ever had was a few friends who proofread my high school and college papers and the teachers and professors that graded them.

That all changed with this first article. It wasn't good but it, and all my future articles, received the thing that helped me the most - public criticism. I was forced to put my thoughts and my writing out there for people to read and with that, naturally, comes peoples voicing their thoughts.

It was those thoughts and the constant engagement in the comments section that I came to value the most.

Viva El Birdos is the place I needed to really grow my writing ability and improve my thinking. It's the place where I was (and will continue to be) challenged to be better and dive deeper. It's the place where I learned to have confidence in my ideas, because I had done the work to formulate them.

That's something I will always be grateful for.

If you haven't caught on by now, this will be my last official post at Viva El Birdos. I've graduated college, gotten married, and started my first real job during my time writing at this site but now it's time for me to take a step back and focus on taking the next step in my career - getting my MBA.

Believe it or not, writing at Viva El Birdos is a labor of love; it's not something we writers get paid very much to do. I have spent far too many hours down some pitch shape rabbit hole than I care to admit and between my day job and night classes, I simply won't have the time to do that anymore.

So while I am stepping back, I won't be leaving the site. You'll still see me in the comments and, heck, maybe even in the fanposts too.

This is a great site with some great writers and dedicated commenters and it will continue to be that. Heather is a great site manager and writer. Gabe and Adam and Skyric are all great writers too. So are the recent additions to the writing crew, who many of you may have already known from around the site. I can't wait to read what the writing crew has in store this offseason.

This has already been a long farewell by my standards so I'll end it with a simple thank you.

As always and for the last time, thanks for reading.