Starting with "I"

I've never liked the idea of starting a sentence with the word "I." It always seems so self-centered, so "look-at-me." The funny thing is, as the youngest in my family and the only boy, I spent a great deal of my childhood running around saying, "Look at me!" As a grown-up, I'm not quite as bad, although my need to be heard is routinely met through my job as a sportswriter and columnist for the Standard-Examiner newspaper which is based in Ogden, Utah.
Anyway, since I've already broken one of my writing rules, I suppose I'll just press forward with my plan to introduce myself and my own personal blog.


At age 47, I'm considered a Baby-Boomer, born at the tail-end of that unique era in American history. Born in the middle of the 60s and raised in the 70s and early 80s, my childhood was easy by most standards. My father worked; my mother occasionally worked part-time, but for the most part stayed home to raise my two sisters and me. We lived comfortably, not lavishly. Still, we seemed to have all we needed ... in other words, we were an excellent example of a middle-class family.
My childhood wasn't much different than anyone else born in the mid-1960s. There were no cell phones, no Internet, no laptops, no iPods. We had a TV, but it only got a few local channels and using the remote consisted of someone saying, "Hey, Jim. Change the channel."
There were no fancy gaming systems, either.
For my friends and me, "gaming" meant riding our bikes to the pool on a hot summer day, shooting BB guns in the open field behind my house or playing golf at the local municipal course.
I was born in Utah, but my family moved to Kansas City when I was 6, then to Plano, Texas (just outside of Dallas) when I was 10. That's where I was raised and where most of my childhood memories come from.
In Texas, football is king and like most boys there, I happily played the game. I played it until I got into the 7th or 8th grade, then realized my dream of playing for the Dallas Cowboys would go unfulfilled. Of course that didn't change my love of sports, it just meant I'd have to find a different way of expressing it. Fortunately, I soon found the newspaper. Everyday I'd read the sports section and as I got older I realized I wanted to be a sportswriter.
One day, when I was in high school the sports editor of the local newspaper paid a visit and said he was looking for someone to cover junior varsity football games on Thursday afternoons. I jumped at the chance and really never looked back. Honestly? I was a really hyper kid and a mediocre student who struggled to stay focused on anything. Amazingly, though, I never lost sight of my desire to have a career in journalism. Now, here I am, more than 30 years later, still living the dream.
If you're interested in following my work as a sportswriter and columnist, feel free to do so at www.standard.net. That's where I cover the Utah Jazz and write two or three opinion columns a week. For more about me and my life as a middle-aged husband, father, son, brother and friend, keep reading my blog.
I promise not to write anymore sentences that begin with the letter "I."
Oops.