​I think I should start this post with saying I’ve been a Twitter troll. I’ve been that sports fan. Ya know the one that’s complaining about Butch Jones coaching or play calling or how Tennessee football is terrible…yeah, I’m the hot take queen. Or at least I used to be. 

I’ve always been a sports fan. I mean I have a degree in journalism and did seven internships in college all in sports. I covered Texas high school football for two seasons out of college. I’ll always be invested in sports, I’ll always tell sports stories and I’ll probably always have hot takes. 

But I will say watching Matt play at the highest level in his sport and seeing the criticism has changed my hot take heart a little bit. Now I have journalistic integrity and I know what to say and what not to say, but being at this level has made me second guess tweeting out a sports hot take. For the sole reason is all of these athletes have families. This is their job. They don’t want to go out and make mistakes or just flat out suck sometimes, but it happens. (I’m not meaning to sound soft. I’m just being honest in how my heart has changed on this a little.)

I thought about putting some tweets here that I’ve seen about Matt. But then I thought nah, I don’t want to give those people attention. And I already want to have a section at the end of my book one day dedicated to the haters. :) Now is not the time.

Shortly after we made Arizona home for the offseason, I sent my resume and some clips to a few newspapers here.
 
We got busy with baseball and training for my part-time job at Lululemon that I forgot to follow up. On Thursday (Nov. 16), I decided to forward my first email to make sure the email got through blah blah.
 
After my spin class Friday (Nov. 17) morning, I checked my email to see a couple responses. One response from the Glendale Star read a little something like this, “I didn’t receive your first email. Can you resend it to me? And also, if you’re available can you cover a high school football game tonight? Let me know asap.”
 
After re-reading the email like five times to make sure that’s what it said, my first thought was ‘no way. I know nothing about either team. I never even heard of these teams until right now.’ But then I thought ‘I can’t say no because I’m nervous or a little intimidated by the situation. I have plenty of experience and know what I'm doing.'
 
I think I would have felt a little better if the editor had read my work/seen my resume and felt I was OK enough... Still not sure if that’s a good or bad thing BUT I took it either way. Newspapers need all — random Jes —hands on deck these days.

We’ve blogged and vlogged a lot about Matt’s journey. I wanted to give a little blog update about my journey to my dreams.
 
While in Arizona, I worked Cubs Spring Training and ASU basketball games. I worked the gates, the batters eye and other stadium jobs. When this opportunity came along, I thought to myself, “well, this isn’t really helping me in journalism, but it’s sports and will make some money. Might as well.”
 
I had so much fun. And more importantly, I made connections. Connections I would have probably never made if I didn’t take the job. I talked (and got a business card) with a guy who owns an online media company in Chicago. He assured me I was on the right track and to let him know if I ever needed a job in Chicago. Anyone I talked to I told them about this blog and made sure they got the correct website address. During the month of March, I had more people visiting my website in Arizona than Tennessee (according to Weebly analytics). That’s awesome! Just because I shamelessly plugged my blog. (And you thought I was annoying on Facebook.)

My job hunt in Tulsa has been guided by Thad who I worked with while at the Progress-Index. Thad is the President of eType Services which is the company who is in charge of the Progress-Index websites. eType has clients in the Tulsa area, so when I left the newspapers, he told me to let him know if we ended up in Tulsa. As soon as I found out we were going to Tulsa, I emailed him, and asked for advice/any contacts he had. He actually gave me a call yesterday to let me know of a couple of people I needed to get in touch with that seemed interested. 

​I had never quit anything. Never.
 
(Wait, except when I was five, and I told my mom I didn’t want to go to gymnastics anymore because I already knew how to do a cart wheel...anyway..)
 
I thought I would never say it’s okay to quit something. Everything I’ve gotten myself into so far in life, I have finished. Or have moved on to something else. For example, I left my job at the YMCA in Nashville because I accepted a job at the newspapers in Texas.
 
But when I “quit” my job in Texas a couple weeks ago, I didn’t (and still don’t) have a new job. That’s why my dad said to me when I told him I was leaving Texas with no job prospects in sight, “sooo, you’re quitting your job?...”
 
He wasn’t trying to be mean. It’s a fair question. My entire life I have been taught to work. My entire life I have been doing something whether it was school, basketball, softball, babysitting or internships. And honestly, even I thought I would always just be working my way up, one job after another, toward my dreams.
 
I still am…just looks a little different right now.