Happy Thanksgiving from Your CI Family

Baseball is pretty quiet every year at this time, which is great because it forces me to hit pause on what can at times be an obsession that borders on mania. For those who don’t already know, this is a side hustle for me. I’ve got a full-time job, which makes it difficult to keep up with breaking news and other time-sensitive posts. Same for the other folks who help us keep the lights on here, Cubs Insider is and always has been a passion project.

It’s probably more accurate to call it a labor of love because there have been plenty of times when the work is just barely outweighed by the desire to do it. I’ve found myself on more than one occasion wondering whether it’d be better to have someone buy us out and allow me to step back into more traditional fandom. Then I realize that — and I know how this sounds, but I say it as humbly as possible — that there is no CI if I’m not here.

The same is true of Jon and Michael and Sean and so many others who are with us now or who’ve come through our virtual doors over the years. A lot of little birdies have flown from our nest to do bigger and better things, which I think is pretty cool.

But none of that matters without you, whether you’re a loyal reader or someone who had a post thrust upon them by Facebook’s all-knowing algorithm and called me an idiot because you only read the title. You make this worthwhile because we’re doing it for you. I mean, yeah, I suppose there’s a measure of self-importance for anyone who writes with the purpose of public consumption — The world needs to hear what I have to say — but we need readers to keep the lights on.

Believe it or not, this little enterprise does generate some revenue from all those sweet, sweet clicks you provide. Yes, even if you hate-read and come back time and again to troll me in the comments, which is really strange and doesn’t seem like a constructive way to find joy. But I have to be honest with you, the blogger lifestyle isn’t all private jets and foreign luxury cars like the folks at Bleacher Nation would have you believe. Like Frank Schwindel, some of us still have to fly coach.

That’s why I actually have three jobs, the other of which is as an adjunct professor teaching online communications courses for Lincoln Tech. My wife tells me it’s not realistic to believe both kids will get full rides to college and my success on the SNKRS app means spending a fair bit on Jordans. I’m finding there aren’t really enough hours in the day to do everything I’d like, though it’s helpful to have a teenager who wants to work out and get better at baseball because it forces me to fight through bad knees and a balky back.

I don’t share this as some kind of bitch session about how hard my life is, because it’s actually very easy. My point here is to say that I don’t just do this for my family or myself, and our other writers certainly don’t do it for fame and fortune. We do it for you and we’re thankful there are enough of you out there to allow us to keep doing it through pandemics, lockouts, biblical losses, summers of mediocrity, and all manner of disappointments.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, please know how much we appreciate you.

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