Linguist By Day-Soccer Blogger By Night

I’m sure many people here on The Offside have done a post on ‘blogging’ in general (why they got into it, why they do it, etc).

As all of you may know (and if you don’t, you will now) in my real life, I’m a Ph.D Linguistics student at the University at Buffalo. (Gasp, I do have a real job)

Well, someone from our student newspaper at UB ‘The Spectrum’ got wind of me, somehow, and approached me to write a story (mostly on the site Center Holds It) that I set up last August.

The piece was entitled ‘Soccer blogging, haven for hooligans’ (which I found to be a rather amusing title). I first read it online and was pleasantly surprised about the article, but when I read it in print today upon arriving in my office at school, the picture in the actual paper is gigantic. Seriously, its huge.

I guess doing this little interview,I never even imagined starting a small blog last year would have led to being sent free stuff, a bit of advertising revenue, and an interview on Spanish Radio (and soon with MARCA about the Sevilla Peña that was founded in the United States).

This soon brought me to realize something. I have absolutly no formal training in writing, aside from the mounds of research papers, conference presentations and abstracts I’ve written in my academic life. Yet, someone can start a blog, write about whatever they feel like, find a following, and take it from there.

I can’t be the only one that has had this realization. I mean, The Guardian said The Offside is the 35th most powerful blog in the Universe!!! (cue music)

Which is why I’m taking this time to write this post, So what kind of double lives to the Bloggers out there live? How did you get your blogging start?

I started blogging, last year when I lived in Spain to keep my family cued in what I was doing when I lived abroad. Then it started going into the Buffalo Sabres, and finally, I went to my real love, football.

So let us know why you do it.

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Category: World Football