Dream on hold…for now.

The primary reason I started writing this blog is to take a step back from my real goal. I have always wanted to run the premiere Midwest Hockey website.

Almost every summer I make plans. Well, actually make plans sounds a little too ambitious. Maybe its more like I make plans to make plans….to start a website that will be the primary source for Midwest hockey at every level.

When I first thought up this grand scheme, I realized as a relative newcomer to Wisconsin, I first had to figure out just what the Midwest is.

A quick trip to Wikipedia showed me that the Midwest is a 12-state region including (in the order I think of them and no other reason); Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas.

That’s a lot of states and a lot of hockey teams from pro, to minorand semi-pro to college, junior, high school and youth hockey.

It is a dream/fantasy/wish/desire that simply will not leave me. Every summer I think and imagine it and every fall my own shortcomings and difficulties shine painfully through once again.

The primary setback of course is time. There simply isn’t enough of it.  I am still a little more than a decade before I could even think about retirement and due to that, I have  to first take care of my primary function — living, eating, working etc. and since I have not found a winning lottery ticket, I need to work to accomplish that goal.

There are other drawbacks though — one primary being a lack of knowledge on websites. My best friend, mentor and boss said to me recently, just go learn it. Get a website, figure it out, it will become easier and easier.

I did that and it actually ended up being a somewhat frustrating and humiliating experience. You see, I was working with a site that was apparently dead easy and it bragged about how one could learn in minutes — or at least a few short hours, how to make a great website.

I went to work for some time and suddenly realized I had spent six hours working on the absolute basics and had nothing to show for it. With the amount of articles and pictures I wanted to get done, I came to the sudden realization that there just weren’t enough hours in a day to do what I wanted to do and make it look good/interesting on a website.

That was a discouraging and disappointing day for me. I guess I expected things to come much easier than they did. After all, I had newspaper layout experience.

That changes a few weeks ago when I spoke with another good friend and his wife.  While one is a successful and highly respected junior coach, the other is a successful businesswoman who has seen her tireless efforts to form her own small business pay off in a big way.

“You should do a blog,” she said nonchalantly as we were watching an NHL playoff game.  I thought about it and realized, I am not giving up on anything. This is a staring point, a chance to hone my talents and building strong base of entries while still to some extent living my dream of writing about hockey.

That puts me right here where I am now. I am so happy to have given myself an opportunity to spew about what I like

Who knows where it will go from here?