Please enjoy!
How did Chicago magazine find my scorecards? How did I react? Here’s the story about how it happened.
The Cubs going to the World Series is enough excitement for any Cubs fan. My excitement got doubled over as Chicago magazine asked to use my scorecard as a blog post on their site, and credit me as the author. Sweet! Now I’m a freelance author for the reputable Chicago magazine.
And then the unthinkable happened. Chicago magazine commissioned me to do a scorecard for every game in the World Series! This is like a dream come true, getting paid to fill out scorecards. And having my work seen in a respected publication. My mind just explodes at the thought of it.
Admitting my fear
Part of me is a bit nervous. Will my scorecards be good enough? What if I have to write an awesome blog post with each card? Then part of me wakes up and thinks, “this is what I do! I can’t shrink away and hide in fear.”
It’s moments like this where you either embrace it or run away. I’ve run away from other projects in the past. I need to stand up and do what I do. Have fun with the scorecards. Load them up with trivia and drawings.
How did this happen?
How did Chicago magazine find my scorecards? Funny story. I accidentally tweeted about my scorecards to the wrong twitter account. I have about ten different Twitter accounts that I actively tweet with. The Twitter account I meant to use was @57hits.
When I wrote my blog post about the pennant-clinching scorecard, I went to Tweetdeck to publish the tweet. Every time you compose a tweet in Tweetdeck, all your Twitter accounts are listed. You just pick the one you want to use for that tweet. However, in Tweetdeck there is always one primary account that is selected by default for every tweet. Any time you want to make a tweet to another account, you have to first make sure to click OFF that default account.
Well, I didn’t click that default account off first. So my tweet went out to my @spudart Twitter.
That @spudart account has many more followers than @57hits. 1,412 vs. 76. Along with the larger following on @spudart, it also has some interesting followers. One of them is the Digital Editor of Chicago magazine, Luke Seemann @bikesarefun. He saw my tweet and asked to use it on Chicago magazine. The rest is history.
Lesson learned: oftentimes mistakes lead to opportunities.
Why would I be crazy enough to keep score at home? Don’t people only keep score at the ballpark? In the blog post tomorrow, find out why my brother and I started doing this.
I am so excited to get this 13-part series under way! It’s taken me over a month to write and design. Some day I hope to collect this together into a book.