I’ve been told that two of my greatest assets as a writer are my speed and my creativity, so naturally I’ve been staring at a blank screen for six hours and can’t think of a single clever way to announce that today is my last day at Yahoo Sports, after nine years as editor of the Puck Daddy blog.
This is a decision I made during the summer, and it’s been in the works for the last few weeks. I apologize for not being more upfront about it, but there were a lot of moving parts.
Simply put: I didn’t want to spend the next three years trying to recreate something that couldn’t be recreated. To try and maintain standards I set for myself, and for you, that couldn’t be maintained, given the changes in staff, resources and objectives after the sale to Verizon. This is very much my own hang-up, as I anticipate NHL coverage will continue to thrive on Yahoo. But it was an insurmountable one.
I know myself and how I work, and I’ve already seen how I reacted to the losses of Leahy and Cooper and Neale this year. It wasn’t healthy, and ultimately it was going to lead me in one of two directions: Overworking to overcompensate, which is my default setting, or into a cycle of complacency because we had built a machine that saw record traffic in 2017.
I didn’t fancy either option, because I also wanted new challenges professionally, and so I decided to leave. Which it turns out was the most difficult decision I’ve made in my career. But ultimately, I believe, the right one.
So to be clear: I wasn’t caught in (another) round of layoffs. I wasn’t fired for something I wrote, much to the chagrin of my new friends at Breitbart. It’s my decision to leave Puck Daddy before this season, and I thank my superiors for accepting it.
I know where my next career destination is. I can’t announce it quite yet, despite being extraordinarily excited about the opportunity. But you’ll be the first to know, officially, when it happens.
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Originally Posted by torontonyr
