With The Rubber Match reaching its 250th post, I take a look back at almost eight months of daily writing on this website, and what I hope to accomplish on here in the future.
After over five years of working in news media back in Chicago, I wasn’t sure exactly what my next chapter would look like or how I would be able to continue to write.
While there’s no doubt that I was reaching my breaking point of working in the news largely due to the state of current events in the U.S., that didn’t exactly make things more clear on what I should focus on after that stage of my career.
In January of last year, my wife was offered an Assistant Professor position at California State University, Chico – an opportunity that exceeded our expectations in just about every regard, making it a relatively easy decision for my wife to accept the offer – a decision we remain extremely happy with today.
The biggest change for myself was of course figuring out what exactly to do with my life – continuing to work in the news in a much smaller market with pay that likely would have been half of what I made back in Chicago certainly didn’t make much sense, with not a plethora of other options in a city of 110,000 with an economy centered around a university and hospital.
After seeking out a few part-time writing jobs after moving here, I decided to pursue something I’ve always wanted and never been able to truly follow through with – my own website, with content ranging across all of my major interests – sports, video games, music, roller coasters and even a twist of current events when I’m not completely losing my mind.
Of course, a big part of this is being in a fortunate enough position to actually tackle this endeavor. I had previously built sports websites as a high school student and worked on them with friends at the time – but by simply being busy high school students, it turned out to be an endeavor far too ambitious for what we were capable of at the time.
In my current situation, I thankfully have the time and resources to keep something like this up, and I’m certainly glad that I have through 250 posts and nearly eight months.
What was initially born as a way to fend off my anxiety over no longer working a conventional job and making sure my days didn’t drift by with nothing to show for them has evolved into part of my daily routine, even when my wife and I have traveled in recent months.
I’d be lying if I said I’m 100% satisfied with the site’s output so far – there’s still hordes of content I hope to eventually tackle that still feels too intimidating and complex to start on many days, such as following through on my intention to review as many albums and video games in our library as possible.
Yet with that said, I’ve also let my day-to-day feelings and motivations dictate what direction I go next with content. Like many other people, my fixations and interests differ and honestly rotate over time, reiterating to myself in my head that there will be a time where another passion completely takes over my mind and therefore, my writing.
What I’m most satisfied with thus far is the overall variety of content I’ve been able to get myself to grow comfortable writing about consistently. After years of local crime and politics stories mixed in with a Cubs podcast every now and then, I’ve been able to expand what I feel I can functionally write about to many of my other interests that had little relevance to the everyday news I was covering back in Chicago.
Yet on the other hand, some days are easier than others to write. A large focus of mine has been to prioritize consistency in order to prevent burnout, which has held me back in past individual endeavors that turned out to be too ambitious – I simply want to do too much right away.
Though it may have taken me until I was 30, I feel like I have finally found the proper balance of ensuring I produce some form of content each day – whether it’s a day where I feel like I could write four or five stories, or a day where I’m greatly struggling to think of just one thing to write about.
The positive part of this is that I have essentially an endless pool of ideas to pull from, including building on content series that I have established since starting the site. In the world of sports, I hope to do more Season Spotlight pieces, taking a retrospective look back at an individual player’s season and what made it impressive and worthy of recognition. I also hope to eventually continue my MVP vote redux series, which had a few installments early on in the site’s life.
Another one of my intentions for my next 250 posts is to once again dive into an album or video game review – a process that is honestly extremely fun and revealing while in the middle of it, despite the difficulty of actually getting started. Though I expect my fixations to lead the way in terms of what content I tackle, I hope to deliver at least a few more album reviews by the time this site reaches its 500th post.
I hope to continue writing rankings of various topics moving forward, including topics that are incredibly frivolous (yes, I’m tempted to rank every Rally House jingle). While these pieces have often been my most laborious thus far, they’re also among the more challenging and rewarding, requiring plenty of preparation and creativity – the latter of which was quite underutilized when working in corporate media.
Furthermore, I want to create content that my readers want to see. While this website is far from a money-making venture and many of my readers are people I know personally, I also know that I’m not exclusively writing for people I know – this site has garnered a little over 7,100 views, around half of which have come from outside the United States. While I’m sure plenty of viewers both domestically and internationally are simply using my writing to train their soulless LLMs, I hope that my content serves as a lighthearted detour from the soul-draining material mostly found on social media.
Therefore, if you are a reader of mine and I don’t know you personally, I would love to hear suggestions on content you’d love to see me write in the future. Feel free to reach me on Bluesky at peter.marzano@bsky.social and via e-mail at therubbermatchmedia@gmail.com.
Beyond the writing, I’ve been wondering how much of a multi-platform presence I want The Rubber Match to have. Being in a position where I’m not strictly trying to gain a large audience and make money, it’s been easy to stay away from Facebook and X, both of which have become bot-filled right-wing echo chambers in recent years.
Yet also being someone who has over five years of experience working in a large media market, I am also aware that my approach isn’t exactly the one that’s guaranteed to draw tons of readers.
While I consume my news like a boomer, reading long-form articles and taking most of my national and global news from the Associated Press (which certainly has many flaws, to be clear), it’s obvious that most people my age and especially those younger than me do not take in information in the same way.
Whether it’s the news or completely pointless bullshit meant to keep you scrolling, short-form video is what dominates the social media landscape today. Holding a cell phone in front of your face and breaking things down for around 90 seconds is viewed as infinitely more digestible than the articles I write on this site, and that’s a reality I’m constantly contending with.
The question for myself with this site at 250 posts is asking how much do I care about this site growing exponentially and reaching a ton of people who likely would never read a long article?
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t put a good deal of thought into it. I scroll through YouTube each night to see ranking videos similar to ones I have made on this site garner hundreds of thousands of views, with the form of the content being the biggest point of differentiation – because it “holds attention” better.
The latter point is something I always found quite fascinating and also frustrating about video content – as it’s simply much quicker to take in content by reading it than it is to invest a given amount of time watching a video. And hey, you don’t even have to read what you don’t want to if it seems too long!
While this is an unflattering reality, it isn’t like it’s something I can’t contend with. This site does have a YouTube channel, albeit not a very happening one, giving me at least one built-in platform to give short-form video a shot.
In many ways, this feels like the website’s best chance to gain prominence. Record short-form videos referencing portions of rankings that I’ve written on this site, giving viewers just a little bit of what I included in my writing in an effort to redirect more people to the website.
While I’m a confident public speaker who has no issues talking in front of a camera, my lack of video editing skills and experience in recording videos in this format provide a learning curve that has at least thus far seemed too daunting to simply dive right in.
There’s no guarantee that I ever follow through with creating short-form videos – at the end of the day, I write on this website to both keep myself sharp at writing while hoping to provide unique, thoughtful content to a wide range of people who happen to share at least one of my interests.
I consider myself very fortunate to be in a spot where I don’t have to make this strictly about money, which has certainly dictated how I’ve operated this website so far. Yet even putting the money aside, I ultimately would like to reach a wider audience and share my passions and interests with others who feel the same.
Because that’s what this website is supposed to be about, at least in my head. Whether it’s my own insight on sports or a nostalgic trip down memory lane with writing about an old video game, I want people to come away from my material feeling like they have a greater understanding and affinity for what it is I’m writing about.
For anybody that has read and enjoyed my work on this website so far, I express my deepest gratitude for taking time out of your day to read my thoughts, whether I know you or not. Writing remains my biggest passion and what I feel most comfortable doing, and I greatly appreciate the opportunity to share that with anyone.
Hope you stay on the ride for the next 250.
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