Another year gone by, another summertime check-in to an oft-thought about, seldom-written blog.
Is another busy year the same tired excuse for only writing once over the last 365 days? For sure! After all, it’s a tried and true beauty that hasn’t failed me yet. As I look back on it, in fact, this was perhaps the busiest of the three years since I returned to Minnesota. Not only did Tommie Athletic Productions once again execute a broadcast TV deal with myself as Executive Producer and On-Air Host, but we also produced 140 events as a team, the most in school history, while continuing large-scale advancements in creative content and staffing surrounding both ends of our production wing within Tommie Athletics.
I also had a bit of a noteworthy personal event, but let’s press pause on the personal and stay with the professional for now…
In addition to the ‘same old, same old’ at St. Thomas, there were two big things that occupied a bunch of my professional time.
First, I once again designed, assembled, edited and finalized the reclassification documents St. Thomas had to annually submit to the NCAA to gain approval to move directly from Division III to Division I. I have done this each of the three years I’ve been with the Tommies, but this year’s held noteworthy significance, as the transition was officially approved, St. Thomas becoming the first school in NCAA history to move its entire athletic department from Division III straight to Division I. Pretty cool, made more special by the fact that the department accomplished it in four years rather than the five that was formerly mandated when the transition was announced back in 2019.
Second, my role in the design and construction of Lee & Penny Anderson Arena went from about a 2 on a scale of 1-10 to at least an 8 or 9 in January, fielding at least five arena-specific meetings per week for the last six months as the production, infrastructure and branding lead from the St. Thomas side of the project. In the absence of having a tech lead within our department, I serve that role, and thanks to a great group outside of our department that I can turn to with questions, concerns, fact checks and more, I think we’re truly setting ourselves up for success once the building swings open its doors in four months.
Which brings me to the title of this blog…
If you’ll recall the last piece I wrote in this space (which would be an unbelievable feat considering these infrequent ramblings only rarely find their way here), I mentioned that my on-air role would be going away with the opening of Lee & Penny Anderson Arena, a brief-yet-substantial footnote near the conclusion of my 2024 jotting. I didn’t go into it at that point, as I was mostly celebrating a return to the airwaves and feeling happy about getting the chance to step into a position in which I’m comfortable and experienced. But as we approach this reality becoming exactly that, the soon-to-be fact of not having an on-air role brings with it mixed emotions and uncertainty.
You see, this website’s first, and essentially sole, purpose was to get me a broadcasting job and advance my career in that space. Yes, there is a blog tab, which you’ve clearly found, and a writing tab, but those were more to bolster my case for multi-faceted gigs that would give me the ability to broadcast, not to lead me away from broadcasting. When I had my one year off the air, that being my first at St. Thomas in 2022-23, I was uneasy. I had shifted my career from the same track I had always been on to one that was adjacent to that track at the VERY best, with my blog from 2023 noting that “I’d like to revisit broadcasting at some point”, recognizing in the rest of that blog (titled “A Seismic Shift”) that I had my hands in almost everything EXCEPT what I had always strived to do.
So now, having been able to dip my toes back in the on-air waters the last two years, I once again stare into a near-future that does not involve broadcasting. We will officially be moving ahead with a streaming/TV crew and a separate radio crew for our major events, eliminating the need for the workaround that led me back to broadcasting (big, long explanation of the workaround in my 2024 blog below). In Lee & Penny Anderson Arena we will have the space to accommodate this new layout, so it makes a ton of sense and I’m all for it, but it brings back the feeling of purgatory, career path instability, and an ever-present lingering question – is this really what I should be doing?
I have a sense that if you’ve made it this far in my once-a-year word vomit that you may be able to relate to the sentiment. After all, is there anything we second guess more than if we’re living our life the right way? If you have made it this far and you can’t relate, please give me a call at 612-865-7052, we seriously need to talk and become close enough for you to share you life secrets with me because you have the magic sauce and I want that! I need that!!
But without that sauce and with a year ahead that will have me focused more than ever on behind-the-scenes ventures, including the EXTREMELY worthwhile and privileged one of opening a $200M arena, I come to you this summer with more questions than answers, much like my 2023 blog. There’s a real possibility that I haven’t grown or am lacking some perspective I need, but as I re-read that blog tonight, this still resonated two years later: “In the immediate it’s knowledge and growth, guidance and leadership, playing my part professionally, and more importantly, for my people. That part, the most important part, has been abundant since coming back to Minnesota, and while I’m not sure I’ll ever know if I made the right decision professionally, I feel great personal peace at birthdays, baby showers and brunches. They’re living testaments to why I’m here. Why a hard choice seemed clear. Why I’d make the same choice again.”
Can you sense we’re getting more personal than professional? The blog is shifting!! So let’s jump into the personal side I teased earlier, perhaps the greatest testament to the quote that wrapped the previous paragraph…
I got married this year. With all of our amazing people in the room to witness me join a person I could’ve only imagined would deem me worthy of an hour, let alone a lifetime, my wife Meagan and I had, what we could only describe later as, the perfect day. We planned the event over the last two years, poured our hearts and souls into it, and then went on a 10-day honeymoon that was funded by those that joined us on our day of wedded bliss. Did it make the first half of this year extra busy? For sure. Would I trade it for the world? Never.
Yes, this blog is for professional stuff, I know! And now you’re here having to see me gush over the personal side of life, a cruel fate! But, and feel free to call me crazy, I don’t believe that professional exists without personal, and maybe even vice versa. My wife and I are dedicated workers, passionate professionals and boundary-pushing balancers of two things that are so diligently kept in their own compartments by many these days – work and life. But having taken jobs to be able to return to Minnesota to be with family and friends, having planned the biggest event of our lives in the midst of our busy jobs, and having the first topic of conversation when we met nine years ago fall firmly under the “professional” classification, the personal and professional just don’t diverge for us the way they may for others.
Since we’ve returned from our honeymoon we’ve found a slower pace, which has been much needed after the craziness of the first half of the year, but we’ve also found a feeling of uncertainty. After all the planning, all the work, all the joy and celebration, what now? What does the future hold?
We’re not sure, and so now, at the intersection of work and life, the question becomes if that is OK? Hold on, are you feeling like this part is relatable too?? Not only do we torture ourselves with asking if we’re living life the right way but then we have to say “are you sure brain??? Don’t lie to me mind! Not you of all things!”. Shaking my head that the brain resides in behind my keyboard right now because it seems we have no way of escaping being our worst enemies!
But as we’ve thought about that question, is it OK to not know what is next, we’ve come to the conclusion that not knowing may just be alright, just like it was two years ago when I blogged about broadcasting. Patience is a challenge, but it’s also a virtue, so both in work, and in life, it feels like we need to remember that in these moments. There’s work to be done, people to be seen, moments to be celebrated and history to be made, and as long as those four things hold true, all the personal plans we can lay and professional dreams we can desire may be just fine as muted moments in our minds.
Then again, that was the message two years ago, and this Mike was right back on that mic. You never do know what the future holds, which is when I’ll see you again, in about a year’s time if I’m to guess.