By Tim Parry

Personally, this has not been a great season for me. And I think it shows in the quality of work I’ve delivered since the redesign of the FCIAC Football Blog.

Maybe it’s because I tried to grow to big (from providing commentary about the FCIAC four seasons ago to thinking I could be everything to everyone on the Fairfield County high school football scene).

Maybe it’s because my responsibilities at my day job have grown since then. And maybe I want to be a more responsible husband than I have been.

Maybe I’ve put too much pressure on myself to succeed. Maybe I just need to scale back and re-think things.

Maybe I’m the punchline to everyone’s joke, and I’m the only one who doesn’t get it.

Either way, I made a rough decision last night, and posted it as a comment on my Facebook page:

Tim Parry is shutting down the FCIAC Football Blog. Thank you all for four seasons of dedicated readership.

I’m not walking away mid-season though, and maybe that decision will help me re-focus. And by the time the state champions are crowned, maybe instead of “retirement,” I’ll start thinking of a 2009 gameplan.

If I walk away now, I will be letting down the readers (there aren’t as many as you think), I’ll be letting down BlueStreak Sports Training, which had faith in me to establish a Player of the Week award. I’ll be letting down the family of the late Bill Gonillo, which I dedicated the weekly media poll to, and I’ll be letting down Jason Intrieri, my co-host on the Internet radio show “FCIAC Football Blog Live.”

So I’m sucking it up and sticking it out for a lot of people who have put their trust in me.

But I have to be real. This season - even this past week - there have been a lot of signs out there to tell me to give this hobby up.

One sign is the economy - I actually have not collected one advertising dollar this year, but have been doing things on a barter deal. I’ve actually not solicited advertising/sponsorships because I know how much local businesses are suffering, and even spending as little as I’ve asked to get exposure here isn’t the wisest return on investment during these times.

But like Robbie Hart in The Wedding Singer, “I’m not going to get rich doing favors for people.” No one has paid me for singing lessons with meatballs, thankfully.

This season has been draining because of travel requirements of my day job, not including two staycation weeks in September that wound up being glorified work weeks (I think I had one whole day off during that time). Fortunately I’m not on the road again until the day after the state championship games, but you can tell by my lack of staycation time that I’ve been busy.

Sandwiched between that time was the death of a pet. Never easy to put a pet down, and Abbi’s cancer came as quite a shock to my wife and I. It’s been very tough to pick myself up from that one, especially when Diggy is crying, looking around the house for Abbi, and sleeping on a corner of the pet bed hoping she’ll come home.

Then yesterday was the trilogy - and no part of it actually had to do with the article on the Week 5 games not counting in the FCIAC standings.

I have a great relationship with my boss. But when I told her I needed to leave at 3 p.m. to go to Brookfield for the Player of the Week presentation, she didn’t seem too thrilled. Even though I was going to come back and get some more work done.

And when I left to give the award, my wife called to tell me she heart was racing and her head pounding and she was going to go home. When I told her we needed to get to the hospital, she told me no, because I had to give out the Player of the Week award.

When you’re a married man, your wife has to come first - no matter what - and I knew both Brookfield head coach Rich Angarano and BlueStreak’s Matt Cole would understand.

Well my wife was feeling better by the time I got to her, and she didn’t want to go to the hospital. So I brought her home and watched over her as she slept, and tried to finish up some work for the day job.

And as this was going on, I was playing phone tag with a coach, and was shocked to find out what the conversation was about. It was this: “Why isn’t our team mentioned on your blog?” And he wouldn’t accept my answer, which was simple: It was an oversight, and I never got the free time to go back and write something up.

But I did a lot of writing on Friday: Yes, because I was home with a dog by my side that has just had eight teeth pulled that was in pain and frightened a bit as he was trying to come out of anesthesia. Diggy came first, I had the luxury of Internet radio and a live video stream, and wrote about those two games with one hand and two laptops.

And mid conversation, I saw the light. This is just a blog. And if the FCIAC Football Blog goes away, will it really matter as much as if my job goes away or my wife goes away? Rhetorical question. Maybe the joke’s been on me all along.

Thank you all who have been faithful fans and readers over these past four seasons. I started this as a test for work during the 2005 season, to show that if you have a passion for something an blog about it, readers will find you.

Remarkably, that happened. And I have you to thank.

Sincerely,

Tim Parry