Back when I was in 8th grade, I had a small diary in which I would meticulously write match reports after every Arsenal game. I'd spend hours filling in this little notebook, perfecting each entry. What's funny is, that I wouldn't let anyone read this diary. The only person I did show it to, was my father.
Impressed, he convinced me to take my writing online and so in the 9th grade I started my own blog. I had actually come up the name a year ago with a friend, who was supposed to co-author the blog with me. Both of us got on a call with a dictionary in tow, and decided we’d open to a random page and combine the first words on them. He got Jerky, I got Loudspeaker. He eventually pulled out of the idea but the name stuck.
I ran The Jerky Loudspeaker blog for nearly seven years, writing personal essays, fiction and of course, sport pieces. But, I still didn’t feel the same intimacy that I felt with my diary. And so the newsletter was born in the throes of the pandemic and has since become my public journal.
Sports shapes the context than content of this newsletter. So for example, I delved into my relationship with the England men’s football team to explore what belonging meant to me. I wrote about how my obsessive sports podcast consumption helped me gauge my mental health. I reflected on how playing squash taught me that you can enjoy something you’re not good at.
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