2014 Sucked

Oh. Hi.

How’ve you been? It’s been awhile since we last chatted here, and I’d love to know where you’ve been in the time since. Has life been good to you?

Me? Well, thanks for asking! Life has been a thing. A brief timeline: PSAMP celebrated its seventh birthday back in March, and I wrote one of the most honest and heartfelt pieces about what you, the readers, mean to me, this guy that publishes sports quips and pictures of miniature horses. At or around that same time, our Bloguin network migrated from an old Joomla-based platform to a simpler WordPress backend. I took about a week or two off, and when I came back to the site, every post from March, including my note to you, vanished into the ether.

Over the past few years, I’ve made a conscious decision to accept the positives in life no matter the outside circumstances. So instead of getting mad, or trying to re-write a one-time expression of emotion, I took time to myself. A couple months, actually, until summer rolled around. A friend and I started actively working on a podcast (more on that in 2015) that was gonna help re-launch PSAMP. And then my 14 year old dog died.

Basically, 2014 sucked.

Instead of rushing anything, I lived my life, free of a website for the first time in almost eight years. But I knew I had to get back to this, a place that helps center my thoughts. So here we are on the last day of 2014 and it just felt right to re-launch the site with a fresh new year about to roll into all of our lives. In turn, this annual year-end kick in the pants to the previous year was the most appropriate way to come back.

Here we are, then. One handful of paragraphs to remember my own previous few months before looking ahead to 2015.

I’m only part of the reason you’re here, though. I can’t really do as much in as little space with the 2014s our sports teams had. The Buccos built on their first playoff spot in forever with a SECOND STRAIGHT PLAYOFF BERTH. Which ended horribly, so now that a streak of positive Pirates performance is part our our collective psyche, then this is the time to demand more. Russ Martin and crew provided some fun this last year, but Russ went back to Canadia and all I’m seeing is a playoff flameout and a desire from the fans for more. So your 2014 sucked, Buccos. I want hardware in 2015.

The Pens had just about the wildest year. In my absence from PSAMP, Bylsma and Shero were canned, Jim Rutherford, Mike Johnston and his Tocchet-filled assistants came in and with them came the mumps. And cancer. And just about 45 other random illnesses and injuries that make you question everything.

There will be no ebola jokes here.

The Steelers’ 2014 sucked not for random injuries, save the old guys Keisel, Polamalu and Taylor getting dinged up on every occasion. Their 2014 sucked because the 2013 playoffs included not a single Steelers game. Their 2013 season ended in that calendar year, and we had to put up with a second-straight playoffs with no Steelers having the ability to thwart awful teams from winning it all. Since then, though, 11-5 and a playoff berth. Only, that first playoff game since the 2012 season won’t come until 2015, so I get to complain all I want. 2014 for the Steelers was filled with nothing but now-meaningless regular season wins and losses. The wins that count come soon.

And that’s gonna do it for this post, and 2014 as a whole. I can’t put out some lazy-columnist drivel about the end of the year filled with topical jokes about every pop culture happening. My heart breaks for a lot of peoples’ 2014s…leaving a website dangle for most of the year while watching my sports teams not win championships over 365 straight days is hardly a horrific year compared to some of the awful things people dealt with by comparison. You don’t come to PSAMP for lazy jokes, we’ll be back in the coming year with more absurdity and Pittsburgh sports randomness than you can handle.

And the mini pony pictures. Those, too.

No Katt Williams quote this year. I’m breaking molds for 2015.

And so ends the least funny PSAMP post in history. I love you all. See you in a bit. Good bye, 2014.