The Diecast Dude’s (Mostly) NASCAR Blah Blah Blog has been in existence at assorted locations since August of 2003, thus making it — well, me — something of a grandfather in terms of NASCAR blogging. Or a godfather. Although I’d rather cry “Abba, Father.”
Although most of my NASCAR blogging was at Restrictor Plate This on behalf of SportsBlogs Nation between April of 2007 and November of 2008, this site remained active. Before I started my gig with SBN, this was quite the rollickin’ place, with daily dissertations on all things NASCAR. Plus the occasional disappearance down rabbit holes, and sometimes into polar bear habitats.
Alas, life has not been prone toward lending me sufficient time for this place in recent months… er, years. The book God’s Not Dead (And Neither Are We), which is soon to be re-released under the title First And Forgotten, was the main reason why I left SBN. My intention was to resume normal operations here once the book came out, which it did back in April of 2009. But, as has been noticed by more than a few, hasn’t happened.
Yet.
I’ve come to deeply miss this place. I richly enjoyed mixing the silly, sardonic and sacred as I strove to inform along with entertain NASCAR fans, while providing those yet to be fans with something hopefully standing on its own as reading material worth the time to… well, read. I didn’t enjoy as much the frequent battles brought on by my penchant for speaking the truth, as I saw it, to power. I’m working on changing that to speaking the truth in love. It’ll be just as blunt, but hopefully done for the right reasons.
I’ve also come to falling back in love with NASCAR and IRL and NHRA, enjoying the skill and competition and stories each league tells. I’d lost that for a good long while. It happens. I’d also lost much of my burning passion for writing. Happens as well. Fully recovered I am not (speaking in Yoda-ish, I am). But I’m at least off life support and breathing on my own now.
So much of what I have today in terms of online friends, communications made and lives touched by the grace of God working through rumbling stumbling bumbling fumbling me to help others stems from this blog’s first go-round before RPT. While I don’t regret the experience, I do regret losing my voice as I tried mightily to be a “real” sportswriter. I’m not. Oh, I can do it; churning out written product to be consumed by the masses. But I’d much, much rather tell stories among a small circle of friends.
That’s the story. Whether getting back to the me writing-wise I once was will be a permanent or brief event I do not know. This I do know: I need to do this. I need to walk this road once more. Now more than ever. Hopefully, prayerfully, you’ll be interested in my modest scribbles as they appear along the way.
June 21, 2010
P.S. And now, to answer the 64ยข question… from whence the nickname “Diecast Dude” originated. It goes like this: in a previous life I worked at a department store. I was in charge of toys, which could be quite a challenge given all the yelling, screaming and temper tantrums. But enough about the parents. Anyway, one of my co-workers was, for whatever reason, fond of referring to us department heads by the name of our department followed by “dude” — snacks dude, OTC dude and so on. Which led to me being called the toy dude. Given my fondness, now mostly subsided, for collecting diecast cars, I said “shouldn’t that be ‘diecast dude?’” Which sounded cooler. And thus the nickname was born.
