Adam Reger | Freelance Writer

Philadelphia-based freelance writer

Tag: Adam Reger

January 6, 2011

New Layout

Happy new year to all. The new layout is not too terribly new, but it is exciting, at least for me: I know just enough about blogging to have gotten thoroughly confused, numerous times, trying to change the layout of this blog. But finally I’ve done it, and I have what I wanted: the main page of this site is now a simple note about me, and the blog is not front-row center anymore. I want to keep going with the blog—my recent, dramatic fall-off to the contrary—but I was getting increasingly uneasy with the disconnect between what was going up there and the reason that I originally started this site.

In a nutshell, I hoped this site would serve as an online portfolio to which I could direct potential clients, and where people looking for a freelance writer in Pittsburgh might eventually find themselves. It is that, of course, but it’s also often a blog where I re-cap the latest Philadelphia Eagles game, or discuss how bad M. Night Shymalan’s last movie was. Maybe “unprofessional” doesn’t fairly describe it, but I wouldn’t call it “professional” exactly, either. Basically, any time I’ve provided the link in a freelancing context, I’ve hoped that the person visiting my page would look only at the “Non-fiction” or “Ghostwriting” pages and leave the blog alone. It got to the point where I thought that if I wanted to keep this site going, I might just have to scrub the existing blog archives and restrict my subsequent blogging to 10 ways to maximize SEO efficiency, the art and science of proper comma usage, the challenges of crafting a good white paper for a client, and a bunch of other topics I know I’d find really tedious to read on a blog. (Actually, maybe not the comma thing, if I’m being honest. There are days I might read that.)

Tucking the blog away here will hopefully allow me to keep a balance between being professional but also having fun writing about the things I’ve so far written about. My “problem” (let’s call it a “first-world problem” of the highest order), after all, stemmed from having too much fun with the blog, writing about marathon training, the maintenance guy who hosts telephone conferences from the toilet, and the comedy I enjoy, rather than producing fussy considerations of the ins and outs of being a writer. Being a writer, to me, means engaging with the world.

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October 26, 2010

Pittsburgh Pools: Reason #6 to Love Pittsburgh

Whether you’re cross-training, nursing a sports injury, or just love the water, swimming is always a solid option. It tends to drop off the radar once the weather turns cooler, but for my money that’s the best time to start up. Indoor swimming during the cold months puts me in mind of all those great moments when you’ve been shut up inside someplace that’s gone overboard on the heat—a stuffy lecture hall, a smelly gym—and at last you burst out into the cold air. For a brief time, it doesn’t register as cold at all, only as a bracing and welcome change. So it is when you’ve been swimming: your hair is wet, your lungs are stung by chlorine and exertion, and the sharp edge of the air takes you by surprise.

I sing in praise of indoor swimming because I recently discovered one of Pittsburgh’s real municipal treasures, the Oliver Bath House on the South Side of the city. The city has a quite good pool system, with most of the pools open during the summer only. But only the Oliver Bath House remains open through the fall and winter months. So far, it’s been a great experience. I’m lucky in that I work only about a mile from the Bath House, and can get there by 5:30 p.m., a few seconds before the bulk of the post-work rush, thus allowing myself about 20-25 minutes of lap-swimming. The pool is well-maintained, if a little small, the staff are friendly, and there’s a general willingness among the patrons to share lanes when things do get a bit more crowded.

The best part, though, is the price. It costs $4 to go for the day, $3 for a child’s pass. But a season pass costs an adult only $30. I was genuinely surprised, upon signing up, to find that “season” doesn’t mean the fall, or even fall and winter, but that my pass will cover me all the way to June. That is the kind of steal that makes me proud to be a Pittsburgher, and to pay the taxes that make such a thing possible.

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