A Mike Life – The Life of Mike!

Jina and My Biggest Fan

// February 26th, 2009 // family

Jina is amazing in so many ways that I’ve talked about this week, but one of the biggest reasons why I love her is the way she supports me in everything I do.

I’m not sure where to begin with this one, but I’ll start early in our marriage when I tried to strike out on my own with a few sports websites. It was a bit before the big DOTCOM crash and at the time, making money with advertising was a lucrative business. It was a big deal for me. I loved sports and here I was learning to write about the subject. Not only that, but the local teams started recognizing me as a member of the media and I got press passes to the Suns and Cardinals.

It was a dream come true.

It also didn’t make us much money after awhile. In fact, we went into some big time credit card debt over the next year or two. The web crash came, making money was suddenly impossible and yet I kept trying to stick it out and find other ways to make a buck.

While it was a time I would hesitate to trade, because the experience of covering sports was so amazing, I sometimes am haunted by the memory of going so long without a job. I feel like it set us back in many ways.

Yet through it all…Jina was behind me. Because it was important to me, it was important to her and to us.  To this day I’m amazed that she stuck with me on this for as long as she did. I think most wives would have been freaking out by then. And maybe she was inside, but on the outside, I felt nothing but love and support.

And she hasn’t change a single bit the entire time we’ve been married. Anything that I’ve felt was important to me, she’s had my back.

When I started this blog, she read everything I posted and was so complimentary of everything I wrote, it gave me the confidence to keep going.

When I helped start Pop Critics and spent so much time on it, she was our biggest fan.

When I had the idea to go back to school, she said no matter what it costs, you do it.

When I get down on myself and am not sure I’m good enough, she always reminds me that I am. And that’s enough for me.

I know there are other examples that aren’t coming to me right now. The real meat of the thing is this: The man I am today, whatever confidence I have, whatever I’ve accomplished in various areas of my life…couldn’t have happened without Jina right there nudging me forward.

Thank you Jina.