Coming soon

This is Walking Bucket, a newsletter by me, Michael Waterloo.

I love the outlets that I write for. Writing about women's hoops for WInsidr and about fantasy sports for The Athletic both allow me to write about passions of mine at a high level.

Hell, it's still cool getting a paystub in the mail from NY Times (the child in me is happy, at least).

Creating this won't stop me from writing there. No, hardly. You'll see links back to my pieces at those respective sites, as well as tidbits from the articles.

But this is going to be my thing. I haven't had my own thing since Pittsburgh Sporting News a decade ago, but even then, since I wasn't financing it, I couldn't have full control over it.

But this newsletter? Yeah, this is mine. So that means what you'll get is the full Michael Waterloo experience - which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who you ask.

A lot of my writing is straight and to the point, with my paragraphs averaging one or two sentences.

I like

To add

Some

Drama.

Sue me (please don't).

There will be pop culture references thrown in here that you may or may not get, and I apologize for the stream of consciousness approach that I have. It's just how my brain works when I write.

So, besides ramblings, what will you see here?

Well, a ton of ramblings, to be honest, especially as I get in the groove and find a format that I like.

See, I could write a women's basketball newsletter only. I could do the same with fantasy. Or books. Or music. Or shoes. Or vinyl records. Or dogs.

But those exist. And I'm not trying to compete here. I want this to be a space where I can link out to other work that I admire. Chat with people I look up to. Post videos from media scrums or Zoom calls. Outsource any questions that you may have for an upcoming interview of mine.

Hell, I may just post a picture of my dog and cat because they get the majority of the love on my Instagram and Bluesky pages.

Because that's what a Walking Bucket is. It's a term that's used about basketball players a lot, but we can expand its meaning here.

Rickea Jackson is a walking bucket, sure. We know this. But my partner, who is a published poet and working on an online publication for queer creators? Yeah, they are a walking bucket.

The idea is to have a longform written piece for each newsletter about a subject that I find interesting. It could be my take on it. It could be interviewing someone else. I did a Rolling Stone-type interview with Lexie Hull of the Indiana Fever recently for WInsidr, and I was really happy with how it turned out, so I may experiment with that here.

I'm not looking to make money off of this. I'm looking for an escape. Because the next four years - at least - are going to be hell.

I'll set up a cadence soon, and while I hate self-promoting my material, I get that it comes along with the territory. So, you'll find links on Bluesky and Instagram as we get things off of the ground.

Things will be up and running here shortly (I'm shooting for the beginning of March, yeah?) but you can subscribe in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is published!