On Tuesday this week, I woke up in an emergency room parking lot.
The sun was not up yet around 6 AM as I got out of my car to walk toward the row of three port-a-pottys lined up next to this small satellite hospital, in between two growing areas in an Orlando suburb. Everything in Orlando is in close proximity to Disney World, and many other theme parks. The growing areas in this part of town won’t be connected to this hospital for a few years. That leaves a lot of vacant space and the early stages of development in this small, quiet area that still gets Disney tourist traffic. One day in the future, this small hospital will serve a larger local population, and the outdoor toilets are meant for the construction workers who have been working on sight for the last few months. My guess is expanding the hospital slowly, ahead of the anticipated future rush.
I went to sleep in this parking lot on Monday night, with a migraine and articles to write. This lot is vast, dark, and quiet, which means my migraine wouldn’t be interrupted by sensory distractions. There was no minor league coverage, and the Pirates lost, so I held my Pirates Prospects Daily feature for Tuesday morning. My only focus that night was going to bed and ensuring this migraine wouldn’t continue to the next day.
On Tuesday morning, I exited the port-a-pottys with an empty bladder and no lingering effects from the migraine. My daily article from the night before was posted before 8 AM, and was better quality than I could have managed the previous night — even though I was writing my idea from the previous night.
I wrote that article in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Then, I wrote re-wrote three features for the weekly premium article drop on the site. After all of those features were written, I went to the local gym where I pay a monthly membership to work out three days per week, and shower seven days per week. I then drove to a McDonald’s and edited under a tree in the far end of their parking lot for three more hours, finalizing this week’s article drop.
With work completed, and games to watch that night, I spent the rest of the afternoon handling a few life chores, cleaning and washing my car, and I eventually stopped at Tijuana Flats for their Taco Tuesday deal for dinner. I got ice cream that night at Dairy Queen, while charging my laptop and watching games. I ended up returning that night to the same small hospital, where I walked the over-one mile loop in the vacant space, and watched fireworks in the distance from one of the local theme parks. After that, I drove nearby to park at another local spot away from my migraine contingency space in the hospital lot.
Tuesday was day 100 of living out of my car.
THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS TIM WILLIAMS
On January 7th, I wrote what at the time might have ended up being my final column on this site. It was the only article I had posted all year, and the first since December 26th. I didn’t publish a lot during the second half of 2023, as I worked to adjust my routines and healthily cut out marijuana and all other substances from my lifestyle. When I say “all other substances”, I don’t do anything harder than marijuana, pain killers, caffeine, or prescribed drugs for mental health. With nothing in my system by December but the occasional bowl of marijuana to relax, I took time to myself. I lived mostly out of hotels during the second half of December and into the new year, adjusting from a bad living situation the last two-plus years.
The night of January 7th, I drove to a Kohl’s parking lot and went to sleep in my driver’s side seat of my mid-sized Honda hybrid vehicle. I knew at that point I would be homeless in my car for a long time, but I did not know how long it would be. I did not know if I wanted to continue doing this site, or attempt to do something else.
After a few days of living in my car, I changed all of my social profiles to “The Artist Formerly Known As Tim Williams”.
This time period represented a period where I was using zero substances, and pretty much had returned to the blogger I was from 2009-2018, before I started taking prescribed pills from a doctor for the first time in my life in order to deal with my frequent migraines and mental health issues. I have talked a lot about my marijuana usage over the last few years, because I think it’s a miracle substance. It’s the best solution for migraine relief, outside of hydration and sleep. Those take time for your nerves to settle and your body to relax. Weed works instantly to cure the pain and allow you to sleep comfortably, or nourish yourself.
I started using marijuana occasionally in mid-2018, specifically for my frequent migraines. This was after I had started taking an unhealthy mix of doctor prescribed pills to get me to a consistent daily level. Weed accomplished the same result.
Prior to this, I was living a life like I’m sure many live, where I felt like I was always behind in dealing with things I needed to do in life. Some people in their mid-30s are overloaded with managing a job, a house, kids, animals, and other fun aspects of life they never find time to enjoy. I was overloaded with a high-traffic/thousands of subscribers website with contributors, plus a fix-er-upper house to maintain from falling apart, and the heightening of a relationship where I was ultimately only seen as the provider of an image for a little girl’s social dream where the man in her picture happens to be interchangeable. It was very difficult to regulate my mood with so many factors in play, until I started addressing my mental health for the first time in my life. I eventually got to a point of a consistent level of energy each day.
The migraines remained, because even though I was at a steady energy flow every day, I had way too much work to do at that flow level. My migraines largely existed because I was taking on way too many operations, and over-extending my brain and nervous system with all of the excess work. I had no time to manage a massive site, plus write all of my articles for that site, plus manage, edit, and publish articles from contributors, plus manage a house that was falling apart, plus manage a toxic relationship, plus four warring cats, plus a further focus on my health to see if there might be something inside my body going wrong. I eventually had the worst migraine in my life in mid-2019, which felt like a small stroke. I haven’t been to a doctor since then, but decided to rapidly adjust my life routines.
Fast forward to 2024. I have no house to manage. I have no relationship to manage. This site went offline shortly after January 7th, as I worked to shift it to a new server. I took a month debating whether I wanted to continue with writing about baseball. And during that month, I spent all of my time developing a healthy routine around working daytime hours.
The Artist Formerly Known As Tim Williams was a two-plus month time period where I reverted to my pre-2018 self. It was zero substances, but a largely unregulated energy flow from my brain and body. The goal, for the second time in my life, was to establish a healthy life routine. I established this in 2019-2020, after the worst migraine of my life. Then, my life went crazy and I got off that schedule.
Last year, I bought the car I’m living inside, with the idea that I’d be living inside of it within a year, should I need a place to go to eventually build back up to the healthy routine I had in 2019-2020. There was a period where I thought I’d be homeless while running this site for other people to publish their articles and make a living as I moved on to something else.
My routine that I’ve developed in these 100 days is focused on saving myself before saving anyone else. Putting my life needs before work, and then only working with a percentage of my remaining energy, rather than working until the job is done and trying to find time to reclaim my energy.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
After 100+ days of living in my car, I’ve got a routine.
I wake up every morning between 5-7 AM. Some days, in trusted lots that I know won’t be occupied the next morning, I sleep in until around 9:30. My sleep schedule prior to this was chaotic, with a few all-nighters a month, and many nights staying awake until 2-3 AM. There was never a consistent time period where I slept for 5-8 hours.
Around 8 AM, I start a two hour block of writing or life chores, depending on what takes priority that day. I also make sure to eat breakfast during this period, usually turning to a high protein/high fiber snack in the car. I also rush into the nearest port-a-potty or Wal-Mart restroom.
By 10 AM, the most important thing I needed to do that day was finished. Even if that was extra sleep. I then spend two hours getting the next important thing done. If it is a big writing day, I’ll continue with my work, and write until lunch. Around noon to 1 PM, I grab the best daily deal in the McDonald’s, Wendy’s, or Burger King apps.
My old TAFKATW schedule would often see me skipping lunch, and working non-stop from 8 AM to 5 PM. I’ve had fewer migraines with a healthy sleep schedule and a constant eating schedule. But the work regulation is where I’m seeing the best results.
After my hour lunch break, I have about three more hours of work. On days where I’m writing a lot, I spend two of these hours writing, and one on life chores, giving me six hours of writing that day. On normal days, I’m writing for 4-5 hours, but always making time for life management. Whatever isn’t done by 5 PM in work or life that I think needs to be done by the next day gets thrown in the next day’s 8-10 AM time slot. From there, I wind down and enjoy my day from 5 PM to sleep time. That usually involves watching baseball.
I changed from my TAFKATW designation when I was ready to bring this site back. That’s mostly because this version of Tim Williams is something no one has seen before. And, I’m still an artist with my approach to sports writing.
THE ROUTINE OF BASEBALL COVERAGE
As I’ve been developing my own healthy life routines (regular sleep schedule, proper hydration and food schedules, daily exercise, a few bigger workout days per week, daily hygiene, and managing time to deal with all external factors like work, life, and barometric pressure shifts), I’ve found the routine of the game of baseball comforting.
Every single day, you can wake up and see what someone in the Pittsburgh Pirates system did the previous day. No two days are the same. Every single night, you can wind down from your schedule by watching the games, from the majors through Single-A, enjoying the spontaneity of human performance. Some nights, I’m stuck on the Pirates. Other nights, I’m flipping between minor league contests, and box score watching. It’s not really an escape from work, in my case, but it is a relaxing escape knowing I don’t have a big feature to write. Seeing the top performers from each night, recapping the key moments in the game, and knowing they’re all going to be finished before 10 PM has allowed me to return to my baseball fan roots, and I always have some thoughts at the end of each night.
Baseball is one of the most difficult sports, not necessarily because of the challenge of the sport itself, but because of the tediousness of the schedule. They play nearly every single day for six months, with six weeks to warm up, and eight more weeks to conclude the season. It takes a special type of person to be wired and focused enough to follow a full baseball season, every single night, regardless of their daily life routines and schedules. Especially when you’re also following the minors, which involves action every single day of the week during a five month stretch.
There are some nights where I feel the grind of writing daily. I’ve learned to scale back my work load on those days. I decided on 4/20 that I was going to take the full day off, and post my recaps the next morning. Unlike the migraine that pushed my daily recap back seven hours, this decision to take a break from work resulted in the Pirates Prospect Watch being pushed back about 10-12 hours.
I’ve been writing about the Pittsburgh Pirates and player development since 2009, and I’ve been writing about sports since about 2006-2007, with message board posts dating back years earlier. This has always been an expressive method for me, allowing me to find my voice and beliefs, at least through this system of following life. As a result, during this homeless stretch, I realized that baseball writing would be the best constant for my work routine as I tried to merge my new life routine in with a full-time job.
Pirates Prospects has me for one year, with a one year option. That’s what I can tell you as the owner of Pirates Prospects and the head writer for the entire 15+ season duration. I figure by the end of 2024, I will have figured out where I want to live in this world, and what I want to do next. To be honest, part of this homeless stretch is that I don’t have any place that feels like a home area, even though I know the Pirates from growing up part time in Central PA. I debate moving to the Pittsburgh area and living the writer lifestyle for another 15+ years.
I still have a dream of being a writer. This time it’s not a sports writer, but a fiction sci-fi writer. On 4/20, on a day off that I scheduled for myself two months earlier, I created from scratch and outlined 23 chapters of a book called “Mantis”. Adding that project to my daily baseball writing schedule, I think I can finish the ~400 page project by the end of June. If I can maintain a schedule of running this site, plus writing 2-4 fiction books per year, that would be ideal. Especially since it would mean one of those books could be the return of me having time and energy for a Pirates Prospect Guide.
If the book projects and P2 workload don’t give me excess migraines, I’m picking up the option for writing on this site in 2025 to continue that writing lifestyle. Ideally, this time, in a home in an area where I want to live for several years.
QUALITY CONTROL
My goal in life is zero migraines. At this point I get a migraine about 10% of the time compared to 2018. I used to have 5.5 migraines per week on average, with 1-2 days pain free. Now, I get one migraine a week, and some weeks go without any issues. The biggest factors for me are storms. The pressure change ahead of the storm always alters my nourishment schedule in a way that I feel is a result of added dehydration beyond my normal routine’s control.
My work schedule allows for my best mindset to be present when writing. There is zero pain, I only write when I’m in a regulated mood from my schedule, and my enjoyment of the game of baseball gets embraced during those hours.
The publishing schedule reflects the layers of quality control in my writing process.
Every Tuesday, I released six premium articles. You can only access these articles with a Patreon subscription, and to be honest, these subscriptions are keeping me and this site going right now, after scaling revenue chasing back for half a year last year. While I’ve given myself a one year deal with an option on this site, the Patreon subscriptions are monthly. None of you are ever on the hook for supporting me and this site’s 2024 project for more than a month.
These premium articles represent the most work on the site. They include features where I sought out interviews. They include a culmination of thoughts on players and subjects while watching games. They include hours of data research. As of today, I know the next 18 topics over the next three weeks. I start writing these around Thursday, and finalize them on Tuesday morning, with a write, re-write, and an edit in three separate sessions.
Every day, I try to release at least one of those same levels of premium features for the free audience. In total each week, I write 12 premium articles, only charging for six. There might be a time when the daily premium articles go behind the paywall. For now, that list of free features looks like this:
- Sunday’s First Pitch has included some site updates in this time, but mostly will revolve around bigger system topics and trends. As the site gets into a routine, and the season develops bigger sample sizes, this will be a bigger weekly Pirates feature.
- Monday is a day off in the minors, which means the daily Pirates Prospect Watch covers the best performers from the previous week.
- Tuesday is all about the six premium articles that get released at noon for Patreon subscribers.
- Wednesday looks at the Statcast Heroes who put up the best metrics in the Majors, Triple-A, and Single-A from the previous week.
- Thursday and Friday include columns from me. I’m trying to arrange a schedule to produce a weekly Pirates Roundtable with subscribers on these days, and eventually a weekly chat.
- Saturday caps off the week with one more player feature that didn’t make the weekly drop, called Saturday Sleepers, looking at a sleeper prospect who fall outside of the top 30.
- Every day I publish Pirates Prospects Daily and the Pirates Prospect Watch for free. Daily also doubles as a free daily newsletter, and recaps the day’s events. The Prospect Watch started about a week ago, as I decided I wanted to expand that recap from the daily article.
The free daily recap articles get written at the end of each day, and get another read through and edit before publishing. Every other premium-level feature on this site goes through several stages of editing and writing before being published. That’s a massive difference from my approach in the past, where every single feature would be written once, then published with less editing than the nightly recaps now.
The fact that I’ve been maintaining this level of quality control for over a month of publishing, including a few weeks into the season, all without migraine issues is encouraging to my overall life experiment. I’ve eased marijuana back into my mix, mostly to help maintain a sleep schedule. I’ll also be enjoying some scheduled creative writing time in the future with my “Mantis” project.
I’m not asking for charity or thoughts over being homeless. At the end of this experiment, I’ll have a lot of writing and data about the homeless life. For example, my current estimate is that it costs $25,000 per year to live out of your car, while seeking fast food apps for daily food deals. This can be adjusted down ~$5 K based on your car and the city you live in. This is based on my data from the first 100 days, trying to live meager, but healthy. Despite the inconsistency of my publishing over the last year, this site thankfully can still offer my this lifestyle as an option of survival.
What I am asking is that if you’ve ever enjoyed my work in the past, I’d appreciate your support during this time. This might be my final season writing about the Pirates. It might also be my first season of writing truly exceptionally about the Pirates like you’ve never seen before. It will be my first season where my health and life routine take priority, which I ultimately think will lead to the best quality of writing I’ve ever produced.
That’s my goal. Otherwise, I’ll think the lack of migraines are due to a lack of effort, and this entire experiment will be for nothing.
LAST WEEK ON PIRATES PROSPECTS
In my premium column for Patreon subscribers, I looked at the cautious approach the Pirates are taking with Paul Skenes. I agree with the approach, but broke down how it could have limits that would call for him being up before the Super Two dates pass.
**Williams: The Pirates Should Be Taking a Cautious Approach With Paul Skenes
I wrote two articles this week looking at depth options who stand out to me in Triple-A.
Nick Gonzales was taken seventh overall in the 2020 draft. He’s dealt with swing and miss issues, which have kept him in Triple-A. In the early part of the season, he’s showing positive overall improvements with his strikeout rates, while still having some underlying concerns about swing and miss.
**Examining the Swing and Miss of Nick Gonzales
Malcom Nunez is a stocky corner infield prospect who can play third, but has the power for first base. After hitting three home runs to start the season, I looked deeper at the power bat of Nunez, and his brief history in Triple-A already as a 23-year-old prospect.
**Malcom Nunez Brings Plus Power Bat to Indianapolis
This week I also highlighted three lower level pitchers who have stood out to me in early looks as potential MLB starters.
The Pirates drafted Hunter Barco in the second round of the 2022 draft, while the lefty from Florida was out with Tommy John. Now fully recovered, Barco is pitching in Greensboro, and has thrown seven shutout frames in his first two starts of the season, with an advanced mix of pitches.
**Hunter Barco is Showing Why the Pirates Invested in Him
Alessandro Ercolani is a 19-year-old pitcher from the small country of San Marino, with a mix of six pitches that all show promise. The Pirates gave him the assignment of pitching in High-A Greensboro, which he embraced with four shutout innings in his debut.
**Alessandro Ercolani is a Big Talent From a Small Country
Patrick Reilly was drafted as a reliever out of Vanderbilt last season, but with a mid-90s fastball that gets up to 98, and a plus slider, it’s easy to see why the Pirates are giving him a shot in the rotation. He’s showing promising control results in the early games, reversing the issue that has held him back the most.
**Patrick Reilly Features An Elite Fastball, With Early Positive Results in Control
THIS WEEK ON PIRATES PROSPECTS
I said that I’ve got my site topics picked for the next three weeks. Tuesday’s article drop isn’t quite finalized. I’ve been working on both a player feature drop, and a Statcast focused drop. You’ll have to check the site on Tuesday to see which one pulls ahead in the race to being published. The other will be published next week, and the first article drop in May will have a prospect rankings update after one month of the 2024 season. There will also be a rankings page added to the site by this point. Again, you can access the premium content with a Patreon subscription.
