When I started The Life of JWo a little almost four years ago, I planned on using it as a place to document funny stories and events in my life. Writing about food and places I’ve eaten never crossed my mind until Tammy and I moved to Memphis in 2013.

Over the last two years I’ve written about my Food Bucket List, food dishes, and various restaurants. There was a time when I thought the coolest thing to come of my writing was when I saw a printout of my post hanging on the wall at Sidestreet Burgers.

That’s my post on the right. It was up well before the others made it on the wall.

Then I was asked to be a judge for Best Memphis Burger Fest and Battledish: Memphis and I thought I’d reached the pinnacle of my food blogging achievements.

But all of that changed recently when I was asked to write a column for a new car magazine called Gearheads4Life that the company I work for was publishing. It’s one of five different car-related titles I design and layout.

Gearheads4Life is the least technical one of the bunch, meaning no install or how-to articles, but it’s full of features on cars, people, and events.

Initially my column was going to be written from the aspect of me NOT being a car guy who works on car magazines and is surrounded by car people on a daily basis. I even went so far as to write a column about my first car and what I remembered of it.

But that was pushed to the side when one of the The Head Honchos, who knows my love of food, said I should write about places people could eat at the various car shows around the country.

I tried to play it cool, but inside I was all…

I then had the idea to make my print column a launching point — an introduction if you will — instead of trying to cram a bunch of places to eat in a limited amount of space (one page). Instead I’d write about places to eat and post it over at gearheads4life.com.

While I was excited about everything, the reality is that I created a lot more work for myself.

Not only do I proof, design, and layout five magazine titles (14 total issues per year), but now I’ve gotten myself into needing to have an online post ready in enough time for people to read them before they travel to the events.

There are literally hundreds of big car shows and dozens of car tours across the United States I’ll be able to write about and doing it online gives me an unlimited space to dedicate to as many restaurants as I choose.

People who go to these big car shows, or take part in the multiple-day tours, have a unique opportunity to experience different towns, some big, some small. My goal is to encourage them to try something outside of the fast food and chain restaurants along the way.

The Head Honchos hope it’ll also drive people to the website and, quite honestly, so do I. I’d love it if my food posts were some of the most visited pages on the site!!

That may never happen, but based on the two posts I’ve written already (Du Quoin, Illinois, and Nashville, Tennessee) neither of which are online yet, this isn’t going to feel much like work.

Best of all, I’m finally getting paid to write about something I love. Now if I could just get paid to go to those places for some actual taste tests.

Just gotta take it one step at a time.

Here’s a sneak peek at my “Food 4 Thought” column header by “The hungry curmudgeon.” Once the magazine rolls out, I’ll post a link to the column.

The Hungry Curmudgeon.