Typically whenever I’m feeling blue, I can usually take solace in the notion that I can sleep it off, and I’ll be alright the following morning. Logically, it doesn’t make any sense other than a convenient literal idea that we’re closing the book on one day, and that the next day is truly a brand new page for us to begin writing on. But usually it works, and things simply feel better just because it’s not the same day when you were feeling down.
Such is kind of the case at the time I’m writing this now, as I do feel a little bit better than I did the day prior despite the fact that other than downtrodden emotions in my mind, there was absolutely nothing physically wrong with me. However, this doesn’t mean that I can’t continue to think about and try and hypothesize the things in my head that put me in a dour mood.
But I think what it boils down to is the fact that currently, right now, in this day and age, I do believe that it’s difficult, for me at least, to really love the world as it is. In the end, such a pessimistic sounding statement boils down to me, my preferences, and my interests, but as it stands now, based on all the things that I do and all the things that I like, I’m finding it difficult to find a positive idea when there are times when I really feel like I could use one.
Sure, this definitely means that I could probably be in need of an extra hobby or five to try and help take my mind off things, or rather expand my horizons to find something to make me happy when I need it, but as is often cited when dealing with feelings of depression, once it sinks it, it’s difficult to get motivated to do anything at all, even things you enjoy doing.
But as was the case with the post-birthday blues, I think it was one of things where I was just seeing the negative sides to absolutely everything in the world, and it would compound on top of each other, and as the day progressed, I didn’t want to do anything at all but sit back and watch episodes of Batman the Animated Series. Honestly, there really was nobody to blame but myself, because I had something I could have done as well as capitalized on the absolutely beautiful weather of the day, but I was feeling tired, and I was feeling the necessity of a day of unwinding and relaxing, so I opted not to.
Turns out to not have been a very wise choice, in hindsight. It’s like everything I did for the entire day went sour in some capacity, and it left me with the feeling that the world is a really shitty place full of really lousy people, and it’s all kind of depressing.
I really wanted to sit back and watch baseball, but it turns out that DISH Network and FOX still haven’t resolved their issues with one another, and long story short, the Braves game was blacked out. Not even three years ago, it was possible for me to sit down and watch all 162 regular season Braves games if I felt like it, but now Saturday and Sunday games are not available to watch, unless they’re being nationally televised on ESPN or TBS.
So then my mind grew resentful towards DISH Network, and how petty they seem to be when dealing with FOX, and that they’re still letting this squabble over metaphorical nickels and dimes continue to rage on while the customers are the only ones that are suffering for it. Sports are the one thing that still manages to be a television commodity in the age of DVRs and On-Demand programming, and DISH doesn’t seem to realize that if they put themselves in a position where desired sports programming is inaccessible, then the rest of their cable package becomes irrelevant. I’m fairly positive I can access any other show I like through alternative means.
And then I’m growing resentful towards FOX and/or Major League Baseball for being so money grubbing hungry that they let things like this happen. Not a week goes by where the thought doesn’t cross my mind about big business corporations headed by a group of middle aged white men, plotting and planning on how in spite of the fact that they’re all veritable millionaires, how they can become even richer and have so much more at the expense of causing vastly many more people have so much less. All these fucking greedy people who would have absolutely nothing to their name if the world were to suddenly go post-apocalyptic.
So with the Braves game inaccessible, I wanted to watch any baseball; naturally there was a Yankees game being nationally televised, so I decided to watch a little bit of that game, if for anything at all to see a former Braves player on their roster get an at-bat. By this point, my mind was already wandering, and the typical drivel and rambling of the announcing crew being nothing more than background noise. But then they began on the minutiae of professional athletes going pro younger and younger every year, and then the darkness began creeping up in my mind again, as this is a topic that I’ve given a lot of thought to over the last few years.
All these legitimate children, barely 19-20 years old, all making themselves eligible for the NBA and NFL drafts. And all these completely misguided and completely uncaring legions of people in full support of kids throwing themselves into packs of resentful and disgruntled wolves; the players that are veterans in their respective leagues who make less money in spite of their years of experience and tenure. All because getting in the door young means they’ll have longer stretches of peak performance, which means their teams have chances at prolonged success.
I don’t really blame the kids so much as I point the finger of accusation at all the people around them; their greedy agents, the greedy professional sports franchises, and the misguided and selfish legions of supposed fans that completely miss the point of why kids should be going to college in the first place. I think I think the people are the worst part about sports, and when the darkness creeps up, it makes me disgusted to even watch them.
Sports, which has always been somewhat of a reprieve for me, isn’t as great as they used to be, whether or not my mood is already in the shitter. The NFL is completely intolerable, and in spite of Mark Cuban’s allegations that they’re going to oversaturate the market, I frankly think they already have. The NBA is embarrassing to watch, when guys putting up Jeff Hornacek numbers are applauded like they’re Michael Jordan, because Michael Jordan numbers are so impossibly out of reach for today’s players, and guys miss free throws as if they’d get AIDS for making them. Naturally, I’ve grown to prefer the college ranks in both sports, but nowadays, even those are tarnished by the fact that college sports aren’t really seen as student-athletes competing for collegiate glory, but athletes that use college as a platform for national exposure to go professional while parading as students, being handed patsy degrees in useless majors that permanently screw their adult lives.
Baseball, which is still my true love of sport, as pure of a game it still can be, it too isn’t without criticism. Players don’t stick around on the teams that make them anymore, because there are dollars to chase in free agency, and fewer teams wish to dole them out than players seek. And then there’s the endless clash of baseball ideals that are almost as convoluted as American politics. Seriously, it really feels like the “war” between old-school traditional baseball logic versus the internet age of statistic Moneyball number-crunching is pretty much akin to Republicans versus Democrats. All day long, people know that in both instances, working together would be vastly more fortuitous than constantly trying to prove one is right over the other, but for whatever reason, it just never happens.
When it feels like the incessant endless debates of baseball happenings off the field begin to overshadow the product on the field, it’s even at these times in which a lover of the game like me just doesn’t want to be a part of it. Sometimes, I just want to watch the game happening on the field, but with zero sounds of the people around me. That’s probably why I like minor league ball so much.
So, completely disgusted and dejected by the idea of professional sports, I decided to go do something else, which in other words means that I went to go play League of Legends. And since hardly anyone I like to play with plays as much as I do, I stuck with ARAM mode, which is the “quick, but random” mode of the game. After two wins out of six games, I’m still cognizant of the idea of random, but random sure as shit feels like “randomly placed on the team full of competent players or incompetent players,” and it’s obvious which side I was continuously randomly placed on.
And everyone who plays LoL is a 14-year old asshole troll who lucks into being the worst player on the winning side that abuses anonymity and thinks they can and does say whatever they want, which is usually the worst stuff on the planet.
Needless to say, gaming wasn’t going in that much of a better direction, so I guessed that farting around on the internet might be a way to kill a little bit of time and relax with. But I guess there was too much darkness floating around my head by this point, because this too became not such a great idea after a short amount of time as well.
Facebook, which I resisted joining for the longest time, I’ll admit is not the be-all-end-all I made it seem like it would be if I ever hopped aboard. I’m moderately pleased with the ease in which it is to connect with people at a whim, and there are times when it’s nice to see people trying to broadcast positivity to the rest of their respective networks of connected people.
But then there are times when Facebook becomes, or rather feels like, a battleground of self-aggrandizing attention seekers who feel the need to boast the things they’re doing on every minute of the day. Sure, I’ve done my share of letting people know where I’ve been, or what I’ve been doing, but not nearly as close to the magnitude of people I know occasionally do. Maybe if I weren’t in such a sour mood, it wouldn’t have bothered me, but man on that particular day, I sure as hell did not have a lot of tolerance for all the selfies, all the check-ins, and all the excessive boasting of the to-them amazingly awesome things they were doing.
Then I just begin to hate the internet. Because it’s in a way infantilized the world in a way, because things in the past that required going out and accumulating real-world experience in doing, are all things now capable of doing in the safety behind a screen and keyboard in your nice safe homes. But then they go overkill, and feel the need to broadcast every single fucking thing to the world, completely oblivious to the fact that maybe not everyone really wants to see it.
So I closed the Facebook tab in my browser, and relegated myself to watching Batman episodes. For the rest of the night. Safely.
And it was fucking Easter. I couldn’t go anywhere that was open if I wanted to, and with gas prices what they are today on account of the rich wanting to get richer, driving for the sake of enjoyment and trying to clear my head isn’t always the best idea anymore either.
And I wouldn’t have been able to put the windows down, because it’s a Georgia spring, and I’ve become susceptible over the years to the pollen which will fuck me up without expensive antihistamines. AND it’s also the most bipolar spring in history where it’s 40F in the morning, 80F in the afternoon, and always fucking 79F in my own bedroom no matter what.
I’m not talking about myself, but it also really, really sucks when bad things happen to legitimately good people. That’s not aggravating, but truly saddening. That was my final straw on an exasperating day.
It’s funny looking back at my post-birthday blues, because it wasn’t truly bad in the sense that horrible things were happening, it was just an aggravating day where my sour mood made me overthink everything into a negative connotation. I can laugh at that. I’d say “everyone has them,” but I’m not entirely sure everyone does. But regardless, it’s also laughable that nothing more than going to bed and leaving it behind is all it really takes for it to pass.
Thank goodness for sleep, because there are some days when the world is a pretty insufferable place, and I find it really, really hard to love living in it.
