This was inevitable, basically since the reports of coronavirus started trickling out blip by blip around the New Year. It was already a thing in January, with people getting put into quarantine when arriving from China. Slowly it became a thing here to, and now we are left in a world of smart panic. We went from talking about maybe playing games in front of empty arenas, to cancelling basically every ongoing sport in 48 hours. In my own life, I went from flying from Newark to Raleigh to Toronto all in four days, to being grounded for the forseeable future, staring a month of working from the suburbs right in the face.
There are serious aspects to this crisis, from the deaths to the economic fallout, but for this I want to focus on the darkness that is infecting the sports world. We are starting a month, at least, with no sports. No March madness, no conclusion (most likely) of the NBA or NHL season. The suspension of all the domestic soccer leagues, the Champions League, the ATP Tour, the PGA Tour, potentially UEFA Euro 2020. The thing that fills every night globally, and every sports bar or water cooler, has been vaporized.
Sports has ruled my life in good and bad. I won't say I've wasted it, but I'm about to quickly realize just how much value sports was to my life, be it watching it, discussing it, reading about it, listening to people discussing it. That all ends, and I can't fill the missing time with traveling or escaping into corners of the world, just corners of my house.
Maybe I'll read, go through all those books I neglected, be it when I was in high school, or after I bought one because it looked pretty but proceeded to let it gather dust. Maybe I'll continue to learn how to cook, to broaden my skills in my mother's kitchen - of course contingent on being able to buy produce from grocery stores that are increasingly hounded by real-life re-enactments of ......
Maybe I'll go for runs around our neighborhood - assuming I am allowed to do so. Maybe I'll turn to gardening. In a weird way, there are possibilities here, there is a world that I neglected to focus on sports and all its trappings. Again, I don't regret this decision, as the joy of watching the Colts beat the Patriots in Jan, 2007, or the Astros winning the pennant in 2005 (I'll leave out some more recent Astros highlights). Those were amazing moments that have provided value in my life, but now I'm left to find value in other ways.
The world will survive Coronavirus because we always get past these things. Maybe it takes 18-24 months to fully recover, for the markets to correct back upwards, for people to travel at the same rate. Maybe it takes six weeks before I'm allowed to travel again, before the leagues even hint at what their go forward plan is.
But for that six week period, I'm going to attack it with a joy and verve that I think will lead to some interesting results. I'm interested to report back as well, living in a closed world still with limitless opportunities, just more close to home and archaic than normal.
There are serious aspects to this crisis, from the deaths to the economic fallout, but for this I want to focus on the darkness that is infecting the sports world. We are starting a month, at least, with no sports. No March madness, no conclusion (most likely) of the NBA or NHL season. The suspension of all the domestic soccer leagues, the Champions League, the ATP Tour, the PGA Tour, potentially UEFA Euro 2020. The thing that fills every night globally, and every sports bar or water cooler, has been vaporized.
Sports has ruled my life in good and bad. I won't say I've wasted it, but I'm about to quickly realize just how much value sports was to my life, be it watching it, discussing it, reading about it, listening to people discussing it. That all ends, and I can't fill the missing time with traveling or escaping into corners of the world, just corners of my house.
Maybe I'll read, go through all those books I neglected, be it when I was in high school, or after I bought one because it looked pretty but proceeded to let it gather dust. Maybe I'll continue to learn how to cook, to broaden my skills in my mother's kitchen - of course contingent on being able to buy produce from grocery stores that are increasingly hounded by real-life re-enactments of ......
Maybe I'll go for runs around our neighborhood - assuming I am allowed to do so. Maybe I'll turn to gardening. In a weird way, there are possibilities here, there is a world that I neglected to focus on sports and all its trappings. Again, I don't regret this decision, as the joy of watching the Colts beat the Patriots in Jan, 2007, or the Astros winning the pennant in 2005 (I'll leave out some more recent Astros highlights). Those were amazing moments that have provided value in my life, but now I'm left to find value in other ways.
The world will survive Coronavirus because we always get past these things. Maybe it takes 18-24 months to fully recover, for the markets to correct back upwards, for people to travel at the same rate. Maybe it takes six weeks before I'm allowed to travel again, before the leagues even hint at what their go forward plan is.
But for that six week period, I'm going to attack it with a joy and verve that I think will lead to some interesting results. I'm interested to report back as well, living in a closed world still with limitless opportunities, just more close to home and archaic than normal.
