The Fields Of Privilege

I spend about a quarter of my life driving now. This includes my entire life, so if we want to pull sleep out of the equation, it's probably more like a third.

Driving to work. Driving to the gym. Driving to do laundry, get groceries, get gas. Driving for strangers in my side hustle, because that's what the math tells me to do right now, and arguing with math is rarely a good idea.

Sports? Well, I listen to the A's games on the radio, and I read newsletters that might help me not be quite so terrible and unqualified in my leagues. But I don't have cable (hell, I don't even have a TV), don't go to games, and don't spend nearly the same amount of time and energy thinking about it.

That stuff has been replaced by the day job and podcasts and political concerns, and if I have time left over, maybe playing a guitar or getting on a stage and trying my hand at stand up. Or sitting at a poker table, because sometimes that works out for the math, too. Eventually, I might add in a shift as a security guard, because that money will happen without more miles hitting my car.

Sports has, effectively, been priced out of my market. At least for now.

Not so much on the actual cost, but the time one. I have 126 hours or so of waking life every week to make money, and I pretty much spend about 100 of them doing that.

This condition isn't permanent, because nothing in life is, and you don't have to really follow sports to have opinions about them. (Short take this week: the fact that Colin Kaepernick isn't one of the best 96 quarterbacks in the world is plainly ridiculous on its face, but ridiculous is what the NFL does best, and every day he isn't on a field is a day where that fact gets a little less ridiculous. Because playing football is an insane way to try to make money, and a blood bargain that its fans have to hold their nose to more every day. It's all ridiculous. But since we don't have to currently rank Kaepernick on our fantasy rankings, out of sight, out of mind. Try not to think about what this means to political discourse, or the chilling of speech towards people of color.)

So if simply watching or following sports is a privilege, and one that far too many people pay for whether they do it or not, assuming we don't cord-cut and stop the de facto national subsidy in our cable bills...

Well, that's just the thing, isn't it? It feels like they didn't use to be. It feels like you used to be able to just put on a game without quite such a dent in your actual or mental checkbook, escape the real world for a few hours, think about nothing but what went on between the lines.

I'm not sure I can do that anymore.

But hey, things change, right?

Sometimes for the better?