I have decided to go on blogging hiatus for the next several months. This might end up turning into semi-permanently. I honestly don’t know. I’ll re-evaluate after the season starts. What you can expect:
- No posts from me on this site until at least November 1st
- Less commenting and involvement elsewhere
- Less of me on Twitter (look, this one is more of a guideline than a rule…)
This is not a huge loss, considering I haven’t been posting much anyway. But I just don’t want the feeling hanging over my head that I should post, when X news happens or X rumor comes out. This past month and a half, I feel like I’ve known too much. And it wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t interesting. And yet I followed it with this weird sense of almost-guilt, of not wanting to miss something. I found myself arguing because of how much I like arguing, rather than because I actually cared. I didn’t even feel evil glee when everyone else decided LeBron was the douche I’d thought he was for years. I just felt bored and somewhat dirty.
What Will Leitch wrote after the LeBron “Decision” special aired really spoke to me. It’s been in my head ever since, and the more I thought about it, the bigger it grew.
We cheer because sports is, ultimately, harmless.And we trust that they will at least pretend. We trust that they will recognize the ultimate ludicrousness of this whole enterprise, that these are grown men wearing tank tops, throwing a ball up and around, running on wood, that this all exists because we allow it to exist, that the illusion must be maintained. We trust that they understand how good they have it, how much we give them, against our own self-interest. We trust that they are not laughing at us.
That trust felt broken tonight.
…[N]ever has it been laid more bare, and never did it feel so empty. It felt like a break, the moment when the tide crested, when we looked at the games, and their players, and ourselves, and wondered: Why in the world are we watching these awful people? It was a question impossible to answer.
The more I know, and the faster I know it, I’ve realized… the less I need to know. Why can’t I wake up and read in the paper that Jeff Bower has been fired or Chris Paul has been dealt? You know, like average people. On Friday night, I looked at the last 48 hours of my life and realized I’d spent it on Twitter, writing sarcastic stuff, and in comment threads. What some of you may not know is that, in addition to basketball, I write fiction. I’m trying to finish my first novel right now. Over that 48 hours I put exactly zero words into this project I really cared about. And what had really happened, in basketball, that was worth the squandering of those precious words and that time?
Nothing. A transaction was not made. A solid, tangible, indisputably factual event had not occurred. A game had not been played. I had spent 48 hours of my life talking and writing and thinking about… nothing.
If The Thing With the Rumors happens, I will miss out on the chance to write one of the biggest, most epic posts of my blogging career. I am aware of this. I am aware that the Hornets are having an eventful offseason. I am aware there are people who have come to care about my opinions. My awareness of this made me consider and reconsider this hiatus a couple of times. So, if The Thing happens, just know that the post I would have written (Is there even a tense for this situation? “I might would having written”?) would have been great.
Despite this post, this has a lot less to do with basketball than it does with other parts of my life. (“It’s not you, NBA, it’s me! Only, it’s sorta you too!”) I am in the middle of a big writing project, and having my head in 2 places (one of which is a big drag) is not working for me. I was on the phone with my mom last week, and she said, “You know, all your non-fiction is great. Why don’t you just concentrate on writing that and getting paid for it or published?” This is a good question. It is probably the question.
What it comes down to is I love basketball, and I love the Hornets. But I just want this more.
Thank you all so much for reading and following. I cannot count the number of great people I’ve met through blogging. I never meant for this thing to be anything. It was just a domain I spontaneously bought when I was excited after a game, and I had to get that excitement out somehow. That’s what the “Hype” in Hornets Hype means: it means getting hyped up, getting really into it. It means the rush I get from being inside New Orleans Arena. There’s nothing like it. And that’s something I never felt guilty about spending words on. When that’s back, you might see me back here. But not before.
I hope you will all appreciate the vast amount of self-restraint it took for me to not make a “I have to do what’s best for my family” or “I have taken my talents to _____” joke during this post.
This is what basketball is to me. I'll be back when this is.
Original Story:
http://hornetshype.com/wp/2010/07/25/...
