Fantasy football is an immaculate waste of time. Over the last two years, I have spent an aggregate of (literally) days (i.e. 24-hour periods) looking at stats, offering trade deals, creating spreadsheets, preparing for drafts and the like. And it helps no one.
I love it. Here's why:
I guess it was a couple years ago when on a Saturday I witnessed my dad performing the normal weekly lugging in tons of stuff just purchased at Sam's Club - paper towels, food, bottled water, etc. Certainly, people need this stuff and effective households have effective shopping trips. I wish in no way to belittle Sam's Club, shopping, the need for paper towels, and certainly not my dad.
But here it was, Saturday, and what was my dad doing? Spending money. After an entire week of working to earn money, the first moments we have away from work we likewise go "work" to lose what we just worked to gain. It's almost like we work to get the paper towels, but that just creates more work because we need to go get them. Further, why do we get paper towels? To make life easier, right? But if we didn't get paper towels (to make life easier) we wouldn't have to go pick them up and we wouldn't have to work the portion of our week that paid for them. In the end we work harder for a guise of ease.
Sidebar: Are our traditional notions and expectations of retirement just a guise of ease? If so, what degree of our lives are spend subsidizing something that isn't even real?
After thinking about this for a little while I came to realize that when we are not working, we are usually spending money one way or another.
And, of course, we go to work to make money. Our lives serve as a financial tidewater. (Please see the larger point of this post, otherwise I will seem like a judgmental ass. I understand that Saturday is a great time to get paper towels if you need them.)
So...
M-F, 9-5 = make money.
M-F, 5 PM - 9 AM = spend money or sleep.
Sat. & Sun. = spend money.
And that's our lives. We are either making or spending money. And we are productive because of it. Make, spend. Make, spend. Work, shop. Work, mulch. Work, eat. Work, go out. Work, renovate the house. Work, impress your friends. Work, "it's for the kids." (Another disclaimer: I know all of these can be used for far greater things than I am making them out to be.) Talk about a vicious cycle. I'm in it to a large degree.
But one place I break free from this is fantasy football. I do it for the intrinsic value of itself. I do it because I enjoy it because I do. It's fun. For me, it is outside the make/spend cycle. I need to find something other than fantasy football to accomplish this for me but I love that all the time it takes up is unproductive.
I'm tired of being a productive tidewater. What's the alternative? I want to be a ravaging, boulder-moving, ragged edge-softening river. I'll leave it up to your comments to see what that might look like.
Awake really late on an cool night with a conference call in 5.5 hours,
-Broderick
7 comments:
Two things:
1 - I generally don't support bloggers that delete comments. Half the point of a blog is what other people say about your thoughts. Or so I thought. Though I understand (and appreciate) the change, robbing people of the discussion in the interim cheapens the point of the blog, yes? Please don't delete another comment.
2 - I, too, have been known to partake of the time leech that is fantasy football. My team was undefeated last regular season, and though I lost in the playoffs, my season ended with me feeling as if I had done it as well as one could have. I looked back and saw how much time I spent, and how silly it was...I didn't like how it affected my thought processes and the way I acted. I realized how much I could accomplish if I spent even 1/4 of the time I invested in FFL doing something for others, and/or for the Kingdom.
I realized that seldom did I spend half an hour a day in prayer or in the Word. During FFL season, my time spent efforting towards this non-athletic sporting event probably averaged out to half an hour a day. I don't know how it works for others, but this waved a big red flag at me to reconsider my priorities.
All of this is to say that, yet again, I appreciate your thoughts, and choose to disagree. I love you, Bro.
As someone who has actually witnessed you frolicking in Sam's Club with Bingo, I feel it necessary to comment. Fantasy football is awesome. Fantasy football with an all-day live draft extravaganza is even better. And fantasy football for money is even better still (because it makes sure some goober doesn't stop playing after week 8). I don't think you need to right a blog entry to justify why you enjoy it...because it's fun. Now you might want to right an essay justifying your vetoed trade. Just kidding.
Peace,
Luke
funny. nicely done.
Maybe we should be asking ourselves how we spend our time rather than our money. Although the spending money cycle is rather vicious, a better indicator of the pulse of our lives is what we spend our time doing.
I myself am also a big fan of fantasy football, but admit that I feel rather worthless after dedicating hours to its demise. Instead of getting out of the spend/not spending cycle we should try and look at how we are spending our lives to further His Kingdom.
Blondie
For further discussion:
Isn't it funny that we use financial terms (i.e. "spend") in describing time. We have economized and financialized the entity of time, as evidenced by the words we use to talk about it.
I agree with your post. I do think we need to ask better questions here. What's a good way to ask the questions you've raised about time w/o using financial terms?... let me know if you have something good because I think it will help us out a lot to see your point through a different scope. Thanks a ton whoever you are!!
-Brody
brody,
i've thought similar thoughts regarding the make money / spend money cycle. i've gotten dirty looks from folks who think it's sinful to spend $50 on a fantasy football league. they see it as gambling. and it is to some degree. but for that $50 (or $20, or no money) I'm getting hundreds of hours of entertainment. would i rather spend $50 to go see 6 movies in the theater over a 6-month period or would i rather spend it to be entertained every sunday for 17 weeks? to me it's a no-brainer. even without money involved, it's and still a blast. gotta love fantasy sports...
bryan
It is right to use "spend" when referring to money, or time, or any resource for that matter. It is biblical language. It is an accurate use of the word. God has entrusted you and I with time. It is not ours, but it is "ours" to spend. How we spend it is up to us? To glorify God, worship Him, treasure Him, or not.
I too love the Fantasy Football, and have played for a couple years. However, God really convicted me this year about the amount of time I spend on it. He revealed to me the idol it bacame in my heart, and how I spent more time enjoying, or worshiping, FF, than I was my Savior. I thank Go for Him showing that to me and freeing me from that idolatry.
I dontknow if its at that place for you, but if so, I would encourage you to stop robbing yourself of TRUE joy, and peaceful rest in our Lord.
Thank God for His goodness in giving us football! But, we dare not raise it above Him.
Post a Comment