I gotta be honest: watching my kid’s former youth football team be more successful after we left hurts a little. Obviously they were trending towards that level of success, so it is no surprise. The coaching is solid and the talent has increased across the board. It does conjure old feelings of failure from as far back as I can remember of teams I’ve been a part of getting better when I leave. Of course, correlation is not causation. The only reason I could play D1 football was because the team sucked and was desperate to cultivate talent when they couldn’t recruit it. Same goes for semi-pro. As for this situation here: It shouldn’t be a situation at all. To be clear, I should not care and should not focus on it at all… yet here we are. Whenever I hear about them I do in fact tune in and pay attention to what is happening. It is just my personality and competitive spirit to want to dive in and learn all I can and hoard scores and figure out who is doing what, etc…
I suppose you could call me an obsessive compulsive person to a point. I want to be all in all the time, but as I age (ungracefully) I am learning to temper these thoughts and feelings and become someone who strikes a more precious balance. It is active work. I have to tell myself not to look into these football things when they pop up. It is hard work. I am still learning how to do it. Normally, I rely on cross addiction. If I get obsessive about A and A is unhealthy then I try to focus on B, which is supposed to be a healthier obsession. I recognize on the surface that it doesn’t fix the problem. Like delayed gratification, it is not something that comes easily or often. Yet the work continues…