Losing televised sports as an interest

   When I was a kid, I loved sports. I enjoyed playing and watching them, and baseball was my favorite. I very much liked seeing the games in person at the stadium, but the television experience was still plenty exciting to me. In those years I was a big fan of very non-local teams like the Reds (from Cincinnati) and the A's (from Oakland), I imagine at least partly because they were so successful back then. I certainly didn't know where Cincinnati or Oakland were located, nor did I seem to care.
   A few years later, perhaps in my mid-teens, I recall going to Yankee stadium with my father and being amazed that he would get bored so early in the game and want to leave. At this point I was beginning to prefer other sports (I believe that hockey, being a sport that my friends at that time would play, was becoming a new favorite), and these preferences would continue to change the older I became. Still, I couldn't understand the boredom on my father's part.
   Now I can.
   I don't know exactly when it happened, when the actual break took place, but I realized perhaps a week ago that I generally cannot watch any sport on television for more than a little while without becoming extremely bored.
   This change did not occur suddenly, but over time I did notice that the different type of sports I watched had shrunken, as had the time I could bear to do so. Baseball was the first to go, then hockey, and now American football, which seemed for a time to take the reins and keep my sports interest from completely disappearing altogether. For a few weeks, European football (soccer in the U.S.), and even basketball had briefly appeared as a possible replacement sports interest, but these were short lived.
   At some point, I had developed the boredom and lack of interest of my father that had so perplexed me years earlier.
   For years, televised sports were something that I used to unwind after work, a passive activity that I could engage in without having to care much about the outcome. For a nervous person such as myself, being able to engage without invested attachment to something was alluring and relaxing, and it worked most of the time. My wife and I even coined a term, 'stupid t.v.' to signify watching television for this same effect, and we would often watch different programs together (She also allowed me to watch the sports I wanted, even though she absolutely hates them. and I am thankful to her for that).
   So it is that this lack of interest in sports has meant not only a change, but also the disappearance of an avenue for me that was useful for decompressing from a world that I often feel quite fearful in. I mourn this loss, truly, but hope that it signifies that I will be moving on to discover new methods that are more in fitting with the person I am currently and will become. This is not only a hope, but also a wish.