{"id":497,"date":"2026-06-13T12:05:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T12:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=497"},"modified":"2026-06-13T12:05:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T12:05:25","slug":"smart-things-i-have-done-while-you-were-watching-sportsball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=497","title":{"rendered":"Smart Things I Have Done While You Were Watching Sportsball"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>\u2022 Composed a funny Facebook post about how I just don\u2019t understand sportsball. \u201cSportsball\u201d is the clever term I use to denote whatever sport currently occupies the national psyche. See, it\u2019s clever because it sounds self-deprecating at first\u2014as though I\u2019m someone who doesn\u2019t fit in among the sports-loving masses. But it actually conveys my contempt for sports, which I consider not only frivolous but interchangeably so. Hence \u201csportsball,\u201d an ingenious portmanteau that I can use to dismiss any sport as a pointless distraction. Except for hockey, since they use a puck for that.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=495\">When the Knicks Are Good<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Purchased cardamom.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>\u2022 Wondered what could possibly make people happy about coming together as communities to behold breathtaking feats of athletic skill.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Perused the Wikipedia page on science to make sure that everything was in order.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Sat on a park bench and sketched the landscape with a charcoal pencil. The sketch could have turned out better, but it was just a preliminary drawing for a painting I plan to begin soon. Yes, I also paint.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Silently congratulated myself in Trader Joe\u2019s after realizing that I didn\u2019t know who won the most recent N.B.A. Finals.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Considered getting my first tattoo. It has to be something meaningful to me, though, so I want to make sure I put enough thought into it. Maybe a bird, to symbolize how I prize my freedom? Or a dragonfly, for the same reason.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 You know those glass cylinders that make a soothing ringing noise when you rub a wooden stick along the outer rim? Bought twelve of those.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Went to the gym, but not with the intention of getting larger muscles or improving my stamina for athletic competition. No. My goal was simply to lead a healthier, more complete existence inside this temporary vessel I call my body.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=493\">Kate Millett Disappears<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Sighed heavily while thinking about politics.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Meditated. (Specifically, meditated about whether the world\u2019s eel population could be saved if we simply did away with Little League.)<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Referred to fruit as dessert.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Went to the Guggenheim and nodded pensively at the things I saw.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Wondered what the deal is with soccer. I mean, admittedly, I\u2019m not the biggest sports guy. But at least basketball has stuff like slam dunks.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Started a fourth Murakami novel to see if this one would do it for me.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Played chess against myself, which was actually pretty fun. Even though I knew every move I was planning and was therefore able to foil all my own attempts to win, it was fun. Not laborious. Fun.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Sighed heavily while thinking about N.F.L. concussions.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Remembered a \u201cHamlet\u201d quote.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Tuned out a co-worker\u2019s description of his weekend while running through a mental list of reasons Himalayan salt is better than the regular kind.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Privately revelled in never having seen an episode of \u201cThe Bachelor\u201d or having gained an understanding of golf.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Thought about the last time I went to a sporting event and enjoyed myself. It was years ago\u2014over a decade now, actually. I must have been seventeen or so. My buddies and I went to the last varsity-basketball game of the season. Even back then I knew sports weren\u2019t really my thing, but I didn\u2019t care. I bought some M&amp;M\u2019s and a giant Coke and got ready to cheer. And we all got really into it, which kind of surprised me. It\u2019s not like we were pals with anyone on the team or anything; if we\u2019d ever talked to the players, we probably would\u2019ve had nothing in common. But for some reason it was still a great night. It was all so natural. When our school won, it really did feel like we\u2019d <em>all<\/em> won, somehow\u2014like we\u2019d worked together to achieve a common goal. I think about that night a lot, and how stupid I was. That\u2019s how fascism gets started.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=491\">The World Cup and the Changing Psyche of the Haitian Diaspora<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Watched tennis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>River Clegg imagines a humorous list of things one can do instead of watching or otherwise engaging with sports, such as writing Facebook posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Smart Things I Have Done While You Were Watching Sportsball - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=497\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Smart Things I Have Done While You Were Watching Sportsball - 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