Opening Day

“Am I stupid,” I ask myself? The answer would appear to be, “Yes!”

I love baseball. LOVE baseball. I am a firm believer in the idea that opening day should be a national holiday. I remember the days when Cincinnati always played the first game of the season. I would watch Barry Larkin and Eric Davis run out onto the field for the start of another six months of baseball. I’ve stayed home from school to watch opening day.

So I was excited to stay home and watch baseball all day. I would order food, stay on the couch, and just enjoy the games. All. Day. Long.

Sounds like a great idea, right?

Right. Except, here I am, 10:30pm, bottom of the ninth in the Giants game, and I haven’t moved all day. Theoretically I’ve learned that depression is a lack of vitality, a lack of liveliness, a lack of emotion (and, as I’ve said before, “motion creates emotion.”) But, no, I haven’t learned. I looked forward to being immobile all day like I had forgotten that I don’t actually feel good when I do this. It’s not a nice change of pace. It doesn’t enhance my life. I’m so stupid I had forgotten that being sedentary all day not only depresses me but actually makes me feel anxious from lack of movement and makes it hard to even concentrate on the games I’m trying to enjoy.

Don’t even get me started on how the shitty food I ate today makes me feel.

I guess the good news is I have six months of baseball to figure out how to find the proper balance. And hopefully I’m smart enough to make an effort to get some movement in throughout the day, to sweat out the anxiety, to raise the floor of my depression at least enough to enjoy a ballgame without wanting to crawl out of my own skin.

Happy opening day, everyone.