The Birds of Leaving Call

It's official. I'm quitting Facebook and fantasy football, as of this weekend. This has been a long time coming. One year ago tomorrow, on the verge of leaving Facebook, I conjured up what turned out to be a fantastic project. It arose from a discussion with my friend Axton, probably here on this blog (which was largely abandoned as a result of the project). So I launched a Facebook group called "P.I.G.S.T.Y.2011," or the Project for the InterGenerational Swapping of Tunes in the Year 2011. I invited some friends. Axton did too. Our friends invited more. The group grew to around 120 members by year's end, yet the project stayed manageable. The sheer volume of songs posted in the group overwhelmed some members (and, I suspect, they considered many to be lesser-quality songs), but I found it a warm and engaging conversation about music past and present. Anyway, I imagine this makes fascinating reading for precisely no one but me, so I'll move on.

Suffice it to say that P.I.G.S.T.Y.2011 enabled my already established Facebook addiction. I could rationalize Facebook visits in the name of sharing music. Inevitably, though, I got sucked into reading friends' status updates or clicking on interesting news links, and following the endless stream of clever, viral, sloganeering graphics. Oh, and I am hooked on the little red boxes that flash when anyone clicks "Like" on one of my posts or comments. You know the drill. Facebook is addictive.

This is not news to me. Here I am, a couple years ago, talking about the same things, yet apparently not ready to quit:

Around the time I joined the book of face, I also got hooked on fantasy football. For those not in the know, it's a stats-based game in which each player picks a team of all-stars and lesser stars from around the NFL. Each league typically has ten or twelve teams, and the manager whose all-star team performs the best wins. Usually. This game appealed to my inner sports geek. Hell, it brought that geek roaring back to life. As a child, I collected and traded baseball cards, followed the Milwaukee Brewers and Green Bay Packers religiously (seriously--they were the closest thing to religion in my life, back then), and tracked league leaders in batting average, passing yardage, etc. Though I've heard rumors that fantasy baseball can be even more fun, I stuck with football. And, competitive as I am, I really got into it. I started tracking NFL news five, six, seven days a week. In year two, I joined nine leagues. (Nine!) Last year I scaled back to three. This season, two. And in the past two years I've won three of five leagues and finished second in another. I'm a fantasy champ. Hooray for me.

Over the course of four years, I devoted countless hours to that stupid game. I saw grown men engage in flame wars that occasionally escalated into full-on cyber-bullying. In some leagues, arguments broke out over the dumbest things. I didn't do any flaming or bullying, but I sometimes got as angry as the next guy. And, as I said, I threw myself fully into the competition. At times, the first thought in my head when I woke was something like this: What can I do, right now, to strengthen my fantasy team? I'd hop out of bed before dawn just to scour the news sites and player pools for an edge. I cringe to think what I might have accomplished if I had devoted that time and energy to, say, my own writing. Or to reading books. Or to meditation. Or to reducing clutter around my house. Or to making money. Or to reducing world hunger.

Plus, there's the whole worshipping-false-idols angle. Sports stars tend to be, by and large, out-of-touch, rich, spoiled jerks. Sure, there must be many exceptions. No doubt a lot of them set up charities and do socially constructive work. But, generally speaking, professional jocks do not seem to be the kind of people I'd want to hang out with. Nor do I look up to them. Nor would I want them running the world in which I live. Here, for instance, is LaDainian Tomlinson's answer when asked whether he would play another season for the New York Jets at the league minimum salary for a veteran:

"I've got kids, man," he said with a laugh. "I mean, I don't know. It would be hard for me to do that. It's never been about the money for me. It really hasn't."

It's not about the money? Then why scoff at $925,000 for a single season's work?! I've got kids, too, and I make fairly near the median income in my state. It would take fifteen or twenty years for me to earn what Tomlinson could make as a second-string player on a team he seems to enjoy. And his attitude is typical of pro jocks. So why follow their careers so closely? Why give a damn about whether Tomlinson or Marion Barber or Ricky Williams or whoever might revive his season the right matchup? I have given way too much of my life to professional sports. It's sickening.

So, near the top of my list of New Year's resolutions, I vow to quit Facebook, cold turkey, for a minimum of three months. After that, I hope I will have the will to stay away. And--though the actual decision looms months in the future--I'm vowing now to take a pass on fantasy football in 2012 and beyond.

If I'm wise, I'll never look and back.