Recently, I’ve starting doing this new thing: I see a tweet on my phone, react automatically in my head, show my phone to my roommate, and say, “Hey, Reagan, act excited for me!” Then, Reagan complies, pretending to read the tweet and acting overdramatically about its contents, which go completely over her head.
February 9th marked the beginning of NCAA softball season. I have already written two blog posts about softball. I never played the sport, but I somehow fell in love with it over the past few years. I follow tweets and live score updates and try to watch as many games as I can.This is an obsession that absolutely none of my friends share. I have very few friends who are even into sports in general, let alone one as obscure to a typical sports fan as college softball. I’ve had a friend ask me how many “rounds” (i.e. innings) are in a typical softball game; the concept of sports is that foreign to them.
Of course I love my friends. I wouldn’t choose to hang out with them if I didn’t. There is a part of me, however, that wishes that I had somebody to talk to about my obsession. I wish that I could share a tweet about a tournament coming up or a player recovering from an injury to somebody who understands exactly what I’m talking about. I wish for that give-and-take sort of rapport with somebody, one that allows us to exchange facts and understand the sport on the exact same level.When I ask my roommate Reagan to act excited for me because my favorite team just scored a run or act sad for me because they dropped in the national rankings, I know that those feelings aren’t genuine. It’s funny when she performs in such a dramatic manner, but she’s just being a good friend by pandering to my passion, which to her definitely seems very strange.
I’m sure that my constant talk about softball can be grating, and it’s not even a week into the season yet. I’ve been trying to tone down my excitement about games and statistics because I don’t want to annoy everybody around me. And I don’t want this one aspect of my life to overtake my entire personality; I don’t want to be known only as “that one girl who’s really excited about softball for some reason”.
But I don’t think that I’m the only one who has this problem. We all have hobbies that we can’t necessarily share with other people. Maybe we’re embarrassed about our guilty pleasure TV shows or we have a favorite singer that everybody seems to hate or we don’t have any friends in our respective majors. There’s that rush of excitement when we think about our hobbies that we can’t seem to ignore, even if there are very few opportunities to express ourselves outside of our own heads. It can feel like we’re about to burst sometimes.So if you’re struggling to find somebody who shares the same passion as you do, know that I completely understand what you’re going through. And, if you’re somebody who loves college softball, maybe hit me up sometime? I’d love to chat with you.
Image Credit: Pinterest, 1, 2,3