If you’ve ever played The Sims, you know the feeling: laboring over the completely virtual existence of computer people and computer houses and computer jobs. In the moment, waiting for a copy of the SimCity Times to see what employment opportunities were available in the virtual computer newspaper felt more important than some of the tasks and relationships happening in the real world of the 12-year-old at the controls.
There’s a disappointingly unexplainable feeling that comes years later when realizing that the stress was entirely unnecessary because this wasn’t a real world. We could simply power down the wheezing CPU tower running Windows 95 and walk away. There’s an especially disappointing feeling when you simply trade one virtual world for another to stress over (and I’m not talking about Twitter).
This year, in trying to predict every single NFL game—an annual process that has its inherent ups and downs—I found myself especially racked with how to advance the Panthers to the playoffs and how to get the Commanders to a record more reflective of their roster. However, making a five-win team a nine-win team is like trying to remove the middle beads on a friendship bracelet. There are 15 other occurrences that have to change as a result, and at some point my patient and kind editors lose patience, especially when they’ve already spent warm, sun-kissed afternoons trying to sort out my unintended tiebreakers and playoff scenarios.
