Ankle-o-sore

I blew out my ankle a few months back playing in a basketball league (technically, a "Grade 3 Ankle Sprain", which means I completely tore some ligaments). After a couple of months of physical therapy, my PT let slip that completely torn ligaments don't ever heal unless you have them surgically reattached, leaving me to wonder why the hell I was spending all this time doing exercises if I wasn't going to get any better.

The upshot is that I went from a fairly active lifestyle (lifting weights 3 times a week and playing competitive sports 3-4 times a week) to sitting squarely on my butt, unable to run or jump, or even fit my foot into a shoe. Since then, I'm back to lifting, and I'm starting to do Kung Fu again, but it's going to be a while before I'm playing sports competitively (certainly I don't want to risk being on crutches again until after the baby is born, as I have no intention of further incurring the wrath of my angry pregnant wife).

So, I got a little stir crazy going from lots of physical activity to no activity, which I expected. What I didn't expect was how much I missed the competition. I found myself playing more and more online games - I got much more serious about chess, but I really got into playing Battlegrounds in WoW. Something about playing team-oriented online games scratched the same itch that playing basketball did, which I really didn't expect.

The only difference is that as a 38-year-old white guy, there's a limit to how good I'm ever going to be at hoops, whereas in theory there's no reason I can't be the best Battlegrounds player on my server. Uh, except for the fact that as an adult(?) with a full-time job, wife, kid, dog, and all the trimmings, I can only play about 1/10th as much as the really hardcore players...

That ankle surgery is starting to sound better and better all the time.