Why Does Football Break Me? How Fishing Restored My Soul After the Storm

The Noise Was the Game

I used to think football was everything—until it became everything that broke me. The roar of 60,000 fans, the flashing lights of stadium cameras, the endless analysis of passes and angles—it all drained me dry. I thought if I just scored enough goals, proved enough critics wrong, I’d be whole again. But no goal ever filled the silence.

The Rod Didn’t Lie

Fishing isn’t football. No crowds. No microphones pointed at your face at 2 a.m. Just water. Wind through pines. A single rod in my backyard on Lake Michigan’s edge—where my brother and I sit without noise for hours. He doesn’t speak much—but he smiles when the line goes still under water. That’s when I remember: this wasn’t about tactics.

Data Doesn’t Heal,

But Rituals Do I run models now—not on XGBoost or Tableau—but on memory and rhythm. Every cast is a statistical anomaly: silent moments are outliers in a life built on pressure points too high to quantify. My brother taught me more than any coach ever could: presence is the only metric that matters.

They Called It ‘Distraction’

They said quitting football was surrendering to peace—that’s what they told themselves so they wouldn’t feel weak again. But peace isn’t absence—it’s construction. The quiet isn’t empty—it’s loaded with meaning you can’t measure with analytics. I’m not trying to become a better player anymore—I’m learning how to be human while staying still.

What You Don’t See on Screen

You won’t find this in highlights or press conferences—you have to sit in his garden after midnight and ask yourself: what broke you? And what restored you? The answer isn’t in expected goals or xG—they’re in the silence between casts.