1. Call your parents: They have likely grown accustom to your communication dropping off sometime in mid-April over the last four years from a dutiful stream to a choked trickle. All the same, you might want to give them a call. Tell them where you’ve been, that you still have a job, that those “weird lines” in your face are popped blood vessels from almost four weeks straight of dry heaving and that sure, you wouldn’t mind coming over for dinner. The last time you brought groceries the Raptors were poised to go to the Conference Finals.
2. Check in with your boss: Explain that they can expect your productivity levels to even out now that you won’t be staying up long after games that already run well past the three hour mark to pour over analysis and argue with people you’ve never met online. Admit you were the one stealing the lunches of your coworkers to take home every night and eat in front of the TV. You should probably apologize to Jerry for slapping the laptop out of his hands when he went to plug it in for that presentation and you screamed “NO EASY BUCKETS”, too. But honestly, in some ways, fuck Jerry.
3. Remember if you have a pet: Do you? Tell-tale signs might include a full to bursting litter box, accumulated hair big as tumbleweeds roaming freely the hallways of your apartment or home and very sad eyes looking at you that are not your own.
4. Take your significant other on a date: Somewhere without TVs with nary a highlight reel to be found, where you can look at their face and remember what they look like/confirm you are out with the right person. Criteria for restaurant is someplace that serves food ranging in flavours other than hot, honey garlic and suicide and comes without carrot and celery sticks as a garnish. A tablecloth would be nice.
5. Go for a walk: Your muscles are in a state of early atrophy. It is hard to unclench your hands from the permanent fists they’ve been jammed into but you’ll find they are good for things like holding a coffee, reading a book, rubbing the layers of sediment from your eyes to behold the beautiful world in bloom all around you.
6. Make plans: Don’t panic, but your calendar will be very clear now that it doesn’t revolve around being home every other night to watch a game. Utilize this to make plans with the friends who haven’t seen you since the All-Star break. Some of them might have had a child or got married in that time, so this could be a great opportunity to check in.
7. Take in a film: Without mentioning the series sweep that cannot be named, we are in a flush and bountiful time of pre-summer blockbusters. Nothing will take your mind off [redacted] better than 2 hours of 3D space travel, a bright and cheerful Coke freestyle machine with plentiful choices (NO SPRITE) and greasin’ your cares away at a self-serve butter topping station.
8. Sleep: It feels strange to be reaching to turn the light off without the painful low or exquisite high of a blowout or bloody-knuckled win thrumming in your nerve center, I know, but your eyes are red and your skin is, like, I want to say taupe?
9. Eat a fruit: I’ll be honest, yesterday I had an orange and it felt like I’d discovered the fifth dimension.
10. This is embarrassing. I can’t even get to ten. I know there was something I did last year when the Raptors season ended that didn’t involve unlocking the secrets of time travel to jump to October. It’s too early to go to the beach and there isn’t a long weekend for a while so, model trains? Complaining about baseball? Fitness? Getting into advanced math and developing a salary cap algorithm?
