I don't know if anyone else can relate to this, but I've not really engaged with any of the emotions of the past couple of weeks. Haven't watched the speeches or any of the LFC specials. Listened to the interview on TAW, it was nice but I didn't have much response to it aside from, "that fella is sound".
Of course I absolutely loved Jurgen Klopp as a manager and a person. Receiving the news in January that he was quitting was a punch to the guts and I was immediately onto the socials (that I never normally use) to commiserate with friends around the world. But these past few weeks I've just been sort of waiting for it to be over, like all the goodbyes have been said and now we're standing at the train platform as boarding has been delayed for some reason, and feeling a tad awkward.
Am I alone with this? Everywhere I read people confessing to shedding tears over and over, and I am not even close. I dunno, maybe I'm an emotional void, maybe some of the personal challenges of the last few years have made football seem trivial, maybe all the cheating and VAR and general bullshit has left me too disenfranchised to care about anything to do with the sport and Jurgen is collateral in all that.
But something in a TAW episode the other day did resonate with me, when Neil said to Gutman that he's a bloke who's always looking to the near future... "not too far ahead, just about 3 months ahead". I think that is kind of where I am in many things, I don't tend to put a lot of stock into recent events, like I'm not much into patting myself on the back when I finish a big project at work, I just forget it and move onto the next thing... but at the same time I don't have much patience for long-term "roadmap" planning, I'm only interested in knuckling down into the next couple of items. But on the flipside, I'm not immune to nostalgia, it's just that I tend to look further back. I still remember every detail of my AFL club's last two premierships in 1987 and 1995. I still reflect fondly on girlfriends from the late 90s and early 00s, and travelling the world in my 20s. But aside from minor tiddles like my wedding and the birth of my children, I don't think much about anything that's happened between 15 years ago and today. It's like the memories need cellaring and I'll pop the cork when I'm good and ready.
Maybe I should be saying these things to a therapist instead of RAWK. Hello? Anybody?
