At Vice, former Mets.com reporter Aaron Taube details the way his season on the Mets’ beat destroyed his fandom. Aaron is a good dude and a good writer and was, long before his stint in the press box, a TedQuarters reader with whom I corresponded by email with some frequency.

The piece deals thematically with issues similar to some I’m aiming to get at in something I’m hoping to post later today, so I was almost reluctant to link it, but its quality and Aaron’s good-dudedness won out. Needless to say, covering the Mets has not killed my own fandom, but it has changed it in countless ways. One key difference, I suspect, between my experience and Aaron’s is that I’ve never been forced churn out copy about baseball games and baseball players for work, so if I feel I need a break from it for whatever reason I can take one at my discretion. There are aspects of this job that feel like a job, for sure, but the going-to-baseball-games and writing-about-baseball parts — not as big a part of mine as they were of his — never do.

Also, you know, we’re all our own unique snowflakes and such, and this particular snowflake happens to a) love baseball so, so, so much and b) not think there’s really all that much in the world worth taking seriously.