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Otis Boudreaux · Yesterday, 07:42 PM

First off, let me start this off by being upfront and honest, I am going to post this in all of the sim leagues that I am a part of. I hope that doesn’t break any rules. Please let me know if that is the case. It is not my intention to do that, but sometimes, well…you can read along and we can go from there.

I want to thank the people who run sim leagues. I want ot thank my teammates and the friends I have made in the leagues. I want to thank everyone involved in keeping these leagues running without pay and sometimes, having to deal with disgruntled and unhappy people. I know that sometimes it is a thankless job…and I want to make it clear, THANK YOU!!

Thank you for the countless hours that you have given to the league’s success. Thank you for doing everything you can to make these leagues a great experience. Thank you for giving us a place to escape from real life and just sit back and enjoy some fake sports.

I don’t want to go into too much detail, so I will give you the quick-hit summary, of why I am wanting to say this. I want to provide the people who make all of this happen see how much it matters to us, the players.

Over the last 3 months I have had some pretty tough challenges in my life. Some of them added unusual levels of stress in my life, while others caused outright fear….and some others were a mix of a multitude of feelings and emotions…some good….and some bad.

Unexpectedly I lost my job after my position at the company I was working out eliminated my position. This was completely out of the blue….joining a virtual meeting to do a supposed “check-in” and it being over in 5 minutes after hearing that dreaded news. I knew I was going to be eligible for unemployment, but it was no where near what I had been getting paid. Ironically, this ended up being a blessing in disguise because I was able to find a job with a company that, at times, I don’t even believe is real. I was offered the new job 4 weeks to the day that I had lost my old one. But the ensuing 4 weeks were filled with anxious moments as I got rejection email after rejection email.

During this 4 weeks I had a knee operation that was supposed to be pretty routine. But, as is normal in my life, nothing was routine. I had complications and ended up with a severe infection that required me to be admitted to the hospital over a long weekend to have antibiotics pumped into my system. As I will still recovering from that my wife and I took my Dad on a already-planned vacation where walking without being able to walk was in itself something interesting.

I returned home and felt like life was finally going to get back to normal when my life, and the lives of my friends and neighbors here in western North Carolina were turned upside down by Hurricane Helene. What was supposed to be some wind and heavy rain ended up being a deluge of, not inches, but feet, of rain that destroyed homes, roads, infrastructure, places of employment, and sadly, even took lives.

I wasn’t sure when or how life was going to return to normal after that. But the response was overwhelming as people, organizations and government agencies rushed in to provide aid and support.

So what does all of this have to do with sim leagues? Throughout all of this turmoil and chaos I had one refuge…there was one place I could escape to, even if it was for only a minute or two. I was able to pop into a sim league, maybe not all I am a part of, but as many as I could. I told them I was alive. I told them that life was crazy, but I would be back. I was able to look at how the team was doing, how the league tables looked. I was able to think about something besides the never ending chaos that was whirling around me.

Life is slowly coming back to normal. My participation in the sim leagues is slowly increasing back to its pre-chaos levels. My teammates are still there, my leagues are still there….my life away from “life” is still there.

So Thank You for providing this refuge and doing what you do.

Now, lets play some fake sports!!