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If you run into Heidi Soliday, do her a favor. Talk about politics.

“I always found it funny when I went places and the first thing people wanted to talk about was sports,” said Soliday, whose long career as a KCCI sports reporter and anchor ended last Oct. 31. “You get tired of talking about the same thing every day. Sometimes I would be talking about sports and think, ‘Does this really even matter?'”

For some reason – she’s not permitted to say why – the 54-year-old is no longer discussing sweaty athletes for a living. She’s out at her country home, constantly on call to drive her seventh-grade son to his next activity, while her husband practices dentistry in Newton.

Better than waiting to spot her at the grocery store, you might give Soliday a call. There’s no station full of colleagues now, and she loves to talk.

“I’ve always blabbed a lot,” she said in a telephone chat. “Maybe the natural thing might be to give speeches or something.” Or maybe write a book about her family’s project of visiting all the national parks. Or maybe just have fun?

“I certainly don’t know if I could do a typical 9-to-5 day,” she said. “I haven’t done that, and I don’t know if I could.”

Clearly, she left the TV world without a plan for the future beyond being a shuttle-driving mom.

Volunteering, maybe? Or, “maybe I could be a film critic,” she said. “I watch movies all the time and make lists of movies all the time. Many years ago at the station, I asked the boss about being a critic.” But that never happened. It was all sports, all the time.

To many of her viewers, it must have looked like a terrific way to spend your life. “There were a lot of good things about that job,” Soliday acknowledges. “You get to witness events up close and personal. But it can be very aggravating. So often you don’t even get to see the end of the game, because you have to be ready to do a live shot. It’s always important to get it on, get it on.

“The weird thing about it, even though I was in sports, I wouldn’t necessarily say sports was my thing,” she said. “I was an athlete, and I like sports, but I don’t know if sports were my first love. I read books all the time, and I’m really into music, but sports put me in one little thing.

“I should possibly have gone on another tack,” she says, then edits that mental tape: “But not really.”

Preceding her immersion in athletics, there was politics. “Before I got into TV, I was sort of a political junkie,” she said. “Mom was active in the local Democratic Party, and I would go around to caucus stuff. This year (during caucus season) it was fun to be driving through Des Moines and see someone doing a live shot somewhere. I might have enjoyed being in on that a little more.”

These days she doesn’t watch much TV. She might check it first thing in the morning, but when 10 p.m. rolls around, “I’m on the computer or reading.”

Not that it’s a major change. “When I was working – and this is true of a lot of people in TV – I found I very seldom watched TV news,” Soliday said. More important, she’s well aware that people outside the industry aren’t as devoted to the TV news as they used to be, and wonders if she exited the business at the right time. When everybody comes to rely on the Internet for their sports highlights, it won’t be as rewarding to sit at the anchor desk.

The best part of her new lifestyle so far is when her son tells her it’s nice to have her around more. He used to worry about her driving home alone late at night. “He would call me at work every night,” Soliday said. “I kind of miss it a little bit.”

But as for the job, “I don’t miss it a lot,” she says. Then edits the tape: “I don’t miss it at all.”

“I’ve never really been the type of person to dwell on what’s over,” Soliday said. “I always felt I didn’t want to just be judged by this job I did. It’s a great profession to be in, but sometimes there’s a warped sense of worth.

“Why waste time missing it?”