Crunching bones 🦴
"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose."
—Dr. Seuss
> newsworthy | crunching bones
My work as a journalist eventually began publishing and airing in mainstream news outlets like Wired.com and the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune.
I reported major projects for NPR's "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition" and beamed with pride as the stories aired in my hometown of Tulsa. ▶️
But I endured bone-crunching insecurities and anxieties throughout my career while living twice each in San Francisco, Austin, and Kansas City.
- I often wondered if people could see my racing thoughts. I wondered if people could see me shaking.
You'd observe a tall, confident-seeming hipster journalist.
But inside me was a firestorm of generalized fear.
- I'd wonder if you could see how hot my face felt.
- I'd wonder if you could see my pounding heart trying to escape through the bars of my chest. ♥️
I took various medications and saw experts for anxiety and depression. The symptoms seemed to get better at times. Then I would plunge again into panic and despair.
My drinking steadily worsened. It only grew worse after my brother died of leukemia in 2005 following a long battle.
Throughout, I was obsessed with work, journalism, and the news.
At a newspaper in San Francisco, I proved myself by "working late" whether work needed to be done at those hours or not.
My mentor and best friend warned me that overwork was fully possible even if you loved what you were doing. He said I seemed depressed. I ignored him.
After working for a time at the Center for Investigative Reporting, I convinced my editors there to let me work from home in Austin where I’d lived once before.
There, I avoided people who might say I seemed depressed.
Relationships came and went. I worked and I read books and I drank and I went to punk and metal shows. Lonesomeness was always only mildly bothersome.
Repeat.
- next time "Audiences decry bad news as cognitive junk."
- listening Leon Bridges "Shy"
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