An explanation

If you follow me on twitter or facebook you've probably noticed I have a lot of thoughts in my head these days. The last few days, my mind has been going a million miles an hour. I go through this every now and then. I can have 100 thoughts in my head at any moment. I start thinking about something and splinter off in eight different directions. My dad (bipolar) has dealt with this most of his life, and now I understand why his stories take half an hour to tell. It's called racing thoughts. One of my medications is supposed to stop this, so maybe I need a stronger dosage. Anyway, I need to get some of this out of my head somehow, or I'll go crazy.

So I've been thinking (among many many other things) about how things ended in Estevan. I never wanted things to end that way. I never wanted to leave under mysterious circumstances in January and then resign from my job in May. Estevan was great to me, embraced me as part of the community and the people I dealt with almost always got me all the info I needed for stories ASAP.

I met a lot of great people in Estevan, many of whom I count as friends. And some of them don't really even know what's happened since I left the Energy City. I didn't even tell people at the Mercury some of this.

As you know, I've been battling at times severe depression the last two years. Sometimes it was so bad I couldn't do my job, I couldn't leave my house, anything. If you paid close attention you probably noticed the quality of my work slipping over the last year I was there. Depression took away my focus, my concentration, my motivation to do anything. I found it hard to get motivated for the same old stories I wrote every week - how this minor hockey team did, and that team, and getting stuff from the scoresheets for road games. When it was really bad it was a struggle to pull myself off the couch and go to a game. I missed quite a few games in 2014 that I should have been at, and my coverage slipped as a result. My social anxiety was - and is - so bad, that I couldn't face people at a hockey game. Even if I knew them well.

I want to apologize to those teams and organizations. You deserved far better coverage than I gave you in 2014. Sometimes there weren't even pictures for home games because I was so sick I couldn't drag myself to the rink or the ball field. I'm embarrassed when I think back on that. And this stuff exhibited itself before my episodes of depression came on. One time when I was in Kindersley, I had to go to a dinner in Kerrobert on a Saturday night. I had zero confidence in myself. I was so scared of going to a dinner where I didn't know anybody, and having to talk to people, that I didn't go. And those people didn't get a story on their dinner.

Right till the end, I found that when there was a big story, I rose to the occasion. The Summer Games. The Western Canada Cup. A big Bruins trade. Anything big, I was still able to write a great story. Because I've never wanted to be anything but a sports writer. I've spent the last 10-15 years of my life getting ready to jump into this career that I'm no longer in. When the chips were down, and there was a big story, even at the end, I felt lucky to be doing the job I was doing. And I put everything I had into that story.

Looking back, reading some of the big stories I wrote in 2014, and knowing what I was dealing with at the time, I'm amazed I was able to produce what I did. But the weekly stuff, the team updates and things, more often than not I just did what I had to do to get it done. I was writing eight or nine stories on Mondays, plus all kinds of little briefs that took time. Some of that was my fault - there were usually a couple of stories I could have done before the weekend. But Mondays in the weekly newspaper SPORTS business are hell. Everything happens on the weekend. Looking back, I was under so much stress, much of it I put on myself.

And toward the end I just couldn't handle it anymore. There were two or three times where my mind just completely shut down on Mondays. I panicked and I couldn't handle the stress. I couldn't have written a two paragraph brief about my weekend. In my six years in weekly newspapers I had always, somehow, gotten through the workload on Mondays. Sometimes I was writing till 2 a.m. but I got through it. I couldn't believe what was happening to me. The other guys at the Mercury had to take on that big workload when they already had lots of stories they had to finish by the next morning. I felt awful. I hated myself for putting them through that. But I couldn't do it. I just couldn't.

Last December, I had the worst episode of my life, other than the one last April where I almost did myself in. For four days I was miserable. The world was crashing in on me. I couldn't move off the couch. The future was hopeless. There was no reason to keep living. There's a difference between being suicidal and having thoughts about suicide - I had the latter. I thought, wouldn't it be nice if I could just end this pain. I wasn't actually going to do it. But then, and I still can't explain this, it's like there was this voice or something telling me to overdose on my depression pills. I know that makes me sound like a psycho or something. I've never experienced anything like that before or since. Something was trying to guide me toward doing myself in. And I went over to my pills, and thankfully I was almost out. I knew I didn't have enough there to do any damage, so I didn't try. I called my boss and asked him to take me to the ER (because the people I was living with were total neanderthals - but that's for another blog).

I spent a few days in the hospital. Felt better when I got out. But I knew I couldn't do this anymore. I couldn't keep putting myself through this. Sooner or later it was going to end badly. I had to be home, where I grew up, around the people I love.

That very afternoon, my first day back at work, my awesome boss Brant Kersey informed me that our new benefits provider had something called short term disability. If I qualified, I could go home for up to four months and sort out my depression, while drawing most of my salary. I saw this as nothing short of a miracle. I was desperate to get home and just get rid of the stress and isolation for a while.

So in January, I was approved and put the wheels in motion to go home. Sun Life kept extending me for dinky little one-week periods at first, so it wasn't until early February that I left. I actually moved out of my "apartment" - a little section of a family's house, a family that gave me zero privacy and thought because I had depression I was going to kill people - in mid-January. I didn't care if I had to sleep in my car for two weeks. Those people made my mental health much worse. They were toxic, treated me like shit and if I never see them again in my life I'll be happy. If I do see them, there will probably be violence.

When I left Estevan, I was hoping to come back in a few months, if I improved dramatically. But I always knew there was a chance of me not coming back. Think about it. Being home, not having the incredible stress of my job, seeing my close friends and family often - it's the best thing for my health, and I knew it in January.

I've been much better since I moved home. Just being in PEI, God's Country, makes me feel so much better. These are my stomping grounds. I have thousands of memories here. I know almost every inch of this Island. Charlottetown is one of my favourite cities in the world. These last few months have been like something out of someone else's life. I still have problems, I still have stress, I fight with my family sometimes, but not having to work and be somewhere everyday has done wonders for my mental health.

However, feeling better doesn't mean I'm not still dealing with depression, or that I'm ready to go back to work. Recently I had three bad episodes in the span of a month. They're unpredictable. I can't start a job and then have unpredictable episodes that prevent me from working. For starters, I'm still being paid the majority of what my salary was in Estevan. You take that salary and put it in PEI with its low cost of living, that's a good chunk of change. So I can't take a job that pays me less than I'm making now, because money is somewhat tight even now. I can't take a job that I don't think I'll be good at. The way my mind works, if I have no confidence in myself to do something, I won't be able to do it. So if I end up not being able to handle that job, surprise surprise, I'm now bringing in zero dollars a month. Kinda hard to manage an apartment on that or even buy a litre of milk. And at least in the beginning, I need a job with as little stress as possible. I've learned that I need to eliminate every source of stress I possibly can. I even stepped down as commissioner of an Estevan-based fantasy hockey league because it gave me too much stress last year.

I have more than depression. I have anxiety, I have social anxiety, I think about things far more than the average person. If I mess up something, no matter how small, it bothers me for days. I've gotten better at that - you have to in order to work in media - but it still bothers me.

One thing's for sure, I need significant counselling before I can even think about full-time work again. I've been in PEI for six months and it's been impossible to find a therapist. I finally just got one this week. I need to work with her on all kinds of things and get them to a manageable place before I can work. Yes, I'm physically capable of working. Yes, I could probably handle certain jobs right now. But it's the risk. I'm in a very precarious position and I need to do things properly in order to get out of it.

Right now I'm in as much uncertainty as I've ever had in my life. I'm not working, I don't know when I will be. I've just given up the only career I've ever wanted to do, and Lord knows if I'll ever get back into it again. I'm bringing in enough money to pay the bills and expenses and the odd "want" purchase, but I'm certainly not able to stop getting my money from Sun Life and survive. I have no idea what the next month holds for me, let alone the next year. Ever since I graduated university I've had job security and good finances. I'm where I want to be, but to do so I've forfeited those things. I'll take that trade-off, but not forever.

But now that I'm home, I finally have a therapist and I have some good things in my life, I have a feeling things will work out. I don't have a clue how they will, but things will be OK I think.

I'm going to miss covering the Western Canada Cup and Summer Games next year more than I can say. I didn't leave because I didn't want to be around for that stuff. I kinda wish I could fly out, cover those events and come back. I want to get into freelancing so I can at least do some writing on the side and keep my foot in the door.

To all the people in Estevan who embraced me and made me feel welcome, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You have no idea how much that meant to me during the worst year of my life. That's rare in this business. I certainly didn't feel much of that in Kindersley. Keep in touch.

Everyone has moved on

I am a rock
I am an island

And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries

I wish.

2015 NHL mock draft

I'm attending the NHL draft for the second time in my life this weekend. Just arrived in Fort Lauderdale tonight (Wednesday) and I'm in South Florida till Monday. Planning to squeeze in a day trip to the Bahamas as well.

Unlike the last draft I went to, in LA in 2010, the Leafs have a first rounder - two in fact. And that number may increase before Friday night is over.

Here's my mock draft:

1. Edmonton - Connor McDavid, C
2. Buffalo - Jack Eichel, C
3. Arizona - Noah Hanifin, D
4. Toronto - Dylan Strome, C
5. Carolina - Mitch Marner, RW
6. New Jersey - Ivan Provorov, D
7. Philadelphia - Lawson Crouse, LW
8. Columbus - Zach Werenski, D
9. San Jose - Pavel Zacha, C
10. Colorado - Jakub Zboril, D
11. Florida - Matthew Barzal, C
12. Dallas - Mikko Rantanen, RW
13. Los Angeles - Timo Meier, RW
14. Boston - Paul Bittner, LW
15. Calgary - Kyle Connor, LW
16. Edmonton - Ilya Samsonov, G
17. Winnipeg - Evgeni Svechnikov, RW
18. Ottawa - Travis Konecny, RW
19. Detroit - Jake DeBrusk, LW
20. Minnesota - Jeremy Roy, D
21. Buffalo - Daniel Sprong, RW
22. Washington - Colin White, C
23. Vancouver - Thomas Chabot, D
24. Toronto - Oliver Kylington, D
25. Winnipeg - Gabriel Carlsson, D
26. Montreal - Brandon Carlo, D
27. Anaheim - Jansen Harkins, C
28. Tampa Bay - Noah Juulsen, D
29. Philadelphia - Filip Chlapik, C
30. Arizona - Anthony Beauvillier, LW

Honourable mentions: Denis Guryanov, RW; Nick Merkley, RW; Mackenzie Blackwood, G; Joel Eriksson Ek, C; Brock Boeser, RW; Jacob Larsson, D; Rasmus Andersson, D.

Taking some time off

In January I applied for short-term disability from work, which would allow me to go home for a bit and deal with my depression. My claim was approved and my last day of work was Jan. 20. At this point I don't know how long my leave will last.

I'm driving home, starting tomorrow. It should be a great trip. I'm going through the States and stopping in Columbus for a few days to visit my best friend. I'm doing the trip alone so that should be... interesting. My stops will be in Fargo, Milwaukee, Columbus, Toronto and Quebec City.

None of this would be possible without the support from my workplace. All of my co-workers have been great so a big thanks to them. I know most workplaces wouldn't support someone with a mental illness and wouldn't create an environment where people can feel comfortable speaking up. The Merc is different. I'm grateful for that.

Looks like *someone's* got a case of the Mondays...

Leave me alone, I don't get many chances to start a post with an Office Space reference.

I have indeed had a case of the Mondays lately. Due to the nature of my job, my Mondays are extremely busy and stressful. I always end up working super late. I have a huge workload on Mondays.

Lately I've really been struggling with the stress. I get panicky when I look at all the work I have to do. My mind shuts down and sometimes the guys have to take on some of my work, which I feel terrible about.

I had a lot of anxiety this morning. I felt better than Friday, but still not quite right - still a little low.

For once, I fought through it and finished up at 5 p.m.

Yay me. Now if I could do that on a regular basis.

Fear and self-loathing in...

 

Yeah, this comic pretty much sums it up.

I hate this goddamn illness so much.

A dilemma that comes up too often

Tonight, instead of doing colour for the Bruins-Ice Wolves game like I was supposed to, I'll be on the couch trying to survive an attack from my old friend depression.

I didn't want to go to the game last night either. Today is worse.

Believe me, I feel lower than a snake for not being able to do my job. I missed a game late last year because of depression and now it's happening again.

I face this dilemma a lot. The vast majority of the time I grit my teeth and go. But sometimes, like today, the pain is just too much.

When I'm in the belly of the beast, the very last thing I want to do is be around other people, let alone hundreds of people. I want to stay home and lie in the fetal position until it passes. These attacks do terrible things to me and I've learned that the only thing I can do is ride them out by myself. When I have to cover a game (or go to work), instead of riding it out I have to put on a face and try to stop it from consuming me. People think it helps to be around other people but it doesn't. When episodes strike, I HAVE to be alone.

As a sports reporter, I don't often get that luxury though. Which leads to the internal struggle that happens every time I'm going through a bad day and have to be somewhere. And when I do miss a game I feel horrible. My job is the only thing in my life I feel like I have my shit together on. When my depression messes with that, I feel like even more of a failure than usual.

Another bad day

Hold on

Feeling like I'm headed for a breakdown

And I don't know why

But I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell

I know right now you can't tell

But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see

A different side of me

I'm not crazy, I'm just a little impaired

I know right now you don't care

But soon enough you're gonna think of me

And how I used to be

I am so worthless.

Ghomeshi, Taveras and racist cartoons

It's been quite a news day for a Sunday.

Jian Ghomeshi was turfed by CBC, who let him go by issuing a three-sentence release on a Sunday afternoon. Ghomeshi responded by suing the network for $50 million.

Ghomeshi's statement on his Facebook page is quite something. IF - a big if - he has told the entire truth, CBC is in a pile of trouble. $50 million apparently represents five per cent of their allocation money.

However, my guess is there's something missing. Maybe he mostly told the truth but left stuff out. Maybe he is lying entirely.

No one can form an informed opinion until we hear both sides. We have only heard the woman's side through Ghomeshi. It would be wrong to blindly support him when we don't have the other side.

If any sort of abuse happened here, then CBC obviously made the right call.

But some of the comments about him on twitter are also out of place. I saw one person that called him a "rapey f***". That's mere speculation. We have no idea what happened, and we don't even know what the allegations are yet.

To support one side or the other before the truth comes out makes no sense.

I think it will be a bitter, ugly, public fight.

Edit: There are now nine women claiming Ghomeshi abused them, with two of them allowing their names to be printed. Pretty hard to defend Ghomeshi at this point.

*****************

Later today came the news of the death of Oscar Taveras, and his girlfriend, in a car accident in the Dominican. The 22-year-old Cards outfielder was one of the brightest up-and-comers in the game and came up big in Game 2 of the NLCS.

These things are always hard to take. We can only imagine what he would have achieved in the majors.

Hard not to think that if the Cards had won the NLCS, he'd still be here.

*****************

Meanwhile, the Toronto Sun (who else) ran one of the most hateful political cartoons I think I've ever seen. It depicts mayoral candidate Olivia Chow in a Chairman Mao outfit, with slanted eyes and glasses, literally riding the coattails of Jack Layton's suit.

Needless to say, someone who spent 14 years as a city councillor and eight years as an MP is not riding anyone's coattails. If anyone is riding coattails, it's the Ford brothers.

*****************

In my hockey simulator program (Eastside Hockey Manager) I've begun a new game. It's too easy to win in this game so I've set myself two rules: 

1) The roster has to be made up entirely of players who weren't born in the Big 7 hockey countries (Canada, USA, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic, Slovakia). So I'm looking for guys born in Switzerland, Germany, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovenia, etc.

2) I have to build entirely through the draft. No trades or free agent signings. Which means my entire roster is made up of teenagers.

My team won one game in the first year, with a 1-81 record. In the second year, they went winless and pointless. Just started the third season.

The only bright spots so far are Latvian centre Zemgus Girgensons, Swiss goalie Benjamin Conz and Swiss defenceman Nino Bieler.

Last year, the team scored 26 goals all season. 26!! Girgensons led the team in scoring with eight points.

I estimate it will take 37 years to make the playoffs.

Saturday...

It's a gorgeous late October day in Estevan. I can't believe the great weather we've had this late into the fall. Somehow (knock on wood) no snow yet.

Earlier, I went to Woodlawn for the Run the Course fundraiser for the Summer Games, then headed to Westview for the city girls volleyball championship. Checked out Pleasantdale against Sacred Heart. It was a great match that went right down to the wire in all three sets, with Pleasantdale ultimately winning.

Tonight I have the Estevan Motor Speedway awards night as well as a Halloween event at the art gallery. In the meantime, packing for Columbus awaits. I hate packing. Has to be done though. Three days till I leave.

*******************

I've been preparing for the upcoming draft in my hockey sim league. In this simulator, you can tell how good each player will become, so I've been putting players into a spreadsheet to figure out who I want to draft. I've worked through 350 of the 538 players eligible. It's a deep draft, but if I had the first pick (I'll have somewhere between 26 and 30) I'd either take first-ranked right winger Paul Low, or go waaaay off the board and take a risk in left winger Sergei Tsulygin.

I've also been playing season mode in NHL 15 with Minnesota. My lineup:

Parise-Granlund-Pominville

Landeskog-Hertl-Coyle

Zucker-Stoll-Niederreiter

Komarov-Wennberg-Galiardi

Suter-Jones

Josi-Trouba

Larsson-McQuaid

Varlamov

Kuemper

*******************

I'll stop boring you now. Argos play the Ticats in 10 minutes in a huuuuuge game.