Author’s Note

I can’t tell you how long I have struggled with mental health issues, or exactly when my journey began, but I can tell you that I have probably dealt with depression for most of my life to differing degrees depending on where I was in my life, and on the planet. I also know for certain that for the first forty-plus years, running three to five miles a day, and at times more, helped me to manage the depression.

The anxiety is VERY different. With the exception of two very isolated incidents, I know that my battle with severe anxiety began almost exactly five years ago as I sit here writing this note. I had been taken off Klonopin, which helped me manage chronic vertigo for a quarter century, by a doctor who was too worried about getting in trouble for continuing to prescribe it and not worried enough about what others since have called long-term Klonopin withdrawal. Regardless, I had stopped the Klonopin, driven home to see my family, bounced my head off my concrete patio upon my return—not my first concussion by any means, nor my fifth, but about the hardest I had ever hit my head, which is saying something—and then by mid-August or early September it became difficult for me to leave my house, and at times my bedroom.

Once in my thirties, I cancelled a business trip because I thought I was having a heart attack. I literally told my driver on the way to the airport to take me home, and then walked myself to the ER. My heart was fine, and so was I after a few days.

Once in my forties, the night before I was to facilitate a four-day offsite for Verizon leadership, I was convinced I couldn’t do it. I called an old friend from Accenture, and he told me I’d be fine once we got started, and the next day I jumped in and away we went. I got rave reviews upon completion.

Otherwise, with all the travel, different clients, different jobs, big games coached, big meetings run, I had never had anxiety. All of a sudden, five years ago, I couldn’t escape it.

Over the years and decades, I have always written. I have always enjoyed writing, and it has been both a way to process things and a way to capture a moment on “paper” rather than film.

The first piece I remember writing that I enjoyed writing and thought was “decent” when I was done was a piece I wrote in high school. I think I was a sophomore, but I’m not sure. The assignment was to write about a fictional character, any character, but using the characteristics of someone you know well. I wrote about a clown, and I used my father as the inspiration. As I do now, I thought about it until I knew what I wanted to write, and then sat down and put it to paper. Actual paper in this case. No editing. No one saw it before I handed it in. Who would have? I got an A. The only A I ever received in an English class. I was the “math guy” in the family. My father was thrilled about the piece and the A!

When JFK Jr. died in a plane crash, I was literally in an airport heading for a flight to somewhere. I heard the news while walking through the terminal, and so when I got on the plane, I settled into my seat, pulled out my laptop, and wrote a piece I called Camelot. Writing about his life growing up a Kennedy, and the fun and excitement that lifestyle brought, but also the intense pressure of the twenty-four-hour spotlight. His death was no different, flying his own plane to whisk off to the Vineyard for the weekend, and ending up in nonstop news coverage for days.

I also once pulled out a box from my closet in Chicago, one of the places I lived during my consulting days with Accenture, and I began to go through it. Valentine’s cards from women I knew in college. A letter from my brother I never knew I had. Photos and trinkets. I wrote a piece called The Box that I liked very much.

Both of these pieces and several others were on a laptop that was taken about fifteen years ago. Before “clouds,” and without backups, I unfortunately lost those pieces, but I have kept writing.

The funny thing is I never shared those stories with anyone. I did once write what I think people call historical fiction about meeting my ex-fiancée and our whirlwind romance. I did share the beginning of that with some folks with whom I taught at Tilton School. The reaction was pretty much, “Where’s the rest?” That was twenty-five years ago, and I still have not gotten back to it. Other than that instance, and until very recently, I have just never shared my writing.

After dealing with the anxiety for a few months, and having other things going on in my life as well, I began writing again to process all the crap that was in my head. The funny thing is that much of what I have written is about topics, and sometimes titles, that have been roaming around in my head for a while. Sometimes a long while. The idea, or the title, or both will rattle around until it is time for it to come out. Very much the same way the majority of my paintings have happened.

After I had written a few pieces, Suffering in Silence and Like a Snowball Rolling Downhill, I started to think that maybe I should share what I was writing in some way so perhaps others struggling with these same issues might benefit. I have always been FAR better at writing my thoughts than speaking them. In fact, my entire life, whenever I tried to share how I was feeling, it went horribly wrong, but when I write how I am feeling, for some reason it just comes out.

I am not saying I am a great writer, and in fact, oftentimes I feel like I have made a fool of myself for sharing these pieces, not so much because of the personal nature of the thoughts, although that is in there too, but because I doubt the quality of what I have written. In the end, though, I simply decided, after taking the temperature of my three amazing sisters, that it would be selfish of me not to share what I was writing, and that if just one person was helped by reading my story, then sharing what I write would be worth it.

That decision was about two years ago, plus or minus. I first started to share what I was writing just on my website. I then started sharing on LinkedIn as well, and then about a year ago someone suggested I should have a Substack profile, and eventually I took the plunge and started sharing there as well.

The intent initially was just to share what I wrote once in a while. Then it became more frequent. Lately it has been every week, and now somehow I have published fourteen articles that started to look more like a collection than standalone ramblings.

Along the way, I began to hear from a few people from all over the world. Not in large quantities, but more than one, which was the original goal. Last week, or maybe the week before, I heard from a woman saying that she had been trying to support her sister for years as she battled alcoholism, and that she had recently decided she couldn’t be there for her anymore. That it had gotten too difficult. She said that after reading Speak Your Truth, she decided she had to do everything she could to help her sister.

That one note is enough for me to keep doing this.