Relax! What’s That?

As many of you know, I’m very open about my mental illness, suffering from depression and anxiety.  I talk openly about it because believe it or not, it’s a healing process to admit this health concern.  I talk about it openly because I’m not ashamed of suffering from it.  Nor do I want anyone’s sympathy when there are literally tens of millions of people on this beautiful planet that suffer from the same illness.  The highs are incredibly high, and the lows can be dark and lonely.  I don’t take medication for it, because with hosting Spaced Out Radio, I get to end my night five days a week on an adrenaline high that allows me to sleep properly.  That’s my treatment, rather than pumping myself full of medication like I did when I was first diagnosed in 2013.  I’ve been med free since January of 2014.

So how do I cope?  I’m a workaholic.  I’m always doing something, much to the chagrin of many people in my life.  I work two full time jobs.  My daytime career, as well as moonlighting with my business, Spaced Out Radio, at night, because I truly believe we have something special here.  If I didn’t, I’d have been gone a long time ago.  In between working as much as I do, I have to be a Dad.  I have to take care of my house.  I do all the household chores.  I have a business that’s developing, which needs constant attention, even with the help of people like Everett, Rich, Gail, Chuck, Ashi, Jim, Amber and many others who dig deep for SOR on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.  I have to keep going.  There is no choice.

My mind is going non-stop.  The only time I can stop it is when it hits the pillow and I force myself to shut off the valves around 1:00am every night.  Sometimes later.  Only to have my annoying alarm clock ring at 7:10am every morning to start it all over again.  There are times I completely forget what day it is, or what I am supposed to be accomplishing that day, especially with SOR.  I try to remember, and it’s not as easy as just writing it down.  It’s running out of time because other tasks during the day ran overtime to make it happen.  But in the end, I keep telling myself it’s worth it.  The payoff potential of going ocean to ocean to ocean is too much of a potential reality to stop.

But it also comes with a price.  People get mad when you don’t respond to their questions, comments or concerns on social media, email or via phone call.  My 24-hour life is something that not everyone understands.  Then again, when my depression or anxiety kicks in, neither do I.  It’s amazing watching it unfold on social media especially.  Even though I’m an extremely small blip on the ‘famous’ scale, it’s amazing to see what some people call you, or accusations that are made or determined by others who have no bloody clue who you are, or what you stand for. That’s before you feel like you’re letting down the people who surround you.  It’s an amazing pressure that sometimes you can feed off of, or can drop you into a blizzard of emotions that your mind cannot comprehend at all.

Sometimes it’s the little things that trigger you.  But with depression and anxiety, I don’t allow people to see that side.  Very few have.  Even fewer surrounding SOR.  They don’t understand the let down I feel.  They don’t understand the guilt when you don’t have time for a proper response to a question or a text.  And boy do I ever hate texting.  They keep pushing and pushing and pushing, without understanding what it’s doing to me on the inside.  But being a ‘pseudo-celebrity’, and with a growing business, there is no hiding.  No private time.  Never a day when there isn’t a shopping list of things to do or people to converse with.  This is why I’m so happy I have Jim and Gail especially to give me those reminders on a daily basis.  Otherwise I’d be running around like a chicken with my head cut off.  I honestly don’t think many people out there could do what I do.  That may sound egotistical, but it isn’t meant to be that way at all.

As Everett has said many a time, ‘I’d never want to walk in your shoes.  I don’t know how you do it?”  You do it because it needs to be done.  You just have to learn to put things off, or just politely decline certain things.  For instance, I get sent videos to watch by people two to three times a day.  They send them out of love for SOR, because they feel it would be an important message for the show, or for some sort of research.  In the four years this has been happening, I don’t think I’ve watched a single one.  Why?  I just don’t have time.  But I can’t say that for risk of offending that person.  Or when someone gets pissed off because they want to talk with you, but you’re right in the middle of doing the show, and you don’t respond right away.  That doesn’t happen as much anymore, but for a while, there were times when I’d get two to three messages a show, from people whom I barely know, asking me about ghosts, bigfoot, UFOs or whatever was on their mind.  That’s why I had to cut out and ignore people reaching out at show time with the exception of people from my inside crew.  I just couldn’t do it.

Every day can be a struggle, or it can be a victory.  I never know.  Neither do you.  All we can do is put out the best effort and see where it goes.  At this point I’ve learned that what’s the worst someone is going to tell me?  No?  Ha!  Heard that thousands of times before.  That’s the story of my love life!  But the biggest problem is there is just never enough time.  No time to finish splitting my firewood.  Not enough time to clean up the broken branches from my back yard after having four dead trees taken down.  Never enough time to wrestle with my little buddy when he wants some ‘Dad time’.  Never enough time to spend with friends.  No time to call people back.  Forgetting to make the bed in the morning, because that extra 45-seconds could take away from something else.  SOR can be the job that never ends at times.  Is it worth it?  I think so.  I believe so.

But what is the cost?  Right now, I have no clue.  It’s either full on success or full on failure.  That can be the rush!  Or the ultimate let down.  I prefer to see the positive.  I have always said for every action, there is a reaction whether it’s positive or negative.  So far, we’re above water on the positives.  Let’s just keep it going, because together my friends, WE OWN THE NIGHT.