A personal note, before getting whatever this is going again

This space is ready to be a sports-related desperate plea for help again. It has just been impossible to write whilst struggling to express my needs.

Gullfoss Waterfall, in the Hvítá river canyon in Southwest Iceland.

The crisis of confidence and career crisis I am enduring is as dark and drawn-out as any in my years on this planet. All my life, I have always been prone to severe self-doubt that is often immobilizing. I have a long memory, though, and I cannot summon a period where I had so many days on end of isolating and barely getting off my bed, getting dressed, or leaving my apartment.

There is a very real fear of what this will do to my health in the long run. As it was explained to me about a quarter-century ago, “Depression is a slow death.” Rejoining the workforce, which I have been out of for nearly six months, would do me well. Working is part of what will get me to care about myself, and care for myself again.

For months, I have struggled with how to let people know I need help, in a lot of areas. It has been over 20 weeks since I was let go from my last media position and I have yet to find a scintilla of the urgency to look for my next opportunity, let alone land one. I am broken.

That is bad. I know that. My dollar-store psych self-evaluation is that my heart and mind are protecting me. Media work is a tough racket, generally. The termination that I received this spring was the fourth time in under eight years that I either got let go from a long-term contract, was laid off, or faced a certain layoff from a job.

It need not be explained, “That’s not a reflection on you, Neate, or your skills.” I know! This is an era of disruption and uncertainty, and my situation is just one data point along the arc of the graph. Therein lies the rub. When the skills you have spent a lifetime building no longer matter in whether you can keep a job, then whatthehell is one supposed to do?

There has to be a way forward. For a while, I have wanted to tell anyone kind enough to listen I need assistance with bouncing back and securing my next opportunity. I do not know who is going to read this, but I have a very particular set of skills in the areas of creative/critical thinking, empathy, and professional writing. I would like to remain in Hamilton, but Sagers often cannot be choosers. My challenges with social anxiety disorder also put some parameters around what kind of interaction I can have at work.

If you are here, then you have read my writing. You might have heard me talk on the radio or on the SportsLit podcast. I can lift heavy things, too. There is a contribution I can make somewhere. Realistic suggestions about fields and lines of work where my skills are transferable are graciously welcome. I promise I will receive that in the spirit of some great advice I was given once: “You are only limited by your thinking.”

That said, I am a different person from the one you might have known in 2008, or 2013. The sportswriter stage is over. Not everyone gets to climb the ladder.

Getting back to work is a piece of the puzzle.

One is, otherwise, responsible for their contentment. I can work on that better without the existential dread of paying for modest material needs. I do not need a lot. Long ago, when I committed to trying to make a living typing about people perspiring in public, I knew I would have to have low-er-ed ex-pec-tat-ions about relationships, home and boat ownership, and event attendance.

That has put me ahead of the game that late capitalism has roped us into, ha-ha. It has set me back as sports media jobs have been cut.

Managing the mood disorders-wise, I am doing my best. I am safe physically. For a spell a few weeks ago, after it was suggested by YouTube, I listened over and over to a video of the CanRock giant Burton Cummings performing “Stand Tall.” It was his solo breakout after he parted with The Guess Who and became a big hit in Canada and the United States in late 1976, which come to think of it was right before I was about to come into the world. Does a third-trimester fetus hear music in the womb?

The alt.nerd.obsessive me looked up the context for the song. Cummings wrote it in when he was, as I am of late, reeling from personal and professional disruption. He had fallen out with his bandmates who, per, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Cameron Crowe’s portrayal of Lester Bangs, had the COURAGE to be the drunken buffoons who created CanRock. Around the same time, a girlfriend ended their long-term relationship.

Of course, that’s what the true art, the kind that lasts, is borne from. From the drive to get out of despondency and loneliness. Cummings crafted lyrics that read like a rallying cry and self-talk of, “OK, everyone, you don’t need to do a wellness check.” Hackneyed and hokey to take a bit of it for myself, but I need those lyrics.

Stand tall, don’t you fall oh, don’t go and do something foolish
You’re feeling it like everyone, it’s silly human pride
Stand tall, don’t you fall. don't go do something you’ll regret later
You’re feeling it like everyone, it's silly human pride

Pride seems to be what impeded sending up a word-salad flare, lo, these past few months. One might say that type of pride needs to go before the fall months. Through it all, it is well within view that I have a lot to live for — such as seeing my nephew and niece grow up while being a good uncle, brother, large adult son, and weird friend to some of you. But I need to earn a living for that. Thank you for listening, and yes, I will get a legit keyboard chuckle if you respond, “TL; DR.” Story of my life.

14 September 2023
Hamilton, Ont.