Wearing and tearing

OK, this marathon is starting to get old.
Two nights to go until my vacation. Hopefully I can blow everything off for the next two nights and head on into nine days of bliss.
But I've had three Fridays in the last 10 days -- last Friday, last night, and July 4th. And I'm somewhere beyond tired, now.
Last night was a zoo when I got to work. My Manager bailed early to go pick up her Dad from the Hospital. Her daughter could have done it alone, but I guess it took both of them. There was nothing seriously wrong with her Dad, he was just short of breath and they kept him overnight.
I guess all she did during her shift yesterday was worry about him -- because apparently she didn't do much else.
When I arrived, our Weekend Replacement was coping, barely. My roommate had been in, and my Manager was in such a hurry to get out of there that she forgot to charge my roommate for the $20 in gas he bought. Replacement let that mistake sit there for two hours until I came in.
Roommate came in and paid his bill, but I had to call him at home. (Roommate is such a Regular his phone number's on the wall in case the store needs to buy change or needs hit-man services. So why didn't Replacement call him?) I warned Replacement that Roommate might be too drunk to come in and pay his bill -- but he was right there, paid it off in cash, and Replacement could then go home.
Meanwhile, I stocked the beer and sodas cooler, which was a mess. For the past 10 days, no one else has stocked the cooler, no one else has bagged ice, no one else has stocked waters or other drinks in the front of the store, nobody else has cleaned the restroom. Or even offered. Its been a real education. Sometimes they can't be bothered to clean coffee spills off the floor or even wipe off a counter-top.
And my Manager wonders why I get upset. I get upset because I get stuck with all the work nobody else wants to do.
I'd just gotten on the cash register when another Regular told us that it smelled like someone had been cooking heroin in the bathroom, preparing to shoot up. It wouldn't be the first time.
"Not that I KNOW or anything," she said, "but it smells burned in there, and someone would've been in there for awhile."
Replacement hadn't noticed. Nobody else did either. I checked the bathroom -- I hadn't had a chance to clean it yet, too much to do first. It DID smell burned. I sprayed lots of air freshener and checked the toilet and garbage can. No evidence left behind. It took HOURS for that smell to go away.
It was screaming busy for the next two hours, but after that the evening was OK. I didn't start getting grumpy until 11:45 p.m., when everybody and his neighbor came in to cash-in scratch tickets.
Meanwhile, Roommate told me someone had stolen a ton of change and some checks from him, bounced $800 worth of his checks in the last week, and tried to bounce more. He changed the locks on the house, and asked me to make sure none of my stuff was gone. I checked after work -- some of my stuff had been messed with, but I had no small change to steal (I'm broke), and I hid my checks in an even-better spot. Things just get weirder at home. As if work wasn't weird enough.
If it weren't for my girlfriend doing her absolute best to keep me relaxed and happy, some of this stuff would piss me off.

Blurring is a good thing

Only five nights to go!
The marathon continues. Made it through my two 10-hour work-nights and am pretty beat, but I'm still here. The days have already started blurring together. I've been having trouble remembering which day it is in Reality for normal people, and that's probably a good thing.
So: Five more nights of this, and then blessed Vacation.
Had two Fridays this past weekend -- Friday night, and then the 4th. Both were screaming craziness.
And how about the 4th, huh? By 10:30 p.m. I'd had two guys in the store who'd burned their hands and arms messing around with fireworks. One guy was headed to the emergency room. Unbelievable, but it happens every year.
We had fires and ugly car wrecks in the neighborhood. Local news reported more than 80 people ended up at Harborview Hospital in Seattle with serious fireworks-related injuries.
One of my co-workers had three grandkids sent to the hospital after a fireworks-related mishap. Her granddaughter's hair caught on fire. When my co-worker got to the hospital, her granddaughter told her "Look, grandma! I still got burned cardboard in my hair!"
She took it better than the grownups.
That same co-worker got 45 minutes' worth of sleep that night, then came in to pull a 12-hour day on Tuesday.
Yesterday was less busy but more fun. Looked like a normal Monday outside, lots of busy people getting on with their lives now that the reveling's over. Inside the store, pretty quiet. Way not so busy. More time to get my stuff done and occasionally relax these old bones.
The girlfriend has been trying every way she knows to keep me happy -- and it's working. I might have been tired yesterday, but I was definitely relaxed. Hopefully I can stay that way for five more nights. Without falling asleep at the counter.
Getting bored again with most of the music I've been taking to work lately. Did actually listen to ALL of Paul Simon's GRACELAND album yesterday. Only took me 30 years! This just in: Very soothing. And some of the lyrics are pretty great.
Might have an update on musical changes coming soon. Also possible other changes in the works, will keep y'all posted.
Now into my "normal" work week. It's all downhill from here!

Marathon continues

Only nine days to go!
Last night was my busiest night at work since Christmas. Folks ran me ragged. It was SO busy I didn't even play any music. I was too afraid I'd miss something or lose track.
Without hot chocolate I would not have survived the last two hours and made it home.
LOTS of people out for the long weekend. Lots of partyers, though they were almost all in a good mood. Let's hope that continues.
Interesting that there's always a few people who think all rules are suspended because it's summer and a holiday. One drunk guy came and pounded on the front door at 12:30 last night -- half an hour after we closed -- and couldn't understand why all the lights were off and I wouldn't open the door for him. Even after I repeated "We're CLOSED" and made cutting gestures across my throat, he still didn't get it. It's not like the lights are shut off for "mood lighting."
These days, after closing at midnight, I don't unlock the door for people I don't know. It never leads anywhere good. Besides, I'm usually busy counting money.
After he got tired of pounding on the door, the drunk guy did a little dance (surprised that he didn't fall down) and climbed back into the truck he arrived in. Thank Ghod he wasn't driving. But the driver might not have been much better off -- they drove away with no headlights on.
There's a cop out there waiting for you. Don't get into town much, do ya?
Maybe I just don't have enough summer holiday spirit. I don't like your attitude, man.
When I got to work Friday, the place was a wreck. Of course it HAD been busy. But.
Our soda machine leaked all over -- under the cabinet and onto the floor. The rugs were soaked. And none of my co-workers noticed. Or could figure out why.
Because the soda hoses were clogged and the water backed up. Duh. I get so tired of having to be the guy who notices things.
Took my boss half an hour to call the soda company and see if they'd come look at it.
When the service guy came, he pulled lotsa gunk out of the hoses and dumped half a gallon of water down the drain. We coulda had a flood.
That's why I'm here, to notice this stuff. But more and more it seems like I'm here so my co-workers don't have to think, and to do the stuff they don't want to be bothered with. It's time for a raise.
On Thursday night, we had a kid on a bike begging for money in the parking lot. I mean, a kid. Maybe 10 years old. A bossy woman Regular came in asking if the kid -- who I hadn't noticed before -- had "been around all day" begging for money, and lecturing me on how she shouldn't have to be bothered by that.
I've got no trouble telling a kid to go somewhere else, but I told her she's occasionally going to encounter beggars here. I can't control everything. And people have no shame.
Whatever she told the kid, he vanished before she did. But at least she went away, too.
My girlfriend thinks part of my problem about attitude and grumpiness at work is because I don't eat enough of the right foods, and I eat too much junk.
I took a sandwich with me to work last night, indicating that I tend to believe she's right.
And I DID feel better after eating, of course.
But it was so busy that it took me two hours to finish that sandwich.
Don't get me wrong. It's all been pretty smooth so far. And I've been rolling along OK with almost all of it.
But man, the weirdness....
And Monday and Tuesday will be ALL OVERTIME, so I really shouldn't whine.
More updates coming soon. Unless y'all are bored already....

#695: My Worst Moment....

...as a newspaper reporter had nothing to do with reporting. Way more to do with interpersonal communication & overwork & stress.
This post is for you Out There who've somehow gotten the impression that I'm A Nice Guy. I'm not. Or at least I sometimes wasn't back in my reporting days. It's also offered as an extreme example of what stress & overwork can lead to. Here's what happened....
It's mid-May 1999 at the world's smallest weekly newspaper, somewhere on the Washington coast. After pulling together another stress-filled issue, the Editor -- let's call her Judith -- calls the four-member writing&layout staff together for a Friday planning meeting. Where she drops the bomb that the annual Tourism Special Edition -- a 24-page advertising-filled tourist brochure -- is due MONDAY, on top of the usual work required for the next normal issue of the paper.
Then she drops another bomb: Myself, the Sports Editor & the Layout chief (who is my wife, who worked for 6 stress-filled months at the paper with me) are going to pull the Tourism Edition together while The Editor spends her weekend across the state in Spokane. She's going to write and do NOTHING for the Tourism Issue.
And she just leaves it there. The meeting breaks up. & I'm furious.
Because this continues a pattern The Editor has had since she came aboard 8 months earlier. She does only what she wants, dumps all the work on everybody else, blames other people for her mistakes, and spreads stress like a plague carrier. When the paper is delivered to the printers late, she blames everybody else for her short-sightedness -- when the front page is usually waiting for her writing & layout work to get finished before it can be delivered.
Over the last 6 months I've been doing more & more writing. At the worst point I'm covering 4 nighttime meetings per week, then coming back into the office at 9 a.m., writing my ass off. I'm on salary so I collect no Overtime. I hardly ever see my kids. About the only time I see my wife is when we bump into each other in the office. & Judith keeps piling on the work. Every time she calls my name from inside her walled-in cubicle my stomach locks up in knots because I know it means More Work.
We've had words before. The last time was when she asked me to do a hatchet job on an overworked city employee -- a guy who was hired to do all the stuff the Mayor and City Engineer couldn't get to. "He just smells wrong," she said. "There's got to be something there." This guy had never hurt anyone as far as I knew. There was no reason for us to go after him. I told her to write the hatchet job herself. She never wrote it, of course. Because there was nothing there to write.
This time around I'm so angry that I'm shaking.
"Can we talk about this?" I ask gently.
"No!" she said, slamming stuff into her travel bag. "I'm outta here. I need a break."
"Yeah, but you're leaving all the work for us."
"I'm allowed a break. I'm going to Spokane."
"That's nothing new," I said. "You take EVERY weekend off. While we clean up behind you."
"You guys can handle it."
"You're counting on that to be true," I said, and I start following her around the office as she gathers stuff to put in her bag. "You always dump all the work on us so you can have the weekend off."
"I do not," she said.
"You DO," I said. My voice is getting louder. "You never do your share, you always leave the work for everyone else. When is enough enough? Where do you draw the line at?"
"Mind your own business," she said. "I'm leaving!"
She goes into the back room to grab her coffee cup. I follow her. By now I'm yelling. I'm full of anger because I know I'm right. This has been coming on for a long time.
"This IS my business!" I yell into her face. "When does it STOP?! How much work do you think you can dump on people before they freak out?! We're ALL overworked! We're ALL burned out! When do WE get to go to Spokane?!"
"Shut UP!"
"NO!" I yelled. "You don't GET it! You dump work on everybody! You do NOTHING! All you do is create stress! You don't know what the F you're doing!"
"Get the F away from me!" she yells.
"NO! Run away to Spokane! Who CARES?! Don't F'ing come back! WHO CARES?! YOU don't! Get the F outta here! We'll cover for you! We always DO!"
"Get the F away from me!" she repeats, this time lower, angrier. I have her backed into a corner as we yell into each other's faces. All the rest of the newspaper's employees are out front in the main office where I'm sure our voices are echoing. Our Publisher is upstairs, directly above us, and can hear every word. And no one is interrupting.
She makes a break for it and heads for the front office.
"You're F'ing NUTS!" she yells. "I'm F'ing outta here! Who CARES if you do the work?! It's YOUR F'ing JOB! Don't do it and you're FIRED! See ya!"
I scream gibberish at her as she runs out the office door. Something about how I hope she crashes and burns and ends up dead in a ditch. Something like that. I walk back to my desk and collapse.
So much for professionalism. I'm still shaking. It's VERY quiet in the office. I expect my Publisher to come downstairs and fire me. It doesn't happen.
Over the next half-hour or so, 3 or 4 of my co-workers swing by my cubicle and say thanks for putting The Editor in her place. They've wanted to say all that stuff for a long time.
"Sure," I tell them. "Next time YOU do it."
The Sports Editor, my wife & I pull together the Tourism Issue over the weekend. We recycle a lot of info from the year before. None of us get paid any overtime for the 12-hour days we put in writing, photographing, updating and laying-out the issue. But that's nothing new, and the package gets done on time. It's one of the last things my wife does for the paper -- 6 months later she decides to divorce me.
The Editor returns Monday morning, & checks to see that the Tourism Issue got done. I cringe in my chair wondering what she'll say to me, but instead she goes upstairs to see The Publisher. They talk for an hour behind closed doors. Then she comes back downstairs, goes into her cubicle, grabs her things, and leaves.
It's quiet in the office for a minute or two. Then our Receptionist says "Uh ... I think Judith just Left."
She didn't even tell the Publisher she was quitting. Later that afternoon, he offers the Editor's job to me. I've told him No twice before, but this time I think I couldn't possibly do a worse job than Judith. So I say Yes.
And immediately Judith gets her revenge from beyond the grave, so to speak.
Immediately I start doing 50-hour work weeks, or more. I continue writing my ass off. The stress is actually less because I'm in charge, but the same amount of writing I was doing as a reporter is still there.
The first issue comes off pretty well. A local alternative highschool holds a rather modest and secretive graduation ceremony -- bassist Krist Novoselic of Nirvana is the surprise guest speaker. One of the girl grads pauses to pose for me right after getting her diploma, and it makes a beautiful front-page picture.
After that it gets tougher. Much tougher. My wife takes the kids and a friend and goes off to Canada for a week. I still don't realize my marriage is in serious trouble. I still think Life Is Good as I approach 40. I even take a week off to celebrate my 40th birthday....
And when I come back to work after my first vacation in three years, by 9 a.m. I'm hyperventilating, and soon after I'm lying on my back on the floor, gasping for breath like a fish....

#669: The torture never stops

(No, this is not going to be a post about Frank Zappa, but thanks for playing....)
In these recent newspaper-reminiscences I've posted, I've left out one of the main reasons I don't do that kind of work anymore.
Because it's a high-stress job, & as a reporter it's VERY easy to get people angry at you without even trying.
You usually don't see it coming, but folks can go off about the craziest things.
I had one angry woman call me up after a domestic dispute she was involved in made the front page of the weekly paper I was working at. Her husband got charged with assault with a deadly weapon -- a kitchen knife.
She wasn't mad about the story -- which quoted her kids telling police that Daddy said he was "going to cut Mommy's head off." That didn't bother her.
What she was upset about was the HEADLINE, which covered all the cases that got into court that week -- which included some meth-possession cases -- & which she said made her sound like a meth freak.
"All my neighbors and friends think I'm methed out of my head now," she said.
I explained that the story didn't say that.... That wasn't good enough for her. She hadn't actually READ the story. So I READ THE STORY TO HER OVER THE PHONE, to make it clearer. She was still pissed about the headline. Finally I said I couldn't teach her friends & neighbors how to read....
After a downtown house fire on a Saturday evening destroyed an apartment building & set-off some ammunition somebody had stored there, when I got into work on Monday I called the Fire Chief for more details about what happened. He didn't have 5 minutes to talk to me -- he said he was too busy running water lines for the new Fire Hall. He didn't want any of the other firefighters to talk to me about it either, said I'd have to wait 'til he was available -- then hung up.
I called him back at 10 p.m. that night, & he STILL didn't have time to talk to me.
But we were a daily paper (published Tuesday through Saturday mornings). So I got what details I could from the Sheriff's Office & went ahead & wrote the story without the Fire Chief -- but left in quotes from him about how & why he avoided me.
& naturally, the next day when I got to work, the Fire Chief was in my Publisher's office, yelling at my Editor & my Publisher about what a backstabbing scumbag I was.
"I've lived here for 35 years and I don't have to take this kind of shit from you!" he yelled.
"I just want to know two things," I said. "Did I get any of the details wrong?"
"No!"
"Did I quote you accurately?"
"Well, yeah, but...."
"I'm outta here," I said, & left my bosses to argue with the Fire Chief -- who wanted to get me fired for not waiting to talk to him.
This kind of stuff happened ALL THE TIME. It was so stressful, the Publisher & I used to have closed-door meetings once a month so we could yell at each other & get all the stress out....
When we printed a photo on the front page of a fisherman's body that was fished out of the river after he'd been missing for a month, people called & yelled at us about that -- even though all you could see was a big gray bag being carried by four guys.
When a prominent local lawyer ran for Mayor -- then got arrested on a meth-possession charge, I wrote the story. & then the Editor & I sat on it for 3 days because we just weren't sure. This was a story that could ruin someone's life. Then our Publisher ordered us to get off the pot & print the story. We ran it on Page 2.
& the next day the Mayoral candidate called up crying. How could I DO this to her, she asked. I'd interviewed her, I'd been IN HER HOUSE! Her husband, also a lawyer, who was listening in on the phonecall, asked if they could've had a little advance warning about the story. I suggested that if they'd had any warning, they probably would've tried to stop the story from being printed.
He laughed & said I was probably right.
I apologized to his wife, who I thought was a good person, & said I was sorry for how things had gone, & that I hoped it would all work out in the end.
She lost the election & never spoke to me again. I'm not sure what happened with the meth charge.
When I was in the Air Force, I got used to defending my writing against people who didn't understand what I did -- but who outranked me, so what they wanted was what went. I got pretty good at it anyway, even convincing some that I was right.
But in the Real World, everybody outranked me. No amount of Good Work I did (& I think I did a LOT) ever made it any easier. No doors opened more easily just because I was good at my job. There was never any big payoff or reward. There were never any "better" jobs offered other than in-the-trenches reporter or small-town editor.
& I can't remember how many times people called at midnight or 4 a.m., spilled their guts to me for two hours, & then said "This is all off-the-record, you can't use any of this, I never called you" ... even AFTER I told them at the start of the phonecall that I'd be taking notes.... But I always tried to be A Good Guy....
When I was in the AF, my old buddy & fellow editor Phil Guerrero had a joke about the kind of long, involved stories I used to write: "Keep typing 'til it makes sense!" For years, that was my motto.
But I got to the point where no amount of explaining made any difference, where everything was just too complicated, & I could no longer even find the main reason I was writing some things. For much of the last four years of my "career," I'd go into work on Monday morning, down a pot of coffee, write the entire front page of the paper, & go home that night not remembering anything I'd written.
Journalism is a career for a young person with lots of time & lots of energy & no social life. It's the kiss of death for marriages & families. You wouldn't believe how many divorced, alcoholic, unhappy reporters I met over the years....
& when I got to the point where I couldn't remember the basics, couldn't keep the facts straight, was making stupid mistakes, couldn't make any sense out of anything I was writing, no matter how much I tried to explain -- I knew it was time to retire.
That was 11 years ago, & I don't miss much of it.

#665: Wyoming will be your new home....

After taking 10 years of the Air Force's BS as a public affairs specialist & base-newspaper guy, I jumped at the chance to Get Out & put-up with some Real World BS -- & took a job as managing editor of possibly the world's smallest daily newspaper: The Northern Wyoming Daily News in Worland.
I thought I could handle it -- I could work hard, I could handle stress, & I was charming & modest enough to win over anybody.
But I didn't really know what stress was. In Wyoming, I found out.
There was an immediate culture shock. In September 1992 we moved from the San Francisco Bay area (home of the world's smallest Air Force base) to the geographical Middle Of Nowhere -- a charming, quiet little farm town surrounded by rolling hills & mountains, about two hours southeast of Yellowstone National Park. But there were no natural wonders in Worland -- just miles of empty countryside, cattle farms & sugar-beet fields & hop fields & oil derricks. & the area's "local time" was somewhere around 1956.
We found a comfy old mid-'50s house with plenty of space for me, the wife & the two kids, with a huge basement "music room," & a heater good enough to keep us warm even when it was -40 outside. & it was only two blocks from the school.
I dived into editing the paper, which proved to be a bigger challenge than I thought. Turned out the editor's job was to layout more than half the paper, slap in stories off the Associated Press wire, proofread all the local news, & write when/IF there was time. As a result, I didn't write much. So I wasn't very happy.
Plus I kept running into longtime local residents who wondered -- & who asked very directly -- if The New Kid was going to be able to "fix" the paper: cut down on the misspellings & get the facts right & stop treating local law-enforcement with kid gloves & tell people what's REALLY going on....
That was the first part of my education. My REAL education didn't start until two years later, when I gave up editing & volunteered to write full-time. Then I was MUCH happier. & even busier & more stressed-out.
I learned lots of things. I learned that the Air Force had no IDEA what stress & overwork was. I learned that local residents had a WAY better idea of what national political policies were going do to them than I did -- because they lived with the impacts on their bottom-line every single day. When local farmers & ranchers were alarmed about NAFTA & claimed that it was going to export millions of U.S. jobs overseas & ruin them financially, I laughed at first. But they were absolutely right.
After that I kept my head down & wrote my ass off. I hardly ever talked politics with folks -- because even if I disagreed with them politically (or thought I did), most of my neighbors were really great people, absolutely salt of the earth: hard-working, dedicated, devoted to their families & their community. Just because I couldn't see their small-town Republican outlooks reflected in national Republican policies didn't mean we had to argue.
Besides, I didn't have TIME for that. Even in a town as small as Worland (4,500 people), there was always something going on -- car wrecks & house fires, & school board meetings & city council meetings & county commissioners' sessions. High school graduations, sports events, community events to publicize & then photograph.
In my "down" time I found lots of funny stuff to write about -- the computer glitch that delivered three-dozen Thanksgiving turkeys to a local woman's door (she donated them to the local senior center); the old couple who replaced their dying front lawn with multi-colored old carpets after giving up trying to grow grass (this caused car wrecks in front of their house); the town council that called a pot-bellied pig to a meeting in a debate about the town's livestock ordinance; how a packet of Holly Sugar got a five-second close-up in an episode of THE X-FILES (there was a Holly Sugar plant in town, & the investigation into how their product got on the show was worthy of an episode all by itself).
There were also plusses I never saw coming. Local politics could be a grind, but I got to interview the Governor, U.S. Senators & Representatives -- names that made the national news regularly. & most of 'em were great people, way easier to talk with than I ever expected. The biggest shock of all came when I got a standing ovation at the Worland GOP's Lincoln Day Dinner my last year there -- the idea that all these staunch local Republicans could give me (then a hard-core Democrat, I thought) a standing-O just put me on the floor. To me it said I'd kept my balance & done a solid job & not disappointed my readers.
I also got my musical horizons expanded in Wyoming: I became a bit of a country music fan, grabbing great albums by Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Pam Tillis, Carlene Carter, Wynonna, Travis Tritt, Dwight Yoakam, & more. Wyoming was also where I first heard Rush's great "Time Stand Still." & where I FINALLY decided that maybe Led Zeppelin had some talent, after repeated playings of "The Battle of Evermore" & "When the Levee Breaks" & *GASP* "Stairway to Heaven"....
It wasn't all fun&games. People froze to death during the bitter-cold winters. People got hit by trains. One beloved local pastor died tragically during a hunting trip. One guy shot a friend by accident during another hunting trip. One local highschool sports star raped & murdered a woman & then dumped her body in the river. One woman & her hideous parents ended up in court in an incest case that made 60 MINUTES. One local guy walked into a bar, shot three people execution-style, then took the $126 in the cash register. It was never clear if the money was to pay for his child-support or to fix the engine in his truck.
After the last of these -- & the death-sentence trial that ate-up my every waking moment for a month -- my Publisher told me that he couldn't afford to give me any vacation time, & that he couldn't afford to hire anyone else to help me report the news.
So, after six years in Wyoming, I started looking for a new job. My wife & kids had been all over the state, to Yellowstone, & up into Montana -- but I never got there, because I was almost always working.
After a couple months of sending out resumes, I got a phonecall from a small weekly newspaper on the Washington coast. The area was beautiful, & the paper looked like it could use some help -- I'd be writing full-time again. So I gave my Publisher 3 DAYS NOTICE, & left for Washington at the very end of May 1998.
My Publisher warned me that as weird & stressful as the Daily News had been, the new paper I was heading to might be even weirder, even more stressful -- with even fewer people to do the work. I told him I couldn't see how that was POSSIBLE.
But he was absolutely right....

#622: The poster-child for stressing-out

Late August, 1999. Two days after my 40th birthday. After taking my first week off from work in 3 years, by 8:30 am Monday I'm back at my desk, trying to pull-together the next issue of the small weekly newspaper I've been editing since May.
It's an absolutely normal Monday. There's a lot of work to do, a big pile of paperwork in front of me, & nobody did much to prepare for the next issue while I was gone. But I've been working 50+ hours a week since May, so I'm getting used to it. Everything is going exactly as I expected.
But I'm having trouble with it.
By 9:30 am I start to hyperventilate. I can't relax. My hands and arms are getting all tingly. I can't stop panting for breath. I call a therapist I've been talking to about work-related stress and marriage problems. He recommends getting out of the building and getting something to eat.
But I can't leave -- there's too much work to do. I can't push it off on my co-workers, either -- they're wrapped-up in their own work. I try eating. It doesn't help. I try organizing a long schedule of events for a quickly-approaching town festival, the one thing that MUST be on the next front page. But I can't focus. I can't MAKE it make sense. I can't even get the list of happenings typed.
I drink some water. I try to walk around a little, but my legs are all wobbly. My arms are going numb. My heart is racing. And I can't slow down my breathing.
I call my therapist back. He ORDERS me to get out of the building. But it's too late.
At noon, I ask our receptionist if she could do me a favor and call my wife. And an ambulance. I can't seem to do it myself. I can't breathe. I can't get enough air. For some reason it seems like there will be more air on the floor, so I go there.
By 12:15 I'm stretched out on my back on the office floor, still hyperventilating. My arms are numb, my hands locked into fists. My legs are cramping and folding up. I moan for someone to help me, but nobody will even come talk to me.
At the edge of my vision, I can see the head of the reporter I just hired, standing nearby, watching, but she won't get closer. I'm scaring her. I'm scaring myself. I can hear phones ringing and people talking and Monday going on, but I'm stuck on the floor alone and I can't move. I'm left to gasp and flop like a fish. I'm helpless.
Finally an EMT appears & I try to tell her what's wrong. Another EMT appears, they put me on a gurney & I'm wheeled outside into an ambulance. I notice vaguely that a crowd has gathered. My co-workers are calling my name and telling me to hang in there. My wife has appeared and says she'll follow me to the hospital.
In the ambulance, the EMTs give me SOMETHING & try to determine if I'm having a heart attack. I'm SURE that's what's happening. I'm convinced that I'm gonna die, 2 days after my 40th birthday.
In the emergency room, they run tests & try to bring my breathing under control. They have to teach me how to breathe again. It takes awhile.
When I'm stable, they admit me to the hospital & put me in the cardiac critical care unit til they determine if I've had a heart attack. It looks like I'm gonna be there for awhile.
My wife appears, and we cry all over each other. We both note the timing of this "attack," & without trying 2 make Too Big A Deal out of it, we both wonder if I've been pushing things too hard & if somebody's trying to send me A Message.
She stays for awhile, then has to leave to go check on the kids. She sez she'll bring me back something to read in case I'm stuck here overnight.
And as soon as she leaves, I'm overcome by the most intense feelings of RELIEF that I've possibly ever felt -- as if this bed, in this place, is EXACTLY where I wanted to be, exactly where I was headed from the moment I woke up this morning. It's safe & quiet here. And someone else is gonna havta run the newspaper for me.
And then I cry like a baby.
Eventually, 1 of the ER docs comes in & tells me I DIDN'T have a heart attack -- I had an anxiety attack. A nurse tells me they can prescribe some anti-anxiety meds, but they won't solve my problem -- that my problem is whatever's kicking around in my head.
Then they release me.
I take a day off to think it over, then go to work on Weds & resign as the editor. But I offer to work as a full-time reporter to make up for it. This is a mistake, but I was always happier writing full-time anyway.
I try the anti-anxiety meds, & once I get used to the "zombie effect," they're not bad -- I feel like me with all the stress removed. It's sorta enjoyable.
But the stress continues -- there's just as much, if not more, with reporting full-time. & I knew that. But this is my 1st step in moving away from my 20-year career in journalism. & it takes me 2 more years to give up & get out of it entirely.

Don't let this happen to you. If you're in a high-stress job that overworks you to the point of breakdown, get away from it. Figure out some other way to pay your bills. Don't give your life to a career where nobody keeps score. Because the things you'll lose are things you might never get back -- spouse, children, possibly your health, maybe your life. It ain't worth it.
I was stupid. Looking back, I wish I hadn't sold myself so cheap. & I wish I'd known I was living The Good Life while I was IN it....