Tackling anxiety and sharing my latest projects
It would be easy to just point at the tech startup (Sparrow Connected) that I’m the CTO for and say that THAT is the reason you haven’t heard from me. The reason why since around September 2018 I have been rather quiet and have only managed to publish one book (5 Critical Things), but it wouldn’t be completely true. More importantly, it wouldn’t be true about the most important part.
Throughout 2016, I felt part of my inner machinery rattling. In 2017, it started to become louder and some inner vibrations started. And then by mid-2018, the things started to feel like they were shaking. In 2019 it got even worse. In mid-2020, I finally started dealing with what was going on.
For those that know me, I’m a passionate, high energy person. Sometimes I could come across like a super-ball having been thrown by the Flash, shooting around, doing mental gymnastics, and seeming to have an endless fountain of energy to get things done.
When I was a teen, I started having an issue that frustrated and terrified me. Sometimes my thoughts would all cram together, trying to get spoken but I’d have an eight car pileup in my mind and the words would lost. I’d sometimes shake, trying to get them out, and I felt stupid. I hid that shame from everyone.
In early 2020, I started talking with my doctor about my anxiety. I wanted to keep track of it, see what was happening and see if it was affecting me. From there we were able to identify that I have ADHD and potentially an anxiety disorder as well. I started taking medication and the world started to get better. It’s been a few months now, and the dosage is too low, but it has already been making a difference.
The medication started to change a number of things for me, for one I was able to start enjoying doing some role-playing games with my kids. I stopped trying to write every spare moment I had. There was a pressure in my chest every minute of every day for me to write, to get one of the dozens of unfinished projects (some novels 90% done including a new Yellow Hoods series, Wizard Killer #4 and 5, Legacy of the Unknown Dragon, Tilruna, and more). For the first time, with the mediation, I felt like I could stop for a minute instead of being forced. It was like the noise got cut in half, and that was enough to let me look at things differently.
I’ve been able to ignite in my eldest son a love of Dungeons and Dragons, and while he plays the latest edition with his friends (online of course), I’ve been running a family adventure that uses the classic edition I first played as a kid. And from that shared passion, my son and I started playing with some ideas that has turned into my latest passion project.
When I was seven and a half years-old, I was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons by some older kids at a park. The chief storyteller, the DM, needed to tell SOMEONE, ANYONE, about the adventure he had planned and I was that someone. Playing the game with my kids (and of course, my wife Jen) has been great, and taking the world of the latest series I was working on, Legacy of the Unborn Dragon, and turning it into a World book for Classic Fantasy Gaming has been a blast. I’m able to tackle parts in small chunks, dealing with anxiety flare ups in bite-sized pieces, and bit-by-bit, I’m seeing it come together.
So if you’ve been wondering if you’re ever going to see more Wizard Killer or anything from me, yes you will. I’ve reached the point in my healing process where, despite the anxiety writing this is causing me, I can manage it and I’m focused on that.
With this post, I break too long of a silence. I look forward to sharing some articles, ideas, and snippets on whatever I’m working on or whatever comes to mind. Keep writing and stay human ;)