You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The weight of the world.
Have you ever just been so overwhelmed, you feel like you are going to explode.
Have you ever thought your shoulders were going to crumble under the strain of an invisible force?
Your heart races, and your ears get fuzzy as the sound mutates like so much bath water swirling down the drain.
They say exhaustion can change you.
This last two weeks has been exhausting, like trying to swim with an anvil on my back.
It wasn’t just the external forces of the weather, it was the personal pressures, the financial obligations and the constant tug of the job.
It made for a stressful sprint on an empty tank.
It made me reconsider what matters.
It starts with sweeps and the bosses want and want and want.
Nothing is good enough. No story is good enough.
Too many live shots is not enough live shots.
The pressure to produce is a spike in my brain.
This past week was one of the most taxing weeks I’ve had in a long time.
For more than a week, Middle Tennessee was beaten down with cold and ice and snow.
Temperatures were sub freezing, for 7 days in a row.
2 dozen people died. Countless others skidded off interstates. Thousands lost electricity and were stuck in traffic snarls.
Schools closed and people hid in their homes.
The mayor’s best advice every single day was stay home if you can stay home.
Yeah, I wish.
The worse it got, the more I was asked to do.
Each live shot requires so much energy. You expel it into the ether, and it’s hard to get it back. You stand in the frosty wind, waiting for your cue. You breathe into your hood, your hands, you literally try to use your own breath to warm yourself.
The cold is so overwhelming it begins to smother you, squeeze your throat, choking off your air, like jack the ripper.
It grabs you by the brain and then begins to put you to sleep, slowly, like a carbon monoxide french kiss.
You do audio checks 5 minutes before the news cast.
You stand there in the arctic stew listening to Robin Roberts meander through a bad interview or the end of NASHVILLE or whatever ABC programming is airing.
It’s a brutal assault on your joints, your knees, your toes as you stand there in the darkness waiting.
You need to be alert, aware of your circumstances and on the ball.
If you are cold, you need to keep moving. Of course you are cold. But nobody at home really cares.
They don’t care if your eye lids are popping every time you blink. They don’t care if your mouth clicks when you talk because it’s icing over.
People at home don’t care that you were scared driving up the icy hill to get to the dangerous highway ramp filled with slush to get to your live shot.
News Directors say they care, but they don’t. They just want to sit back on their couch, in their warm living room and be entertained.
Monday I did 5 live shots. Icy power lines, broken water pipes and slippery interstates.
Tuesday I did five more live shots starting in the downtown. I ran up and down icy sidewalks banging hockey pucks off the Bridgestone Arena.
Later that night, I was on the side of another interstate telling you that TDOT help trucks were humping hard.
By Wednesday morning, I felt the burn.
It was harder to wake up. It was harder to roll out of bed. I felt a pressure building on top of me trying to keep me under the covers with the shades drawn.
Wednesday was possibly the coldest day of them all. Wind Chill temps were negative five degrees.
It was tough to leave the house, to drive on slush hills 6 inches high that grabbed my tires and forced me to over-correct.
Work stress and relationship stress and financial stress and regular life stress was beginning to bludgeon me into submission.
Wednesday I only do one live shot.
But it’s a brutal live shot.
It’s so windy, so cold, I feel my skin burning.
My brain is screaming.
Every breath of frigid air is like an ice cream headache making me wince in pain.
My thoughts are fleeting and my exhaustion heightened.
I remember being on the side of the interstate holding a frozen t-shirt.
I am talking, but I’m not sure what I am saying. I am having trouble concentrating. The cold is lulling me to sleep like an ice punch to the cerebellum.
I have 8 layers of clothes and 2 coats. Still the wind is eating me like an icy piranha. I’m in pain, I’m so tired.
I don’t how many times I can do this.
I get home at 11 pm and fall into the couch.
Thursday is another barrage of slipping and sliding and countless live shots.
By Friday, I am done.
I am a tv dinner that has been microwaved one too many times.
I have worked four 11 hour days and this day will be longer than the rest.
Friday the forecast calls for ice.
Ice is evil. Ice is bad.
I do 4 live shots downtown as the sleet is coming in.
I am summoning strength from where, I don’t know.
I battle mean-spirited drunks and conditions that most avoid.
I am a zombie spinning around, pointing at buildings and pushing a snow shovel.
It’s good tv, but I’m empty. I’m a rocket with no fuel.
I slump into a chair at the station.
I want to go to sleep.
I have 5 layers of clothes. I am so uncomfortable.
My thoughts swirl. Work and real life. It is fighting inside my brain adding to the sensory over load of stress.
Then 8:30 rolls around.
The ice is now coming down relentlessly.
It’s dark. It’s icy. It’s dangerous.
I want to give up. I am alone.
I get in my car and the engine whines. Cold air blows through the vents. I push the heater to the right, trying to force heat into the compartment.
There is no heat to push. The old car is tired too. I have beaten it into submission this week.
I have forced it to drive on slick interstates. I have raced to places that people were told not to go.
I bang my steering wheel as the windshield freezes over with each wipe of the blade.
It is a nightmare. It’s frustrating.
I wish I could call someone and spew, complain.
But there is nobody. Nobody cares.
Getting to the live shot is exhausting. I am battling snow plows pushing road grime onto my windshield.
It’s like driving through a force field of weight.
My brain is empty. I don’t want to do this. I want to go home.
I’ve done 4 live shots all ready this day.
I’ve probably done close to 20 this week.
I have 4 more hits between 10 and 11:30 pm, extended coverage.
I have sprinted through a marathon of cold death and I’m like a boxer, out on my feet.
I feel sick, tired, not sure what I’m suppose to say that I haven’t said.
I feel like I am three atmospheric zones down?
My head hurts like I’m scuba diving without clearing my ears.
I stand on the ice and I tell you that it’s icy. It ain’t Shakespeare. It will have to do. I’m done. I’m empty.
By the time I get home. It’s 12:30 am. I’m so tired I fall on my bed face first. I don’t think I move once.
What a zombie induced craziness.
The pressure of the job, the pressure of the pay check, the pressure to produce, the pressure to be a good parent and a good citizen.
I understand how people can let things overwhelm them.
If you can’t compartmentalize, you can be eaten alive.
Life is a sneaky bitch and will put you in a sleeper hold if you are not careful.
Some people turn to drugs and alcohol.
I turn to the universe and simply ask for it to give me what I need.
“Universe, take away the snow. Replace it with palm trees. Change my call letters and give me a new lease on life.”
And then I listen for a harmonic whistle that comes when the sun hits the horizon.
You have to believe. You have to want it.
I can’t do another week like this last week.
Hey universe. Take the anvil off my chest.
I’ll take a Corona with a lime please.
So to the bank account and the messy relationship and the kids in college with all their needs, enough all ready.
Calm.
I deserve it.
No more expectations that cause me pain.
No more.
Thanks Universe.
Now take your negative wind chill and shove it up someone else’s ass.
Life’s Crazy™