Value the Time With the Ones You Love

When I was in HS, I knew I was going to work in media. I wanted to stick to just sports. Locally, I found out that it takes a lot more to do that than most stations in America are willing to do. I started adding tasks to my list between producing games, anchoring news and sports casts, DJ’ing on air, and much more. After 3 years in radio, I decided to try video and work for a cable access station. Funniest thing was I started falling in love with behind the scenes work. I had lost a spark in media when doing the same ole same ole.

Moving to 2014, I decided to move back to radio doing the same thing I was doing prior to moving to television. It was a pleasure to be back working with some familiar voices in the studio. I served in that capacity until December of 2016 when I took a full time on-air role in Robinson.

In 2017, I did something I had never done. Well, it was really several things, but I took a whole week off of work at one time. I don’t think I have ever talked about how big of a first step it was for me to take a week off. To say it was the time of a lifetime would be an understatement.

When I went back to work, I was so relaxed to be back. I have another story that I will tell some other time with this trip, but I learned something that week. I learned that I need to value the time with the ones you love most.

In 2018, I left my full time radio gig. I don’t want to go into details why, nor should I, but there were several reasons behind the scenes of life.

Fast Forward to 2019, I took some time away from my work at the time. At the time, I had gotten some new home responsibilities and I was pretty stressed about some things. I had several things I was working on lining up for 2020 and then Covid-19 hit.

With Covid, many things changed. Sports was paused, vacations weren’t allowed to happen, and weddings were not allowed to have big parties. Because I worked out in the public still every day, I moved out of the house I was paying for so I can continue to work, generate an income, and try not to get my elderly mother Covid.

Labor Day Weekend, one of my biggest fears came up. At that point, I had never had a panic attack in my life and while working utilities for a major network and dealing with mask mandates, I totally had an attack. I had a tele-health appointment with my doctor as I was headed back to my hotel and I don’t know what I said, but it was something that made my doctor set up a referral to a neurologist. Knowing issues my dad had, several things hit my head. I didn’t want to talk about it, but at some point, I was going to have to confront it.

During this whole thing, the other shoe dropped. One of my best friends from High School knew about it. My chief engineer knew about it and I had not said anything to him about it. I had a feeling the individual knew… and they did. My biggest thing was I was such a wimp to admit something.

While I am choosing to keep my reasoning internal, I will tell you one thing I have really learned as I have been going through what I have been going through recently. I’m learning that I need to slow down and start spending time the people who matter to me most. Those people know who they are. I am also slowly trying to learn I have to work on my mouth at times. I really at times at my own worst enemy, but thankfully I have wonderful people in my life to call me out when I need it and hold me accountable.