I am in a special kind of hell right now. I don't know who I am.
I am That Sailing Guy, and I think I have pretty much figured that out. He's a sailor, a journalist, a media personality and broke.
I am destitute for all intents and purposes.
My wife is the bread winner in our home because the best I can rate is $35 an article writing for a struggling news service. I did have a job getting paid a bit more than that, working for an Indian Crypto News company. However, when even an ADHD ship captain can tell that your writing sucks because you don't speak English and you refuse to hire an English-speaking editor, something is very wrong. So I had to leave that.
Yesterday, was in many ways my birth cry. I created a show called The Crypto Nightly News. It was my first go at a real media project that took a lot of work, and I think it was pretty good. Yeah, the video quality is not the best, and it looks like I'm sitting three inches from the camera. In fact, I am sitting three inches from the camera. I am broadcasting from the back bedroom of a travel trailer in the middle of the Utah desert, I have to.
Otherwise, I think it was quite good. The writing is solid, my voice quality is pretty good, and the editing is kinda fun. It needs work, but then again, I am doing this in poverty with no sponsorship. It looks kind of like a cable access TV show from 1985. But the writing is good.
I also have messages out to a couple of sponsors who could take this thing from simmer to burn in a hurry with a small investment, and we could market this thing, get a few thousand more views in a hurry and really shake the Crypto landscape up. But right now I am in hell.
My hell came in the form of a phone call today from a marine outfit down on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Gas prices are through the roof right now, so they are hiring captains and mates to go find oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and they are paying quite well.
They are certainly paying better than my only other prospect for a job, which is working for an independent TV station as a reporter/anchor in the middle of Nebraska. If I could get that and a sponsor for my podcast, I probably still couldn't make in a week what I would make in a day working on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, but I would be working toward my goal- to be free of ADHD.
It has me. Every time I think I am out, thank you, Michael Corleone, they pull me back in. My hell is that I have reached a pinnacle in a career that I have worked at for more than 20 years to be a captain, and all I really want to be a writer/videographer/podcaster.
If I take the job as a mate on a boat in the Gulf, I will pay my bills and probably could even get my wife the medical care she so desperately needs, feed my dogs and pay for my cars. Hell, I might even get my student loans current.
But to stay the course and keep writing and recording, eventually I could do that too. Just not right now. Right now, I don't have any faith that I can get a real paycheck for my brain, because I have trained myself for the last 20 years to work with my back, as my brain kept failing me.
That's the problem with ADHD, especially when you waited 45 years to get diagnosed. You doubt yourself.
I could take a job as a mate and get good money and pay my bills, but if I do take the jobs like I did last year when I went to Alaska, I am giving in to my doubt and fear.
I am tired of being afraid of my brain. I am tired of always feeling like I am not good enough or deserving enough. I am tired of being ADHD and if I take the job in Texas, I am admitting once again that ADHD wins.
I have no idea if I will find a sponsor for my show. I have no idea if the phone will ring, and it will be a full time job at a TV station in Nebraska. I just know that I have a bird in the hand right now with a job in Texas being a mate on an oil boat, and it pays pretty good.
If I go, that's the end of my podcast once again. After one episode, it's done, because I gotta go be a dumb again. Oh, I'm not saying all mariners are dumb, I'm just saying not many mariners can create The Crypto Nightly News or write Whither We Tend or think up an idea for a movie about The Great Loop.
I am the only one who can do those things. They are mine and I made them.
And if I go, I'm saying goodbye to my ideas to go spend my nights driving a boat through the Gulf of Mexico looking for oil.
The words of Jimmy Durante seem appropriate here.
Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go, but still had the feeling that you wanted to stay?
I want to pay my bills, care for my family and be a standup guy. But that is why I walked away from journalism the first time in my life, because I had bills to pay and wanted to be a stand-up guy.
If I hadn't run from using my brain when I was 21, I would, in all likelihood, have a wife that was getting the medical care she needs, have my student loans paid off by now and a credit score higher than 320.
But God had a different plan for me. I just wonder if he's telling me right now to go to Texas because he knows what's in the cards in Nebraska. That's why this is hell.
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