Regular readers know Adam Harstad, a longtime friend and co-writer of mine at Footballguys.com. Adam, who is known as the second-best trivia expert on the FBG staff, is a frequent guest poster here and a good follow on @AdamHarstad.
If you’re curious about a look behind the Football Perspective posting curtain, I write most of my articles in the morning. I spend an hour between waking up and going to the gym where I catch up on life things and also draft an article for this site.
Today, I didn’t have time to do that. That’s because I was busy reading Adam’s article (posted on his own site) about depression. It’s a long article (here’s the executive summary) but that’s a feature, not a bug. Adam put together a very revealing and thoughtful bit of writing about a really serious and important topic. I am no expert on mental health, but I know depression is bad for at least two reasons: a lot of people suffer from it, and it has an enormous impact on those suffering from it.
It’s not easy to expose yourself to the world the way Adam has, and I commend him for it. Even more impressive: Adam admits and acknowledges that he hasn’t won, but that posting this article is part of his process in trying to overcome depression. He said that public shame is a powerful motivator, and posting this would perhaps help him in this battle. So if me posting this helps him help himself, hey, I’m happy to.
I also wanted to post it here to show Adam that we all support him, even if he knows that already. And I’m sure there are other FP readers dealing with depression in all of its stages and depths, so I think reading Adam’s story can be helpful. If you have the time, I encourage you to read Adam’s article in full. And if you don’t have the time, I really encourage you to read his article in full. Again, I’m no mental health expert, but I think people dealing with depression find comfort in knowing that they’re not a lone, and that lots of people deal with depression. And if you’ve come this far and are still wondering, yes, today’s post was really just a ploy to remind Adam that I’m better than him at trivia.
So today, maybe leave a nice note for Adam in the comments or on his twitter feed. Or maybe you have some knowledge to share on mental health and depression. I trust you guys to help each other out.