Tag: struggle

Into the Abyss

Fortune favors the bold.

I believe these four words because I have lived them, time and again. But nothing was quite as bold — or as trying — as my move away from the news industry and into a future of unknowns.

Some have asked what led me to abruptly walk away from a career I’d devoted so much to, but quick explanations can only go so far.

This article delves deeper.

November 15, 2012

It was a normal Thursday in the newsroom at KMID Big 2 News, the ABC affiliate in Midland, Texas. Eight days had already passed since President Barack Obama had won re-election, and the shine of pulling off flawless election coverage had finally worn off. Thanksgiving was a week away and a busy ratings period was winding down.

As I got to work putting together the 5 PM newscast, I felt as if the finish line was in sight. As KMID’s Executive Producer, I had devoted a lot of time and effort into making sure election coverage went to plan — an important initiative, as previous years’ election newscasts had been doomed by technical glitches and other blunders. I’d also followed that triumph with a trip to Oklahoma for a college football game, so I had little left in the tank on this particular Thursday. However, I happened to be working a half-shift, so some long-needed R & R was finally in sight.

Or so I thought.

It was about 4:40 PM — 20 minutes from the start of the 5 PM newscast. I was doing my final check of news scripts when the police scanner went off.

All units be advised. Accident with train. Garfield and Front.

There was no time to think. I instinctually went into breaking news mode.

I sent a cameraman to the scene and called Midland Police to get more information. I quickly learned that a Union Pacific train had collided with a parade float carrying military veterans and their spouses.

It was a truly horrific incident, but this was no time to reflect. There was much more to be done, and precious little time to do it all.

I immediately broke the story on the station’s website and Facebook page, rearranged my newscast and wrote new scripts to account for the new lead story. Then I let everyone — production staff, reporters and news anchors — know what was changed, and what I needed them to do. I did all of this in less than twenty minutes, and the ensuing newscast went off without a hitch.

When I got back to the newsroom, my office phone was ringing. It was ABC News in New York — producers with the national program were calling to ask me for information.

That when it hit me: I’d hit what some producers might call “The Jackpot.” I’d nailed a breaking news event that went national.

It was the greatest achievement of my career.

But I don’t recall a feeling of exuberance during this defining moment. Instead, I recall a feeling of pain.

These painful memories remain vivid.  I remember a reporter calling me from the accident scene and crying uncontrollably, overwhelmed by the pressure and gravity of the situation. I recall the ruthless race by our crews to get more information and interviews, even though the victims understandably wanted no part of a TV camera in their face. And most of all, I remember the pit I felt — and still feel — in my stomach, knowing veterans who had been wounded in duty in Iraq and Afghanistan lost their lives in a parade held in their honor.

These images and sentiments stuck with me when I finally drove home around midnight, at the end of what turned out to be a full 9-hour shift. As I lay in bed, I remember asking myself for the first time if the career I’d chosen was the right one.

At my career apex, I’d never felt more low.

November 16, 2012

A breaking news story is like an earthquake. After the initial devastation is over, there are waves of aftershocks.

In the case of the 2012 Midland train wreck, those aftershocks came courtesy of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Now, anyone who’s seen the movie Sully knows that the NTSB arrives quickly after a disaster but investigates slowly and deliberately. As investigators set up camp in Midland and began a series of daily briefings, our station worked diligently to keep up with the latest developments. Suddenly, I found myself working 7 of the ensuing 8 days. There was no weekend for me, no Thanksgiving. My job beckoned, early and often.

By the time Black Friday was over, most of these new developments had mercifully dried up — but so had my energy. As I went into my first extended period of free time in two weeks, I was so tired that I couldn’t do much more than curl up in the fetal position and sleep.

The next day, I did something I would have considered inconceivable just weeks earlier — I started applying to jobs outside of TV news.

December 14, 2012

It was a Friday morning that started the same as any other. I woke up and checked my phone for what I missed overnight. Such is the life of a producer.

As I scrolled through my Facebook feed, something caught my eye. It was a friend’s status that read: “What the hell is wrong with people?”

Knowing something was up, I powered up my laptop and checked the ABC News website. That’s when I learned that a gunman had shot up an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut — killing several first graders and their teachers.

The pit in my stomach returned. Then I went numb.

After staring into space for who knows how long, it hit me.

I’m going to be cover this horrifying story at work later.

My heart sank.

That day turned out to be the most difficult one of my working life. Even though the incident happened 2,000 miles away from West Texas, spending a full day keeping up with developments in a real-life nightmare was pure torture. There was no silver lining; by reporting on the sickening events of Sandy Hook, we left our viewers as upset as we all were. Yet it was our duty as media members to report the story, even if no one really stood to benefit from it.

It was the ultimate no win scenario, one that seemed to play out in slow motion.

When the day mercifully came to an end, I went home, collapsed on the couch and cried.

At that moment, I knew there was no future for me in news.

March 6, 2013

It was a Tuesday that was anything but ordinary.

When I arrived at the station, I walked into my boss’ office, closed the door and handed him a signed letter — the only letter of resignation I’ve ever drafted.

I told my boss when my last day of work would be and we shook hands.

As I walked through the newsroom, the evening anchor turned to me, a look of sadness on her face.

“Dylan, did you just…?”

I nodded and continued on to my desk. I didn’t want to be a distraction.

Truth be told, I’d known this day was coming for a few months. I just didn’t know when.

After taking some time to enjoy the holidays, I had begun my job search in earnest in the first moments of 2013. I zoned in corporate communications and Public Relations jobs in Dallas — knowing there were plenty of opportunities there — and I applied to as many job openings as I could find each morning before heading to work.

I had it all planned out. I’d get a job offer, put in my two weeks, move to Dallas and get started in my new profession. It was all so simple.

There was only one problem. I didn’t get a single job offer.

With 20-20 hindsight, this makes sense; no hiring manager worth their salt was going to give an unproven commodity living 300 miles away the keys to the castle. But in early 2013, it felt as if the walls were closing in with each failed job application.

Soon enough, the hourglass did run out of sand. As my KMID contract and apartment lease neared expiration, I knew I wasn’t about to renew either. So on the first Tuesday in March, I formally announced my intentions.

Job or no job, I was heading east.

March 30, 2013

There’s no day quite like moving day.

As the morning dew glistened off my car windshield, my father and I loaded my personal possessions into a U-Haul van. I dropped off my apartment keys at the leasing office and we headed for the highway — my father in the moving van, me in my car.

About 5 hours later, we unloaded the contents of the truck at their new home — a storage unit outside of Fort Worth. I then checked into an extended stay hotel, and my father flew back to his home in the Northeast.

I was on my own, facing an uncertain future.

“This too will pass,” I told myself. “A couple of weeks from now, I’ll have a 9 to 5 job and my own apartment.”

Not so much.

July 1, 2013

I turned the key in the lock, opened the door and set foot in my apartment for the first time.

After months of struggles, I’d finally made it.

You see, the two weeks I’d figured I’d need to land a job had turned into three months, as company after company turned me down. But after applying to more than 600 jobs, depleting my savings account and nearly maxing out my credit card to cover basic living expenses, I finally got a job offer. And now I had a place to call home.

I set up a chair in the living room, sat down and thought of the journey I’d been on, along with the new adventures that lay ahead.

It was sobering and exhilarating at the same time.

November 16, 2016

As I look back at all of these moments, one thing is clear.

I made the right decision leaving the TV news industry.

Sure, the road I took was highly unconventional and full of struggles that could test anyone’s will. But it was a road that needed to be taken.

You see, TV news was my passion early in my adult life. It was my career, my future, my dream. But the stress and angst I felt on the job in those fateful last months of 2012 served as a powerful warning. Maybe news wasn’t right for me, or I wasn’t right for it.

The decision to switch careers saved my life, or at least prolonged it. I now have a greater sense of purpose in my life, along with a renewed sense of balance. And I’m forever free of the monumental stress associated with producing TV newscasts — stress that I estimate would have shortened my lifespan by three years if I hadn’t left the newsroom behind when I did.

Much has changed in the past few years since I made this decision. I’ve matured. I’ve become more self-accountable. I’ve made massive inroads in a new career. And, most of all, I’ve gained a world of perspective.

But even with all of these changes, I think back constantly to the decisions I made to get me to where I am now. I understand that they’re a key ingredient of my story, and always will be.

It’s been a wild journey, and it will continue to be one. But I wouldn’t trade one second of it.

Darkness In The Light

“I’m going to die.”

The thought raced through my head, over and over like the words on an electronic marquee board, as I sat on the gym floor. I stared blankly out the windows illuminated by bright sunshine, resigned to my fate. All around me, my classmates stared intently, as the faculty leaders told us that we were safe.

“That’s bullshit,” I thought. “Stop lying to us.”

Still, I stayed silent. It wasn’t my place to say a word; even if it were, what would I say?

Soon, it was back to the school day. I wandered to my next class, my body climbing the staircase but my soul halfway to the other side. Moments later, my teacher told us to call our parents and tell them that we were okay.

Still in a daze, I turned on my phone and called my mother. On the second ring, she answered, sounding worried. I told her what I had just heard, but didn’t believe — that I was alright and we were all safe. My mother told me she was glad to hear that, the palpable emotion in her voice knocking me back into reality.

As the shock wore off, I was hit with an avalanche of emotions I’d never experienced before, feelings that I’ll never be able to adequately put into words. At the age of 13, my life had changed; I was broken, and would never be whole again.

The date was September 11th, 2001.

***

It started as a normal Tuesday. It had rained the night before, but as I started my hour-long journey from the New York suburbs to my middle school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan — a trek that included a bus and two trains — the skies were clear and the air was warm. It was the kind of day that made a teenager long for the recently departed summer break; one you wanted to hold on to before the biting chill of fall set in.

As I sat in my history class an hour or so later, I was momentarily distracted by the sound of an airplane overhead — an unusual, but not unheard of occurrence. A few minutes later, it was on to a Physical Education class, and we headed out to Central Park to play soccer in the beautiful weather. As far as school days went, this one didn’t seem so bad.

But as we left the park, I could tell something was wrong. The streets were nearly empty; only a few people were on the move. A woman approached our gym teacher, who was nearly twice her height. The teacher leaned over as she whispered something to him; when he turned away he looked pale. I knew this teacher relatively well; he was also one of my baseball coaches and a pillar of positive energy. I’d never seen him so shaken.

That’s when I learned the horrifying news: The plane I’d heard flying over the school an hour earlier had crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, just 7 miles south of where I was standing. Moments later, I learned that another plane had hit the south tower. It was apparent that the city was under attack, and doomsday scenarios sprung into the forefront of my mind; even with so much still unknown, I was convinced whoever was responsible wouldn’t stop until they burned down the entire city. There was nothing I could do to avoid the inevitable.

As the entire school gathered in the gym for an impromptu assembly, I was convinced this day would be my last on Earth.

***

After I got off the phone with my mother, and returned to my English class, I gained some clarity. We learned that terrorists had hijacked commercial airliners and intentionally flew the planes into New York’s tallest buildings. Other terrorists had flown a plane into the Pentagon, and there were a few reports of a plane crash in rural Pennsylvania. New York’s public transit system shut down, and the National Guard quickly blocked all the bridges and tunnels around Manhattan. I had nowhere else to go.

Two hours later, my father picked me up. He was teaching at another school a few blocks away at the time of the attacks, but he had to stay there until the parents of his students came to collect their kids.

When my father showed up at my school, I didn’t want to leave. I had finally realized that I was indeed safe at school. Who knew what would happen if I left? But there I was, moments later, walking down empty Manhattan sidewalks, hardly saying a word. Soon, my father and I were heading back to the suburbs in a car driven by his colleague’s mother.

As the car approached a toll bridge at the top of Manhattan, a heavily armed National Guardsman stood by the tollbooth. “Go on,” he said. “Get out of here.” It seemed like something out of a movie, and it gave me chills.

Around 1:30 that afternoon, my father and I met up with my mother and sister in the Bronx, at what would later be my high school. We took the short drive home and turned on CNN. For hours, I watched Aaron Brown give the latest developments on America’s darkest day, his voice weighted by somberness and mounting exhaustion. Eventually, my parents and sister went to bed. I stayed awake, worried that I wouldn’t wake up the next morning — and worried about what would happen if I did. Eventually, exhaustion took over; I shut off the TV and crawled into bed.

***

September 12th, 2001

I awoke confused, angry, disturbed and hurt. School was cancelled for the day, giving me plenty of time to think. So much was unknown, but one thing was abundantly clear: My life would never be the same again.

***

September 21st, 2001

Within a week of the attacks, the authorities reopened some of the sidewalks of Lower Manhattan. My father and I wanted to get a firsthand sense of what had happened, so we took a train to Chinatown (where the police barricades were) and walked a mile down Broadway to Ground Zero.

There was no way to prepare for what we saw next. A plume of debris filled the air, and the wreckage was six stories high. My father touched a scaffold three blocks from the World Trade Center and discovered the dust stuck to it was an inch thick. It looked like a war zone.

Soon, horror gave way to disgust. As we made our way down Broadway, I saw Don King standing on the other side of the police barricade. He was wearing an expensive jacket adorned with the Statue of Liberty and promoting his next fight. It was selfish, callous and rude for King to use a national tragedy as his promotional stage, but there he was just the same; I’ll never forgive Don King for that, as long as I live.

***

Time heals wounds, but some are just too darned big.

As the days and months passed, I returned to my normal routine at school. But everything felt different. I knew the immense pain I was feeling would take time to heal, but it seemed like things were only getting tougher.

I thought about what happened on September 11th, and all that was lost, each day. But in the first few years after the tragedy, my thoughts would quickly turn to questions:

  • What can bring closure after a catastrophic tragedy?
  • Can you get PTSD from watching people jump out of buildings and get buried by debris, even if you only see it on television?
  • When will we truly be able to feel safe again?
  • Will those responsible for turning our world upside down ever fully pay for what they’ve done?

Answers were fleeting, and the pain never subsided.

***

Eventually, I came to a sobering truth.

There is no closure for a tragedy like this, and there never will be one.

I don’t know when exactly I discovered this, but it marked a significant turning point. I had to live with the fact that my life would forever be changed, that I would forever have a hole in my heart. A part of me was stolen on September 11th; instead of letting it go, I had been wasting years trying to get it back.

A strange thing happened when I came to this revelation — I found solace in it. The pain of the memories was raw as ever, but my soul was no longer in a constant state of restlessness. Somewhere along the line I found God, and faith has been a significant part of my life ever since.

***

May 2nd, 2011

I was sitting in my apartment in Midland, Texas, on a Sunday night, winding down before another stressful and exhausting week as a producer at KMID Big 2 News when my cell phone rang. It was KMID’s weekend anchor on the other end of the line.

“Dylan, our troops killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. I’m trying to get more information on this for the newscast, but can you update the station’s website?”

I thought I’d misheard something, but she assured me that yes, Osama Bin Laden had been killed. Soon, I was watching ABC News and writing a detailed recap for the KMID website — from my couch. Journalism at its finest.

Once the story was up and the breaking news rush was over, I took a moment to think about what had just happened. I didn’t even know Bin Laden was still alive at the time, but I felt his death at the hands of our forces provided a bit of relief. Although this might sound vengeful and immoral, I felt that the killing of Bin Laden was justified (and ironically, I was watching an episode of Justified when I got the call about it). A man who brought so much suffering to our world, who ruined so many lives — that man deserved to have that suffering turned on him.

I thought about all this. Then, I thought about the events of September 11th. I prayed about it, went to bed, and slept better than I had in 10 years.

***

November 22nd, 2011

My plane touched down at LaGuardia Airport on a gloomy November day. I was up in New York from Texas for the Thanksgiving holiday. When my parents picked me up at the airport, they sprung a surprise on me: I wasn’t heading to their house.

My mother dropped my father and I off at a subway station; we rode the train to Lower Manhattan and headed toward the newly unveiled 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center site. Where the towers once stood now lay two square reflecting pools, surrounded by waterfalls and the names of those who perished in or around each tower. Quite fittingly, it was raining as we walked around the site.

My father and I hardly said a word as we looked at the water rushing into the memorial, both from the sky and the waterfalls. The silence wasn’t unusual; as a teacher, my father had to explain the unexplainable to a group of frightened sixth graders on September 11th, 2001, and the subject had been mostly taboo for him in the 10 years after that.

At one point, I kneeled by the memorial to think about the victims, and pray for their loved ones. As I stood back up, my father surprised me by asking for a hug. Suddenly, we were talking about what had been off-limits for so long — the events of that fateful day, our intertwined memories of the aftermath, the emotions we had to deal with in the years afterward and our separate quests for closure. After a few more moments, I asked if he was ready to go. “Not yet,” he said. We hugged a second time, each choking back tears. It was one of the most emotional moments of my life.

***

December 26th, 2014

As the late afternoon sunshine slowly faded away from the 9/11 Memorial site, and my father and I made our way into the newly-opened museum on the grounds. While I’m not often a museumgoer, it was important to me to get some new perspective on the tragedy that has so deeply affected my life.

I knew visiting the museum would bring back some gut-wrenching memories, but I had no idea how raw those emotions would be. Archive news footage, police dispatcher recordings — they all brought back feelings from half my life ago, the most harrowing and traumatic memories of September 11th, which I’d long since buried. When I came upon recordings of cell phone conversations between passengers on the hijacked planes and their loved ones — calls to say goodbye — I found myself paralyzed by grief.

Visiting the 9/11 Memorial Museum was one of the most difficult things I’ve done in my life. I left nearly as broken as I felt in the days after the attacks; I essentially dragged myself up the escalator and out the door when it was time to leave.

But I wouldn’t have traded any of that for a second. If you don’t have a full understanding of all that’s been lost, you can never be truly found.

***

November 27, 2015

The last remnants of the morning fog lifted over New York Harbor and Jamaica Bay as I watched through glass windows more than 1500 feet above the street. It was as if the veil of the past was being lifted to show the future.

As I explored the One World Observatory — atop the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, now towering over the World Trade Center site — I felt many different emotions. Fear was not one of them.

Those that took so much from myself — and so many others — 14 years prior had still failed in their ultimate quest. My very presence, high above the ground at the very site they had once targeted was proof of both our collective resilience and the totality of their failure.

But even with my symbolic journey of resilience and recovery now seemingly complete, one thought permeated in my mind:

Although the view is stunning, this building shouldn’t be here. The Twin Towers should.

All we’ve gained doesn’t wipe out all we’ve lost; it simply reinforces it.

***

“Mama said you gotta put the past behind you so you can move forward.”

Forrest Gump is one of my favorite movies of all-time, filled with wisdom I use in my everyday life. But this is not one of them.

I will never put September 11th behind me. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about the events of that fateful day. For more than 5,000 days, these reflections have made me both stronger and weaker. The hole in my heart is ever present, the emotions still raw, and the events of that fateful day never forgotten.

But more than that, I don’t think I’d ever want to put September 11th behind me. The past has helped me move forward, as the events of that day have transformed my life ever since. I don’t take a single day for granted, and I strive to treat others with grace and kindness whenever possible. While I lost all traces of childish innocence forever on September 11th, the actions I’ve taken moving forward have helped shape me into the man I am today.

Coping with the memories of that day hasn’t gotten easier. I will carry the burden for the rest of my life. But while I will never be whole again, I am finally at peace.