Chris Graham: There’s more to life than sports?

For the life of me, I will never understand why people feel it’s OK to call me a “snake,” a “troll,” just because they disagree with something I think out loud about … sports.

There’s so many more important things for us to use our mental energy on, and maybe where my head is on this today is a kick in the butt for me to do that.

I like to think that I’m not a clickbait columnist, which isn’t to say, when you scroll back over 26 years of columns, literally low five digits in terms of bylines, you wouldn’t find a few to point to and say, “um, but what about this one?”

I’ve certainly mellowed as I’ve gotten older, wiser, more cognizant that sports are supposed to be fun.

Just so you know, I’m not a “snake,” not a “troll,” just a dude who wakes up every day thankful that I was able to create this job for myself, and make a good, great, living doing it.

I love being able to take ideas, tidbits of things going on in the world, and try to make sense of whatever it is that I’m writing about that day.

Sometimes it’s sports, other times it’s politics, local issues, public health, mental health.

The last one has been a biggie for me this year. I had a physical health scare back at the end of the college basketball season that triggered awful recurring bouts with anxiety, and through months of therapy, I’ve come to realize that I’ve been battling anxiety all my life without knowing it.

My wife and I have been working behind the scenes since the summer with local mental health groups, the regional hospital and the Virginia Department of Health on a public awareness campaign that we hope to launch early next year aimed at destigmatizing mental health treatment.

My part in that is an effort to try to make it so that other people don’t have to experience what I did for several months, fighting against myself trying to get better, not knowing what was wrong, not knowing if I ever could get out of the spiral.

My wife, incidentally, comes at this from years of experience as a mental health advocate and suicide prevention trainer. When I introduce her to people, I make it a point to emphasize that I’m the person that everybody knows from my bylines as a writer and published author, but she’s the one who does the important stuff, saving people’s lives.

All I do is write nonsense about sports, and sometimes other stuff.

Hey, the pay is good, so I’ve got that going for me.

I don’t know what it is about today. I’m used to seeing negative people saying negative things about something I’ve written, and shrugging it off.

Today, I’m starting to think that there’s got to be more to life than devoting countless hours to critical analysis of games just so people can assail my name, question my character, wish bad things happen to me.

Ah, I’ll get over it.

Or maybe I won’t, and I’ll figure out what the more to life thing is.

Story by Chris Graham