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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
A different slant on signing Josh Hamilton and Zack Greinke.
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1. depletion Posted: November 28, 2012 at 09:29 AM (#4311222)get the right help. see the right people. but why all the constant noise about it?
that's why greinke was my kind of guy. he kept it private. dealt with it on his own. as it should be.
others seem to want it as some kind of personal brand.
… are the things not to like about a Hamilton contract, according to TFA, not his drug-and-rehab history.
As to the drug-and-rehab point, I couldn't agree more. That's the main point of TFA's discussion of Hamilton, and it's an important and cogent point.
My one quibble (and what would a BBTF comment be without a quibble? :) is the worry about "his reliance on contact skills rather than plate discipline." True, Hamilton's strikeout rate was up last year (as was his walk rate, both being the highest he's posted since coming to Texas). That could be due to any number of physical problems, including eyesight and sinus issues that he complained of, which are part of the "troubling injury history" that I would also worry about. Or maybe he's just lost bat speed with age, and that's a worry, too.
But all else equal, his reliance on contact skills is a good thing about him. His lifetime batting average is .304. That's his game; he's more Vlad Guerrero than Jim Thome, and if you're good enough on the Guerrero side, the fact that you rely on contact instead of take-and-rake is simply a matter of style. I see no reason why a contact type would age badly or anything like that: Vlad himself was still hitting .300 and driving in 100 runs at the age of 35. Contact is a reason to sign Hamilton, not avoid him.
Concur. Contact is a "young man's" skill. Players tend to add power and patience as they age, and lose contact ability.
Hamilton's in much better shape to age well than an equivalent hitter batting .240 with a ton of walks.
The positive effect of talking publicly about mental illness, I think, has to do with getting rid of the stigma on mental illness. There have been a lot of people with mental illnesses who haven't gotten the help they needed in part because they couldn't acknowledge their problems out of shame, out of concern regarding how other people in their lives would treat them. People saying publicly that they have this problem, and that they're getting help, can play a part in enabling others to get help, too.
Are there ways to change the culture of rub-some-dirt-on-it besides making it public?
(or what MCoA said)
i have no issue with someone responding to a question or perhaps mentioning it once or twice in a public forum. i roll my eyes at those who talk about it 'constantly'. why do we have all these rules about health privacy and then have folks yammering about this malady or that issue nonstop.
get the help you need and there you go. it's none of my business nor should it be.
i lump all of the viagra garbage into the same pile of nonsense.
I think it's a function of the social media era we live in. There are things I would tell my brother or my best friend because I trust them and rely on them. At the same time I would prefer to keep those issues generally private. However, between internet commenting, Twitter and Facebook and other social media we have a culture where everyone feels compelled to disclose information. I'm not sure what direction the cause/effect goes on that one but I think more and more everyone feels like they should share their opinions on everything.
look, if you need a ramp to get to work i have no issue becuase you are getting to work. and if you need a special reader on your computer because your eyes are shot that's ok too because again, you are working
but i need to keep your spot because you need to sit home because your head is elsewhere? got a developer who has missed over a month in 2012 because of this stuff and allegedly we cannot do anything about it.
i have a problem with that
and if that makes me an 8sshole so be it
Would you feel the same if they had an obvious physical malady that kept them out of work for the same time?
I'm sure he would. Damned gimps need to be out begging for their lives, surely.
there is a process for that in human resources. apparently when it's a head issue need to take a tippy toe approach
I do totally understand the issue that with mental health problems it is much tougher to tell if the person is just faking it to get out of work.
if you have a recognized physical health issue that is not mental health there ways for HR to work to see if this is a short-term disability path, long-term disability path or what have you. there is way for the company and the employee to reach an understanding so that the employee is not on the street but work still gets done
Which is, I suspect, a big reason why the stigma exists. But if you have a doctor's diagnosis, that should be easy to verify. With a diagnosis, a workplace can also easily tell who needs to be treated as having a disability and who doesn't.
Unless workplaces can't ask for doctor's notes anymore?
Why can't the same process be done with mental health issues?
In my case, at least as of back in 2/01, they can basically ask you to take the doctor's note back & for all intents & purposes tear it up.
I would say a bit more, maybe, but John Wayne Wallbangers might be offended.
Edit: Cokes - that sure took off in a hurry.
feel free. you don't offend me. i enjoy your posts
got me. just sharing what i am hearing from hr
For me, I wasn't seeking any sort of (un)paid time off or compensation or anything, just a different schedule. Oh, well -- by then I'd made my bed at the newspaper in Little Rock, & that gave them an excuse to make me lie in it. Or, rather, to throw me out of it.
Unless workplaces can't ask for doctor's notes anymore?
You can get a diagnosis of bubonic plague from a Dr., if you search for the right quack.
Someone who worked for me pulled a stunt like this. We had a layoff, and she wanted a severance package, but the company wanted to keep her. She complains about it loudly for days, then goes on vacation, calls in sick the first day back, and never shows up again.
Never tells us what's wrong with her, and we can't ask HR. Zero communication. We eliminate he job after the mandatory period, and as soon as the insurance co. kicks her off disability, she's back to work somewhere else.
I disagree with those that let you off the hook here.
Mental disorders are every bit as legitimate as physical disorders. Making accomodations to help people that are suffering from either... that is something that needs to be done. Period. (and if you believe in the idea that mental disorders are often brought about by issues with brain chemistry, mental disorders ARE physical disorders.)
This was a GREAT article. Greinke is one of my favourite players because his admission got people talking about it, and that is very important.
I have experience with someone very close to me sufferering from fibro myalgia and depression and ANY inference that she should 'get over it' will not be taken well by me, and when you say that a person suffering should lose their job, that is exactly what you are saying.
well, i was sharing my frustration that because of the nature of the malady i am given no path for resolution.
i don't know why an employer should be kept in limbo. why is that ok? why is disability not an option? why am i just told, to use the vernacular of the day, 'deal'?
you read about 15 things into my post that weren't there. for one, not desperate to fire anybody. i just want to know the process.
My situation is that I'm the only salaried employee in my department that manages 12 others. We provide service hours 17 hours a day, 7 days a week. The person who is scheduled to work until midnight Thursday - Monday has a doctor's note that indicates the person can have difficulties functioning at intermittent times and as such we need to make accommodations for this employee not showing to work (calling in) or leaving if the day ends up too rough. Because I can't ask anybody else in the department to work extra, I get to cover any hours my employee decides he can't work. In a typical week, that means I get to cover the midnight shift at least once because he decides he can no longer function and needs to go home and I normally cover at least one of the Saturday/Sunday shifts because he isn't able to come in. This has been going on for almost 2 years and HR has indicated that this will continue indefinitely. I've told my employer that I'm looking for another job because this situation has made it near impossible to have a life outside of work. They've essentially encouraged me in my job search.
I really don't know if he's faking it or not -- although I probably lean toward taking advantage simply how frequently it is the traditional weekend that requires him to take a full day off. But either way, I don't see how this is a sustainable situation for the employer.
I'm sure one's position in management / non-management clouds things but from my position it's very frustrating. Frustrating is an understatement.
sorry about that situation. but yes, that is the message i am getting from hr
posters here can call us big fibbers or tell us that our human resources departments stink but this is our world.
and when we say anything we are the bad guys.
interesting. most of the disability plans i have seen are a percentage of the person's standard pay. 50 or 60 percent give or take
Of course, when I started in the biz back in '81, I'm almost tempted to say that $35 a week would've been "50 or 60 percent give or take" ... Twice that would definitely have fit that bill. (Which explains why I happily snapped up the university fellowship Arizona State offered me that summer to go to grad school in history. Being tax-free, the stipend paid more.)
I recently read an interview with Terry Bradshaw on this subject. Some of it's pretty tough reading.
"This time I just could not get out of the hole. The anxiety attacks were frequent and extensive. I had weight loss, which I'd never had before. I couldn't stop crying. And if I wasn't crying, I was angry, bitter, hateful and mean-spirited. I couldn't sleep – couldn't concentrate. It just got crazy."
"I was drinking a lot, and I didn't like the path I was on. I was frightened by what might happen. I wasn't sure if I was going to drink myself to death."
Took him a long time to get help even though he knew there was a family history of clinical depression.
Oh yeah. Turns out he was dyslexic (and successfully hid it). It really did take him forever to learn his reads, etc.
interesting. most of the disability plans i have seen are a percentage of the person's standard pay. 50 or 60 percent give or take
Yes, I've usually seen 100% pay for 4-6 weeks (Short-term disability), then 50-60% beyond that (Long-term disability).
Note: it's a good idea to pay for LTD yourself, rather than letting the employer pay. It's generally cheap, and then your benefits are tax-free.
posters here can call us big fibbers or tell us that our human resources departments stink but this is our world.
No doubt. It's the same with terminating incompetent employees. You can lay-off 100 excellent employees faster than you can fire one loser.
Yes, because "quack" encompasses the vast majority of doctors, right?
You can also fire an employee for cause, who doesn't have a documented illness, than one who does. Whether this should be the case, I don't know, but I object to the notion that such people are "losers".
No, not at all. But there are unscrupulous Drs., and you can find one it you need to.
You can also fire an employee for cause, who doesn't have a documented illness, than one who does. Whether this should be the case, I don't know, but I object to the notion that such people are "losers".
I wasn't talking about people who have physical or mental illness, I'm talking about lazy people who don't show up for work on time (if at all), and don't do their jobs.
If you've ever been to AA that's not the majority view or even the view of a significant minority. The conventional wisdom is that we (people in AA) are only one drink, or one bad moment away from going off the deep end. I dont know what the statistics are on that; but in general, w/o a solid period of sobriety, the odds seem to be way against you. Even with long periods of sobriety, we've seen seemingly stable people go off the deep end quite a few times.
It also helps with sobriety to remind yourself of this danger, even if the danger is not so great. So this attitude might be distorting things, perhaps. But I tend to agree that most people in AA really need to be vigilant and there's still quite a danger.
As often as not, I'm sorry to say, these people are also known as "management" ... at least where I've worked (during which time I've been middle management more than 50 percent of the time).
That's not entirely fair, of course. Cluelessness & abject stupidity are frequently factors as well, & those aren't the sorts of things one can necessarily help suffering from, I suppose.
If you're objective is to do it quickly that's probably true but firing someone properly is easy enough and does not need to take a long time at all. As long as you properly document what the employee is doing and communicate appropriately the day comes pretty quickly.
i want to hire your human resources department. barring the employee engaging in threatening or dangerous behavior most terminations have a 90 day runway approximately. that's 3 months of detailing what isn't being done, improvement plans and the whole shebang
that does not sound 'quick' to me
That's not what I've seen. It always seems to take at least 6 months.
That's not entirely fair, of course. Cluelessness & abject stupidity are frequently factors as well, & those aren't the sorts of things one can necessarily help suffering from, I suppose.
Management or not, these people should be gone, quickly.
Well, of course. Too often, though, they seem to have the one truly indispensable employment skill -- keeping their job.
I fully admit that "malcontent" is my middle name (my silly parents!) but offhand I can't think of a single workplace of mine with more than a handful of employees in which management didn't include at least one person who had no more business being employed, much less in charge, than a houseplant. I could curl your hair with accounts of utter incompetence by higher-ups. So, probably, could just about anyone else here ... you, I'm sure, very much included.
After some 30 years of employment, I guess that's just the way things (don't) work.
In my experience, managers really dread being fired for cause, so you can reach a severance deal quickly.
I accept! (I am the HR department).
Seriously we work on a 30 day action plan but frankly that 90 day plan doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Three months is pretty quick and if someone commits some form of gross misconduct they are gone right then and there. I think what happens is HR professionals get too worried about lawsuits. Yeah, it sucks but if you document properly then you should prevail. If you have communicated throughout the process with the offender and then deal with them in a respectful manner the day it happens I find it goes pretty smoothly.
"Rubbing dirt on it worked for me, so ..."
"... that's how you should handle it. And if you're not as strong as I am, well, no problem, just ..."
"I mean, really, what's the problem, anyway?"
I understand and share your frustration with the complicated workplace administration issues that arise around mental health concerns, but I feel that your understanding of the difficulties of dealing with the problems of depression and social anxiety is archaic.
For some people, the barriers to getting the "right" help (if such a thing should even exist for them) are insurmountable. I promise.
To be unaware of this doesn't make you an 8sshole, I don't think, just hopelessly out of step. Part of the point of publicizing these struggles is to change your mind.
;-)
A favorite novel of mine is Rob Grant's "Incompetence". It's a moderately interesting murder mystery set in the near future in a federated Europe that has a rule that nobody can be "prejudiced from employment for reason of age, race, creed or incompitence[sic]"
The joys of trying to book a trip with a clerk that suffers from ADD or dealing with police officers with anger management issues or ...
The heart of the book is trying to cope with day to day interactions with people manifestly unsuited for their job.
While I obviously lean much more strongly toward your interpretation of the situation than I do HW's, the fact, I think, remains that if he's "just hopelessly out of step," so is a huge portion -- very possibly a majority -- of the rest of the populace. Which calls into question the entire concept of being "out of step."
I hope I'm wrong, though.
Well, nightmarish.
But fun!
Adding it to my want list even as I type.
Thanks!
For some people, the barriers to getting the "right" help (if such a thing should even exist for them) are insurmountable. I promise.
I think the issue is some of us don't believe people have the right to hold a job they no longer can perform, even if that's not their fault. If physical or mental illness prevents you from doing your job, that's what disability insurance is for.
LTD typically covers 2 years for same-job disability, and indefinite if you can't perform any job. So, if you're a ditch digger and you hurt your back, or an bond trader who can no longer cope with the stress, you get two years to find another trade. If you're completely disabled, you have an income. That seems fair to me.
Yeah, that matches up with my experience. Often longer if the problem employee is a member of a protected class, and most of them are nowadays.
Some of the blame needs to go to poor management though; many managers do a poor job of documenting performance issues, and sometimes don't do the job at all. If you've been suffering with an incompetent employee for years, but never noted their issues in performance reviews, set up improvement plans, or otherwise documented their ineptitude, I don't have a ton of sympathy for you.
i am old but not daft.
first, i don't see the purpose beyind blending various statements together other than to try and confuse me or to tag me to statements not made. it's an old ploy on bbtf and i am not buying. state your point clearly or don't bother
as for employees having barriers to help that is possible but unlikely since a good many companies (large and small) have some form of employee assistance hotline and of course there are health plans. and lest we forget people have friends and families as support networks to possibly guide them to a health professional
and note i am speaking of folks who are working, not the unemployed or semi-employed where options are reduced.
try again. i grade the above post--------------fail
Three different worlds (which doesn't change at all when I note yet again that most of the experiences I've alluded to occurred in Arkansas).
That's not what I've seen. It always seems to take at least 6 months.
That's ridiculous. That's an HR department being overly sensitive to potential pitfalls. Obviously you don't want to just boot people out the door with regularity but when you've reached that point where someone has to go there is no reason at all for it to take six months. Frankly, if you've created an action plan for someone and they've survived that long either the action plan is flawed or they have corrected the behavior.
The problem is often the will to let people go. It sucks, no doubt about it. At the risk of being unfeeling you need to be willing to let people go to run a successful business.
I have nothing to say regarding the workplace aspect of this discussion.
My point is twofold: the language you use unfairly characterizes the maladies under discussion and those who suffer from them, and that characterization does harm.
Or, as indicated previously, you can opt instead to keep promoting them.
(I won't truly believe that newspapers are as bad off as they keep whining they are until they start lopping off unsightly, useless flab instead of muscle & bone. I can't speak for anywhere else, but at least in Little Rock & Montgomery, it hasn't really begun happening yet.)
post 9 onward was focused on how this relates to the workplace
and this fussiness over language baffles me. i acknowledge the problem is real (i have it myself). i believe people should be able to get the help they need. what the h8ll else is needed?
Money.
Lots of it.
Sent to gef the talking mongoose for proper administration & distribution.
Small bills or large ... doesn't matter.
(No checks, please. My bank persists in confusing me with someone with an entirely different name.)
Thanks in advance!
let me guess, the human fund
but i need to keep your spot because you need to sit home because your head is elsewhere? got a developer who has missed over a month in 2012 because of this stuff and allegedly we cannot do anything about it.
The way you're phrasing "this stuff" sends the message that you don't really understand what depression is really like. Most people think they understand depression because they experience sadness, but depression isn't sadness. Sadness is the tip of the iceberg, and the part that the world sees.
I've had (fortunately rare, but still frightening) incidents where I was literally unable to move my limbs from depression. I've alternated weeks where I couldn't seem to get to sleep or stay asleep for longer than a couple of hours at a time with weeks where I slept twelve hours a day. There's also sometimes physical pain: usually just a dull ache, but sometimes splitting headaches or intense stomach issues. Of course, I've hit the point where I use those symptoms when I call in because depression has a stigma associated with it.
Depression is also a serious obstacle to its own treatment. The disease fills you with hopelessness that makes it hard to expend energy to fix it, and often history shows that fixes are only temporary. I've tried at least fifteen different anti-depressants and none have lasted longer than six months or so; most do nothing at all. Plus it takes about a month to even know if medication is working at all. So you endure a month of side-effects to find out if the medicine even does anything, and it's very hard to read. Maybe you go up a dose because you think you feel something, but it might just be a relatively good month (maybe that's what motivated you to try a different medication in the first place), and then that's another two months spent on a useless med. Imagine if you had a broken leg and you spent the last fifteen years trying all sorts of different casts, but it couldn't heal. Now imagine the difference between functioning with a broken leg and a broken brain.
It is certainly true that people can cry wolf, but you can do that with anything. It's not hard to find someone who lost the same grandmother a few times in college.
Which I'm very, very sorry to hear. Take care of yourself.
At least you don't think you're a mongoose. Believing onself to be a bird is, I think, more socially acceptable.
I agree with that. Then again, I live in a very strong employment-at-will state. You can legally be fired without cause unless you're under contract. You can be fired with cause so long as it's a legitimate cause.
My company can say "it's just not working out" and fire me on the spot. They don't need an action plan. However, it's a big corporation, so they make an action plan. They also create a ton of little responsibilities here and there that are easy to screw up even for the highly diligent, so if they want you gone for cause, it's fairly easy. My manager can put me on a terrible class that will screw up my numbers and then restrict my hours because of poor numbers, and then put me on an action plan for lousy numbers and going under on hours.
If you have a competent HR department, you should be able to trim dead wood pretty easily. Create a few rules about how things must be documented precisely that are very nitpicky and take maybe 1-2 hours per week to do properly, but generally grade your employees only on other stuff. The sort of employee that does all that stuff is usually already not the problem. The sort of employee that is great but doesn't do it gets ignored. The employee you dislike gets called on it every time, and generates a healthy report of bad conduct: grounds for termination.
Sure, that's true. That's why I said "sends the message" rather than "proves."
I figured out how to deal with it in my career. I have a significant distance from management; if I put up good numbers, they generally ignore me. There's practically no dress code (or at least enforced dress code), so if I don't shave for a week because I can't be bothered to, nobody notices. I make my own schedule for most of the week and I generally don't work mornings (where the depression is worst). I am treating my mild ADD and the stimulant creates some artificial physical motivation just by nature of being a stimulant.
I also found that keeping busy really, really helps, but only if the thing I'm busy with is something I really enjoy. I could not be successful in a job that I didn't love.
At least I'm lucky enough to, as you say, be doing something I enjoy -- screwing with other people's words.
and a spectral, talking mongoose at that!
(Note to self: Devote self to coming up with very odd revamp of Dr. Hook's "The Cover of the Rolling Stone." Where are bands like the Notsensibles now that I need them?)
FTR, I do not equate mental illness with general incompetence, but at some point the rights of one's coworkers/customers has to Trump the rights of a supposedly aggrieved employee. See the case of McDonalds being successfully sued by a former employee for wrongful dismissal because she wouldn't wash her hands.
i am not built to share but i know of what you speak. my outlet was killing people. luckily i was in the war and it was approved behavior. it was also the reason that i was assessed as a 'borderline sociopath'
upon my return i married someone who is very tolerant (massive understatement) and the hard physical labor of farming plus working as a field foreman kept me engaged. i didnt' work 20 hours a day because i was superhero. i did it so that there might be a chance i might get an hour of sleep. that and of course the gin. over time it has gotten better.
i know of what you speak.
Well, if I ever wore one, it would be.
(Note to self: Add Harv to long list of "people who could undoubtedly beat my ass to a pulp if they felt like it.")
Unfortunately very few modern vets have this option, whereas it was a relatively common occupation after WWI & II.
unnecessary. the person who gets the credit is my wife. 57 years married in december. known her since i was 14. that's 65 years. you want daft, she is daft.
lucky for me
on a vaguely related note whenever there was a troublesome male member of the family (my young brother-in-law, nephews, grandsons) they got sent to my farm to the summer to work. i paid them of course. but they 'worked'.
they all turned out all right. though that likely would have happened anyway.
you will be amused to know that when that topic comes up the recurring themes are the greatness of my wife's cooking and what a sob i was. but my boys are always quick to add that whomever was a summer visitor was lucky because he got to leave come early september. my boys got me year round.
ha, ha.
I don't want you to think that I was making assumptions about your experiences; I was really just noting that the language you used sent a pretty trivializing message and giving you the opportunity to clarify. I think it's also the sort of language that discourages so many people from getting the help they need, or even just being understood by their social network. I've cultivated a very strong talent for casual lying because depression is so stigmatized (and it remains one of the reasons I don't post under my real name, because it allows me to talk about it frankly without risk of discovery).
upon my return i married someone who is very tolerant (massive understatement) and the hard physical labor of farming plus working as a field foreman kept me engaged. i didnt' work 20 hours a day because i was superhero. i did it so that there might be a chance i might get an hour of sleep. that and of course the gin. over time it has gotten better.
I totally get that. If you're working so hard physically that you pass out when it's over, there's not much time for self-contemplation. Depression is definitely in part an idle (not lazy, just idle) man's disease, and I strongly suspect that we're seeing it more in the mainstream because our lifestyles allow for more idleness. I'm not making some sort of statement about the morality of hard work: I would not say that idleness causes depression so much as lack of idleness covers up depression. (It's good that we have the luxury of less demanding jobs, especially physically, and it allows us to address other problems that previously were ignored.)
Also, I'm glad it got better for you. I mean, it's better for me right now because I love my job and I have a better understanding of what's happening. And while it isn't my serious poison, I completely get the anesthetic properties of alcohol.
you and morton with the language. jiminy
i am exasperated that my companies have employees who apparently can work on a sporadic basis and the organizations are hamstrung to do anything. that's not right. that is the sum total of my message
but i also think this whole jabberwocky about personal issues veers too much into wallowing.
but based on 'coaching' from my wife i work to keep that sentinment to myself
mostly
Anyway, I don't know what a fair balance is. At a high level, people have to be able to do their jobs. If you have a manual labor job and you get hurt, you might never be able to do your job again. If you have a mental illness, maybe you can't do the job that you used to do. If a pitcher blows out his shoulder and can't get guys out, he won't get a new contract. Of course it's only fair to have a recovery period and I think that's such a fuzzy thing with mental illness.
Reasonably regular attendance is usually deemed an essential qualification for most jobs, but plaintiff's attorneys & the EEOC have introduced enough wiggle room that it can be messy. Harveys situation and the one described in #27 seem to be cases where HR is going a long way to avoid a potential complaint, grievance or lawsuit that the employer would probably eventually win. Drawing the line on that sort of thing can be a problem in a lot of contexts, including trying to reasonably accommodate mental disabilities. Perhaps management needs to talk to HR about its risk tolerance.
As I did begin to discuss it with a few people who needed to know, however, I was surprised at how many of them had similar health issues that they were keeping under wraps, presumably for the same reason. One guy had a heart attack and didn't tell anyone (although we all suspected it when he had an unscheduled 2-week vacation). That gave me the courage to talk about it more openly, which has been a big relief. It's not like I made an announcement at work, but I also am not obsessively hiding it from my friends in the fear that word might get around the office. Anything that decreases the stigma around these issues is a good thing in my opinion.
It needs to be stated that "getting help" isn't nearly as easy as it sounds. Trying to get help is extremely important, but finding something that actually does 'help' is not an easy process.
There is no royal road to mathematics, or sanity for that matter.
We just deal with it best we can, because, for us, there really is no cure. So the day goes, as Greg Luzinski perched near the line but facing toward center to offset his momentous sloth, a small step here, a step back there. Get the absolutely mandatory things done (breathing, taxes). In the long run, we're all dead. And all those missed opportunities, they're never coming back so you can't do anything about them anyway.
I gotta go check my winning powerball number.
Regards,
Tim
Once two important things happened, it became really fantastic. The first was accepting that it was perfectly acceptable to do this rather than use my law degree. (Basically, to stop punishing myself for not practicing after spending so much money on school.) The second was recognizing the long-term financial possibilities. There's potential to make over $300k/year in private tutoring if you work exclusively for yourself (I don't do that YET), which I wouldn't have believed a few years ago.
Note to self: Explore remunerative possibilities of offering services as tutor on subjects of horror movies, anarchism, paranormal, American Basketball Association, comics, Philip K. Dick, H.P. Lovecraft.
It doesn't indicate he was over his old issues--if he was 'over' his old issues, he wouldn't have used. What's a good sign is that he didn't fall into a pattern of relapse, and that does suggest he's a decent bet as a ballplayer.
An alcoholic with five years sobriety has something like a 50-50 chance of staying sober for the rest of his life. I'm optimistic about Hamilton's chances, but he isn't over anything.
No, you're just wallowing in the lush, carpeted womb of your own sense of superiority. I ran into this nonsense at times when I was counseling, people who thought all depression and abuse were essentially the same. Most of them were able to grasp that they aren't, in the same way that all cancer is not the same.
Some depression is in response to specific events, like the death of a loved one. Some depression is in response to the chronic, daily sexual and physical violence wrought on children, which changes both the brain's wiring and its response to all manner of stimuli. Some is the result of an inborn or innate chemical imbalance, and requires an entirely different approach. Some of those imbalances are easily corrected, and some are essentially intractable, requiring years of trial and error, and often the slow adjustments possible through, say, cognitive therapy.
And what Matt Clement said in 5, and Voros in 84, and other posters throughout this very interesting thread.
I find posters that can't just make their case and quit really annoying. Surely you don't have to spend a lot of time talking about it and wallowing in the feelings of self-righteousness?
My favorite parts of the thread:
Try listening to yourself some time.
I don't know if this is the fairest possibility, but it certainly seems reasonable on its face.
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