anxiety

Sometimes You Just Gotta Sit With Your Pain

/ Stuart Danker / 83 Comments
Man looking

Photo: Jonathan Rados

One step forward, three steps backwards. Sometimes that’s just how life be like.

I eat healthy. I exercise. I’ve found a full-time job. I seem to have everything I need. Yet something just seems wrong.

I keep looking back to see if there’s a particular event I can put the blame on, but this dark cloud hovering over my head seems to have followed me for as long as I can remember.

We all grow out of things like these, don’t we? Isn’t angst supposed to be like asthma? Something debilitating at the moment that you forget once enough time passes?

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Sometimes It Feels Like I’m Going Through Life Hungover

/ Stuart Danker / 25 Comments
Hangover Sleeping - Maria Teneva

Photo: Maria Teneva

Let me take you back to somewhere in 2006 when I had to lead a two-hour class, totally hungover, while having to yell above the pitter-patter of rain on the zinc roof of our hairdressing academy.

Wait, did I throw you too deep into the action? Need some context? Perhaps I could take you back a few hours earlier, to when I walked into the academy smelling like a distillery, and throwing up into the first wastepaper basket I saw.

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When You Can Barely Keep Your Head Above Water

/ Stuart Danker / 88 Comments
Man

Photo: Noah Busch

Sometimes you try and you try, but all you get for your troubles is falling face-first into the dirt. I remember the first time I had felt hopeless. I was six years into my hairdressing career when I realised I didn’t want to have six-day workweeks anymore.

But change didn’t come easy. I had no other skills, and back then, job-search portals were few and far in between, seeing as to how the first iPhone hadn’t even launched yet.

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NON FICTION: Depression Can Be A Great Teacher, And Here’s What I’ve Learned

/ Stuart Danker / 30 Comments
Woman staring out a window

Photo: Anthony Tran

All right I’m going to start this off my saying that I may or may not have depression. Let me explain.

I’ve never been a particularly happy person as far as I can remember. In fact, the last time I’d felt true joy was probably at the age of twelve. Then secondary school came and swept me off into the world of angst and darkness.

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NON FICTION: The Universe Doesn’t Give A Damn About You

/ Stuart Danker / Leave a comment

Sand dunes in a house

Photo: Jean Wimmerlin

There are times when life kicks you in the butt, and then there are times when it really gives you a shafting. You know, those times when you metaphorically feel like you’re getting drawn and quartered after you’ve had ten inches shaved off your height at the guillotine.

At these junctures in life, the problems will seem like they’ll never end, like the eternal crash of waves on the seashore. You’ll curse the heavens and call on anyone who’d listen to your plight. How could the world be so cruel? Can’t the gods see the injustice? Only once the initial anger passes will you see the truth: The universe doesn’t give a damn about you.

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