People ask me how I do it. How I read the police reports, sit through the hearings, file the records requests, and then go home and be a present father to my son.
The honest answer is: barely. And also: intentionally.
There is a version of this job that destroys you. You have seen it — the burned-out reporter who drinks too much, who cannot separate from the darkness of what they cover, who eventually just stops because the psychic cost is too high. I have been close to that version. I know what it feels like to look at the volume of fraud and waste and institutional cruelty in the world and feel something in you just give up.
I am not that version. Not today.
Here is what I actually do:
I move my body every day. Not as a lifestyle brand, not as content — just because a body that does not move becomes a body that cannot handle stress. Kettlebells. Walks in the woods with my kid. Barefoot in the grass when the ground is not frozen, which in Maine means approximately four months a year.
I use cannabis. Have for twenty years. It is not for everyone, and I am not here to convince you. But for me, it creates a kind of psychic pressure valve — a way to process the weight of this work without letting it calcify into something permanent. I am honest about this because I think the shame around it is worse than the thing itself.
I eat like it matters. Not perfectly. But intentionally.
I sleep. I protect my sleep like it is a source I am cultivating — because it is.
And I write. This site is part of that. Getting it out of my head and into words is how I keep it from eating me alive.
I am going to write more about this — the intersection of this kind of work and this kind of maintenance. Not as a wellness guru. As a guy in the middle of it, trying to figure it out.
If any of this resonates, you are in the right place.
— Evan Houk
[AI DISCLOSURE: This post was written by Evan Houk. No AI-generated content.]