I have to get this out of my system. Mental illness is a real illness with real physical pain, trauma and challenges. It can be debilitating and it can kill you. Yet I am continually amazed when people deny its existence, even today. 

I write about mental illness in some of my books. In 1999, the father, Henry Lee, suffers from debilitating depression. It colours much of the story. I tried to write about the illness honestly, as I have seen depression in my family first-hand. I have also experienced it myself on a number of occasions. 

Unbelievably, my wife told me a story recently where parents of a child she knew informed her that they didn't believe their child was experiencing depression or mental illness. It simply didn't exist. Their child had to snap out of it or pull themselves up by the bootstraps.

I say to this: Bullshit. 

Without getting into a long rant, let me use the simplest argument that is part of the mental health speeches I give periodically.

At any given time, how many chemical reactions and electrical impulses are at play in your brain? Too many to count. What are the chances that, in some of us, those impulses and chemical reactions are not firing perfectly? I would say it's more than reasonable to declare this a fact.

These are physical things happening in our bodies. Just because someone can't see the cast on your arm or the bandage covering a wound, it doesn't mean there isn't something physically wrong with you.

These physical symptoms are often only manifested by emotions, moods, temperamental flare-ups and other side effects that we cannot measure. But still, does it mean these outbursts just come from nowhere? There has to be a tangible origin to them, right?

In my life, I can name four people that I have known who were either friends, colleagues or friends of the family who were unable to overcome their mental illness.

Matt, Matt, Tim and Jen were four great people who deserved better than to be thought of as "crazy" people who were soft. I can tell you from first-hand experience that it has taken me more than a decade to tame my mental illness and to be able to live with it. I still fall short and go through tough times.

It's pain unlike anything you can imagine, if you have never felt it. 

Why do people who suffer take physical drugs? To magically cure something that doesn't exist?

I understand that it's sometimes a generational thing or cultural thing to deny the existence of mental illness.

However, I can show you a picture of me when I lost 35 pounds in the span of six weeks, due to mental illness. That's a physical thing. I didn't make it up and I don't ever want to endure something like that again.

For those who don't have help close to them, call 9-8-8. It's a national service where you can start your journey on the road to better days. 

Let's stop pretending mental illness is not an illness. I know from experience how real it is. 

Recently, I was invited to the 30th anniversary of the newspaper where I started my journalism career. It was a chance for me to reminisce with the people I started my career with, most of whom are still good friends.

Kate, Darren and Ellen were there from the editorial team, as were a few others, including the man who gave me my start in journalism, Mike Curran. Mike is a guy I have always respected a great deal, as a manager and as a person.

But then I thought about who I was back then in 2000, an early 20s university grad with stars in my eyes and not nearly enough worldly experience or even humility to truly succeed. I worked extremely hard for Mike, but I also gave him some epic headaches.

If you're of my vintage (ahem, late 40s), do you ever wonder what you would have been like as a young adult if you knew then what you know today?

Alas, life doesn't work that way. I like who I am as a person now much more than the person I was in my early 20s. I mean, I was still a good person (I think!), but there are just some things you can't quite appreciate when you're young because you don't have the life experience.

That brings me to my book, 1999. I wrote much of it when I was in my mid-20s and I think the things I just mentioned above are reflected in the story. Still, I do like that the main characters, as young as they are, seem to be more self-aware than I was at that age.

I hate the expression about youth being wasted on the young and if-I-knew-then-what-I-know-now, because I wouldn't have gotten to where I am now as a person if I wasn't who I was when I was young. That younger version of me made big mistakes, did some stupid things, but also worked hard to get to where I am today.

1999 is very much the type of book that looks at how young adults see the world and how their lack of experience tends to lead to two outcomes. They either crash hard or they somehow achieve incredible things. 

Read the book for yourself and see if you can find a little bit of your younger self in there. 

This week, I found out that two of my colleagues from my time as a reporter have passed away. And far too soon. That means three people I worked with in reporting have passed away, which is a tragedy.

The last stop in my journalism career was as a reporter for the Waterloo Region Record in Kitchener. While there, I was fortunate to work alongside some great people and talented writers. The Record was a newsroom unlike any other I had worked in as a reporter. Everyone was friendly and supportive, which isn't always the case in the field. There is always internal competition and politics in the business. In Kitchener, I found there was very little of that. Everyone made me feel at home instantly and supported me.

One of those great writers and good people was Karen Kawawada. Karen was talented and diligent, for sure, but she was an even better person. When I heard she passed, the first words that came into my head were kind soul. Karen often would partake in gatherings among some of the younger reporters in the newsroom during my time there. I recall many a time we would all gather at a sushi place on King Street in downtown Kitchener and just talk as friends. It was a fun place to be. I won't pretend like Karen was a close friend. We kept in touch a bit after I was laid off in Kitchener, and she went on to work in communications at the University of Waterloo and have a family. You can read more about her from this tribute posted on the University of Waterloo website. 

Amazingly, another writer also sadly died recently, around the same time Karen passed. Tamsin McMahon was another reporter I was fortunate to work alongside in Kitchener. After the newsroom was shaken up by layoffs in 2009, Tamsin went on to achieve incredible feats in journalism. She spent time with the Globe and Mail and Maclean's Magazine, earning awards everywhere she went for her amazing journalism. In later years, she found her way to the United States and continued to win awards wherever she was. I read that she recently led a newsroom in Santa Cruz, California that won the Pulitzer Prize. 

And if that were all I could say about her, that would be worthy of a tribute. But Tamsin was also a wonderful person and supportive colleague to those she worked with. Again, I am not going to pretend we were good friends. Tamsin was someone I admired a great deal for her skills and her humanity.

The common thread between Karen and Tamsin is that they were both wonderful people. And I consider that to be a far greater achievement than anything else they did with their lives. Both Karen and Tamsin were still quite young. Their deaths don't seem terribly just to me. It seems they both had so much more to offer the world.

Finally, I want to mention Matt Walcoff, someone I worked alongside at the Record quite closely as we were both business reporters. Matt passed away in 2012 and I have never really forgotten about him. I will say that Matt was one of the best reporters I ever worked with. He often, through his own work, inspired me to be a better reporter.

Matt was a hard guy to get to know. I know a little of his life story. Originally from Ohio, Matt found his way to Canada somehow and ended up doing fine work at the Record in a way that unsettled some of the most powerful people in that city. And I say that as a good thing. Matt was effectively shut out of all contact with Research in Motion (later BlackBerry) because he was seen as pressing too hard with senior management. Always a sign you're doing your job!

Matt's death has always stuck with me because, quite honestly, I wished I was nicer to him. I won't say I was mean to him, because I wasn't. But I know that, due to his unique personality, he sometimes pushed people away. It's not uncommon in the business by any means. I'm sure I've had the same effect on people at times. In Matt's case, it meant I was probably more distant from him than I likely needed to be. With age comes wisdom, of course, and I know now that I might have been more charitable to him.

I say this because, after I lost my job in Kitchener, Matt went out of his way to try and get me back into the business when he didn't need to. In the years before his untimely death, Matt earned great acclaim as a reporter for Bloomberg and I came to be quite happy for him and his success.

I recall when I was teaching a business reporting class at Conestoga College in 2008-09, I used one of Matt's stories to show the class how business reporting could also be human. Matt wrote a story about newcomers to Canada and how they had made a success of themselves by buying and operating a  Petro-Canada gas station. How many people would think to write a story about someone who owns a gas station? And how many people would make it interesting? Matt would. He had that kind of mind.

Since his death, I rhyme off his name each night when I say my prayers, asking for his soul to be at rest. I do it because it's part of my efforts to make up for my shortcomings when he was alive. Matt deserved better in life.

So did Karen and Tamsin. They deserved more time. The world is poorer for having lost all three.

I'm excited to share that, in addition to 1999 being out and getting great feedback, I am relaunching my first collection of short stories, Sunshine at Night.

For those who missed it when it was originally released in 2017, I recently finished a new version of the book with two new stories and a redesigned cover. The text has also been fixed for initial glitches (the joys of publishing on demand!).

The new stories fit with the theme of the book, which mostly focuses on stories from small towns and the suburbs. One of the stories, The Queen of Sparks Street, was inspired by an ancient variety store that was once an institution on Sparks Street in downtown Ottawa. I wonder how many people in my city remember that store. I could never figure out how it stayed in business as long as it did, but it did.

The other story, The Day the Music Died, was an old idea that I had worked on at various times over the years but could never get right. I took another swing at it recently and came up with a tale that I think is worthy of the title. I will admit the story's name was ripped off from a lyric in the Don McLean song, American Pie. This story is timeless in that it deals with how young people come to grips with the death of their idols. For my generation, it was Kurt Cobain. For my parents, it was John Lennon. Every generation has at least one lost star.

Revisiting this book was a lot of fun, because it brought me back to the time when I wrote many of these stories. It also helped bring me back to the moments that inspired many of these tales. 

One story, Kent Bridge, was inspired by a quick stop at a rural crossroads community in southern Ontario, when I walked into a general store right out of yesteryear. My wife told me, "You gotta write a story about that place!"

And I did. I hope I did that store and town justice.

If you don't have time to commit to a whole book, why not try some short stories? 

Thanks to the people who have reached out to me and told me what they thought of my book, 1999. Being a writer is a lonely pursuit at times. As fun as it is to write a book, you often wonder if it's any good. Whether I like it is irrelevant. If I don't like it, it never sees the light of day.

It makes me feel like the Gladiator who yells 'Are you not entertained?' after he completes a bloody fight in front of hordes of Roman spectators. Of course, writing a book is hardly the same, but you are still putting yourself out there, which means you are at the mercy of people's tastes. 

And I understand that part of the game means sometimes you get very little feedback or even none at all. That's okay. In my case, much of the feedback I've gotten has been through informal channels. I appreciate it all.

That leads me to one simple request. If you did like 1999, I'd invite you to post a review online, so word can spread about this book. You don't have to leave your actual name on an Amazon review. Also, a Goodreads review stays on Goodreads, where you are among supportive fellow book lovers.

Your help in spreading the word is appreciated.