The question posed in the words of the song, to forever haunt me as life went on. The photograph of me depicted above is from almost thirty-three years ago. Where did the time go? Yet I look into those youthful eyes, and I see staring back at me a mere remnant of a man, whose self-doubt, frustration, lack of self-esteem, and most particularly, the fog of depression, which had clouded my thoughts since I was ten, all militated against my goal in the arts at that time. A kind subscriber recently posed a question to me in response to my newsletter I Saw a World in a Grain of Sand https://michaelspringauthor17.art/2026/02/20/i-saw-a-world-in-a-grain-of-sand/. “Why did you stop pursuing an acting career?” It was a reasonable question, after all, I had been involved in the world of stage and film since I was three, when my late grandfather, Hector Spring, enrolled me at the Southport Youth Theatre, that eventually saw me at age sixteen becoming a member of the Royal Queensland Youth Theatre, and at eighteen, a lead role in a local television documentary film. Still, the answer to that subscriber’s question is a matter which I shall come to shortly. However, it is perhaps prudent to explain my almost forty-seven-year battle with mental health, how it shaped my destiny and almost led to my departing this world before it was my time, and most importantly, how in constraining my mind’s demons, I became a published author of so far two thriller novels, The Flower Bed and Two Minutes.

For the sake of brevity and not offending you with prolixity, I will not revisit the factual matrix of how the fog entered my mind, but what I will tell you is that the fog never completely dissipates as one realises now, some five years after I completely broke down. Rather than dissipating, with the benefit of hindsight, you adapt to carve a rudimentary arch in that fog, to enter into a new and yet brittle world, hoping that your demons do not follow you into that new world, which in adulthood is accompanied by living a life in a bottle. Yes, self-medicating oneself in the dreaded drink, not that I am suggesting the world of the fermented grape causes the tempest of the mind, but it is too frequently visited by many, of whom I was one, to try to wash away the fog and only to encircle it with a thick sludge of bog.

So, bearing in mind the pitfalls of life when you venture onwards, blinded by the fog, after initially intending to pursue my current professional calling, I surrendered to my demons, unthinkingly setting out to relocate to Sydney, where I decided to resume my love for the performing arts, and I trained professionally as an actor and singer. Still, there was only one obstacle to doing so, and that was that I could not perform stage dancing; in other words, I was burdened with two left feet. Oh, yes, fill me with drink back then, in a nightclub venue, and I, like many others, believed that I was worthy of the lead role in the film Saturday Night Fever. Yet in moments of sobriety, trying to teach me stage dancing was akin to trying to teach a slug how to drive a motor vehicle. You know that you are forever doomed by two left feet when you can hear your mother laughing out loud at your graduation concert, and what made the moment even more ignominious is that I could hear her over the deafening sound of the contemporary jazz ballet music. I even caught a glimpse of her tonsils aimed at the rafters of the ceiling of the theatre. Although I could sing, stage musicals were immediately erased from the list of sources of work. Then there was the issue of my looks, which many casting agents considered not Australian; in other words, I lacked blond hair and tanned skin. Indeed, my agent once told me that a casting agent thought I looked either British or American. The agent, damn that man, for when a role surfaced for a television series by the mid-1990s, which I had the right look for, he left a message on my home answering machine when I had already informed him about the number for the radioactive brick of an analogue mobile telephone I had specifically purchased so that I never missed an opportunity- an opportunity was missed! I then travelled to Los Angeles, only to be confronted by a pool of about ten million people pursuing the same shining star I had crossed the vast Pacific Ocean in search of putting in my pocket. In the fog, or perhaps it is an accurate analogy, back then, for Los Angeles to say the smog, I surrendered to my inner voices of doom, gloom, and diffidence. I decided to return to Brisbane to study for my professional calling.

Somehow, in the fog, I managed to gain my professional qualifications as a Barrister-at-Law, and do not be mistaken by my next words, for I am grateful to be blessed with a mind that permits me to do so. Still, I was plagued by my visceral demons of depression, anxiety (of several varieties, including mortality), and uncertainty. I wore a mask while I saw too many tequila sunrises, only finding solitude in writing poetry during moments of clarity. And yet, while I wondered about what might have been had I pursued that star in the sky somewhere above the smog of Los Angeles, the greatest gifts of all entered my life in the form of my beautiful, intelligent and compassionate wife, followed by the greatest privilege of all in this life, becoming a father to my angelic daughter. Yet the nemeses of my mind still cursed me, and no matter how much fermented grape juice I consumed to try to drown those demons, they would only resurface, to slowly torture me as my youthful looks disappeared as I counted the clock that told the time. I commenced writing the rudimentary draft of my first thriller novel, The Flower Bed, inspired by the creative eyes of my darling daughter. But then came the unexpected horror, when one morning just after Christmas 2020, I received the call from my siblings that my mother had passed away on her feet at some stage the previous day, and when I subsequently saw her lying dead on the floor of her apartment, robbed of every ounce of dignity and vanity, a nexus in time took my mind back to the same trauma I suffered seeing my darling grandfather, Hector, lying in his deceased state in his coffin forty-two years beforehand. Yet this trauma was far more profound, and when the dam walls broke, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression, the irony of my still being here to tell you this sorry tale, was that one of my inner demons about my mortality was intertwined in the battle for me to remove myself from this life, so that I revealed to my wife my desire to depart this world, and from there I was admitted to hospital approximately five years ago, to embark upon the long and winding road to some form of ingrained normalcy. Still, I had my wife and my daughter. They helped me scale the seemingly impossible mountains, to return to life, to continue practising my professional calling, and also most importantly, embrace the arts again, by becoming a published author, the satisfaction of which is signed on my aging face by the return of a smile on each occasion the first printed copy of my books arrived, as is evident in the photographs below.

30 April 2024 1 November 2025

And so, I have laid my soul bare before thee, to insatiate your curiosity about my creativity. Imagine the trauma, but please don’t bear my burden, for that is my cross to carry, until nature decides it is time for me not to get another word in. But where there is misery, there is also hope, and if I have learned anything from making my demons my friends, there is always a universe of creativity within a trope.

I dedicate this newsletter to my wife and daughter, the lights of my life.