The Emotional Purging [2011]; or, How Valdyr Became T'Pau
April 2007 was a really good point in my life. My career was hopping, I was comfortable being single for the first time in my adult life, I was surrounded by good friends, and was living with my amazing roommate Corrie in our first condo in the DC metro. It was a time when I was able to sit down and not only examine my place in my own existence, but also make some commentary about things I saw around me in both my personal and professional lives. So, I wrote this.
Four years later, it's time to follow suit and assess where I am now - especially since I'm about to embark on the greatest adventure of my life.
How Valdyr Became T'Pau
First of all, I will congratulate the 0.76% of my friends' list who caught my extremely obscure Star Trek references. Now, for the vast majority, let me explain:
Valdyr isn't a 'recent' thing with me...it's not just a name I picked up when I started DJing, or even before when I was interning at D1 in college. Valdyr is a female Klingon character in one of my favorite Star Trek books back in middle school. Of course, being an impressionable youth, I was really struck at the time by the character's courage, passion, and sense of honor. 'Valdyr' therefore became one of my earliest internet handles, and has remained with me ever since.
The thing is, I don't really feel like Valdyr these days. It's like my passion about everything has been bled dry. It's more than just a burnout. I approach things logically and try to separate myself emotionally from everything that I do. I'm constantly the 'voice of reason' when others are raging about any number of injustices. I feel cold and distant. I feel like T'Pau, the archetypal Vulcan woman - the emblem of pure logic and purged emotions.
Of course, these are two extreme metaphors for what I'm feeling, but I still feel like I've made enough of a metamorphosis over the past few years that it's bugging me.
Back in middle school, my 'teen angst' got so bad that I went to see a therapist for awhile. She told me that I had a 'coping' problem, but I don't think I really understood it correctly at the time. I knew that I was hiding my real feelings and insecurities for as long as I could, but that in the end I would break - unleashing my anger and misery in the worst possible way. Since that moment, I always thought my 'coping' problem referred to the fact that I was weak and failed to hold it all in forever.
Of course, as I got older my ability to actually 'cope' with stress and disappointment in a healthier way started to develop, but I think I'm still light-years behind where I really should be; in fact, I think I may have regressed from my late college and early career days to where I am today. Even more to the point, I think it was only this year that I have even consciously become aware of any of it. Because, in the end, I still start dealing with every bad situation by trying to repress any feelings of anger, sadness, betrayal, etc. and dive directly into a logical approach to a solution. I never really allow myself to 'feel' anything negative anymore. Of course, all that energy still has to go somewhere - and I know now it's that never depleting ball of stress that wells in my throat every night before I go to sleep.
The thing is, it would be one thing if this 'coping' strategy just applied to the negative things in my life...but it's engulfed the positive now, too. It's like I've trained myself to not emotionally respond to ANYTHING anymore...even the good things. Part of it might just be that I'm too busy to just enjoy all of the awesome things I have going on right now. And that makes me scared that I'm setting a dangerous habit for myself, especially as I'm about to really solidify both my personal life as well as my career.
Breaking Kolinahr
In December, I really started to deal with some of the physical manifestations of all of this stress. I started having problems falling and staying asleep. And then I started having vivid nightmares consistently every night. And THEN I started sleepwalking. Since then I've been able to combat the problems with half of a non-addictive sleeping pill and some simple melatonin, but I know I'm just treating the symptoms and not the cause here. So in January, I really started taking a hard look at the things having a negative impact on my life. Now really, there's nothing actually 'bad' going on...just a lot of work and deadlines. I enjoy staying busy and being engaged with my job(s), and I used to be of the opinion that this kind of 'good' stress was healthy. But now I know that I've been pushing myself too hard for too long, so some things are going to have to change.
I haven't made the official announcement yet, but I am planning on putting the production side of RAM on a short hiatus starting in April. While I won't be releasing anything new over the summer, the web store and general promotional efforts will continue. Obviously, the main reason for this is simply because Rick and I are getting married and moving, so I'm gonna be just a tad bit busy doing all of that on top of still doing my 'real life job' full time. But I know that during the summer while I'm taking the production break that this is my chance to really analyze what I want to do with the label, and to morph it into something better for everyone involved - not just me - once I re-open in the fall. I feel like I'm on the verge of doing something really great with what I've created here, and I know that if I can restructure this to simply work better with my own life, that everyone else involved will benefit, too.
As for my personal life, I'm fortunate that I have someone so amazing as Rick. This is the most stress-free, healthiest relationship of my life...but I am catching myself lately not really taking advantage of the time we spend together. More often than not, when we're together, I'm still having to answer phone calls from work, or upload files for the label, etc. Even when there are times when I could put things off, I have a really hard time relaxing and just enjoying our time together. I know I did that with JSun a lot, too, so it's a consistent problem for me. I know in the end there's always going to be some of that going on - it's the nature of my career choice - but I also know it's getting to a point where it's not a good balance anymore. I've been on the outside of this situation looking in with my friends - I have several buds who are at the point of re-evaluating their marriages because their wives are so consumed with their jobs that the relationship has dwindled to nothing. I now know why things like that could happen, and I'm determined to never let it happen to us. I've somehow lost the capacity to just exist in the moment; but fortunately I'm catching this now, and know that I have the ability to re-engage with my own feelings.
And it really just starts with me making the time out of my life to just exist in whatever moment I'm in. I've started with a few harder things that have re-surfaced just in the past month or two. For instance, I sat down with a woman here at the bar the other night who recently lost a loved one to Alzheimer's...and I have to say that this was probably the first time since my grandmother died that I really felt how much it hurt to have her gone, and how awful it was to watch her slip away. I couldn't admit it to myself before, but I did this week. I'm also trying to figure out why I have such a hard time expressing some of the positive things that came out of that situation, like gratitude; I never told my aunt and uncle how much it meant to me that they took my grandmother in to their home and took care of her after she fell at the nursing home, so that she'd be safe and peaceful until she died. For some reason I still have such a hard time of admitting to any kind of emotion - even positive ones - to my own family.
I'm also taking the time to really go back and sift through a lot of the things that I've done over the past few years. Really, most of it was quite awesome - but again, it all went by so fast that I feel like I never really embraced who I was then or who I was becoming. But going back and really enjoying what these last few years have brought me is starting to help me feel a little less like an outside spectator in my own life.
Rite of Ascension
So, now what? I don't have a 100% fully-thought out plan, but I have some good places to start. I'm looking back at some of the key elements that really helped me break the ice to my own soul 10 years ago. Yoga helped. "River Stories" in Performance Lab helped. God helped. Having a dedicated "me time" helped. Purposefully making time for my friends and relationships helped. I know part of this process will include other hard moments of grief (such as finally accepting the emotional impact of my grandmother's death), but I'm tired of living my life in shades of grey, when I know how colorful it can be.
At first glance, this entry may not seem as up-beat or as peaceful as my last one did in 2007, but the one thing I really do want to communicate is my hope for the future. I'm about to marry the greatest man I've ever known, and embark on many new journeys in my career. There have been many times in my past where I thought I was living in the best years of my life - but now I know they're just about to begin. And I want to make sure I'm prepared to enjoy them as much as possible!
Four years later, it's time to follow suit and assess where I am now - especially since I'm about to embark on the greatest adventure of my life.
How Valdyr Became T'Pau
First of all, I will congratulate the 0.76% of my friends' list who caught my extremely obscure Star Trek references. Now, for the vast majority, let me explain:
Valdyr isn't a 'recent' thing with me...it's not just a name I picked up when I started DJing, or even before when I was interning at D1 in college. Valdyr is a female Klingon character in one of my favorite Star Trek books back in middle school. Of course, being an impressionable youth, I was really struck at the time by the character's courage, passion, and sense of honor. 'Valdyr' therefore became one of my earliest internet handles, and has remained with me ever since.
The thing is, I don't really feel like Valdyr these days. It's like my passion about everything has been bled dry. It's more than just a burnout. I approach things logically and try to separate myself emotionally from everything that I do. I'm constantly the 'voice of reason' when others are raging about any number of injustices. I feel cold and distant. I feel like T'Pau, the archetypal Vulcan woman - the emblem of pure logic and purged emotions.
Of course, these are two extreme metaphors for what I'm feeling, but I still feel like I've made enough of a metamorphosis over the past few years that it's bugging me.
Back in middle school, my 'teen angst' got so bad that I went to see a therapist for awhile. She told me that I had a 'coping' problem, but I don't think I really understood it correctly at the time. I knew that I was hiding my real feelings and insecurities for as long as I could, but that in the end I would break - unleashing my anger and misery in the worst possible way. Since that moment, I always thought my 'coping' problem referred to the fact that I was weak and failed to hold it all in forever.
Of course, as I got older my ability to actually 'cope' with stress and disappointment in a healthier way started to develop, but I think I'm still light-years behind where I really should be; in fact, I think I may have regressed from my late college and early career days to where I am today. Even more to the point, I think it was only this year that I have even consciously become aware of any of it. Because, in the end, I still start dealing with every bad situation by trying to repress any feelings of anger, sadness, betrayal, etc. and dive directly into a logical approach to a solution. I never really allow myself to 'feel' anything negative anymore. Of course, all that energy still has to go somewhere - and I know now it's that never depleting ball of stress that wells in my throat every night before I go to sleep.
The thing is, it would be one thing if this 'coping' strategy just applied to the negative things in my life...but it's engulfed the positive now, too. It's like I've trained myself to not emotionally respond to ANYTHING anymore...even the good things. Part of it might just be that I'm too busy to just enjoy all of the awesome things I have going on right now. And that makes me scared that I'm setting a dangerous habit for myself, especially as I'm about to really solidify both my personal life as well as my career.
Breaking Kolinahr
In December, I really started to deal with some of the physical manifestations of all of this stress. I started having problems falling and staying asleep. And then I started having vivid nightmares consistently every night. And THEN I started sleepwalking. Since then I've been able to combat the problems with half of a non-addictive sleeping pill and some simple melatonin, but I know I'm just treating the symptoms and not the cause here. So in January, I really started taking a hard look at the things having a negative impact on my life. Now really, there's nothing actually 'bad' going on...just a lot of work and deadlines. I enjoy staying busy and being engaged with my job(s), and I used to be of the opinion that this kind of 'good' stress was healthy. But now I know that I've been pushing myself too hard for too long, so some things are going to have to change.
I haven't made the official announcement yet, but I am planning on putting the production side of RAM on a short hiatus starting in April. While I won't be releasing anything new over the summer, the web store and general promotional efforts will continue. Obviously, the main reason for this is simply because Rick and I are getting married and moving, so I'm gonna be just a tad bit busy doing all of that on top of still doing my 'real life job' full time. But I know that during the summer while I'm taking the production break that this is my chance to really analyze what I want to do with the label, and to morph it into something better for everyone involved - not just me - once I re-open in the fall. I feel like I'm on the verge of doing something really great with what I've created here, and I know that if I can restructure this to simply work better with my own life, that everyone else involved will benefit, too.
As for my personal life, I'm fortunate that I have someone so amazing as Rick. This is the most stress-free, healthiest relationship of my life...but I am catching myself lately not really taking advantage of the time we spend together. More often than not, when we're together, I'm still having to answer phone calls from work, or upload files for the label, etc. Even when there are times when I could put things off, I have a really hard time relaxing and just enjoying our time together. I know I did that with JSun a lot, too, so it's a consistent problem for me. I know in the end there's always going to be some of that going on - it's the nature of my career choice - but I also know it's getting to a point where it's not a good balance anymore. I've been on the outside of this situation looking in with my friends - I have several buds who are at the point of re-evaluating their marriages because their wives are so consumed with their jobs that the relationship has dwindled to nothing. I now know why things like that could happen, and I'm determined to never let it happen to us. I've somehow lost the capacity to just exist in the moment; but fortunately I'm catching this now, and know that I have the ability to re-engage with my own feelings.
And it really just starts with me making the time out of my life to just exist in whatever moment I'm in. I've started with a few harder things that have re-surfaced just in the past month or two. For instance, I sat down with a woman here at the bar the other night who recently lost a loved one to Alzheimer's...and I have to say that this was probably the first time since my grandmother died that I really felt how much it hurt to have her gone, and how awful it was to watch her slip away. I couldn't admit it to myself before, but I did this week. I'm also trying to figure out why I have such a hard time expressing some of the positive things that came out of that situation, like gratitude; I never told my aunt and uncle how much it meant to me that they took my grandmother in to their home and took care of her after she fell at the nursing home, so that she'd be safe and peaceful until she died. For some reason I still have such a hard time of admitting to any kind of emotion - even positive ones - to my own family.
I'm also taking the time to really go back and sift through a lot of the things that I've done over the past few years. Really, most of it was quite awesome - but again, it all went by so fast that I feel like I never really embraced who I was then or who I was becoming. But going back and really enjoying what these last few years have brought me is starting to help me feel a little less like an outside spectator in my own life.
Rite of Ascension
So, now what? I don't have a 100% fully-thought out plan, but I have some good places to start. I'm looking back at some of the key elements that really helped me break the ice to my own soul 10 years ago. Yoga helped. "River Stories" in Performance Lab helped. God helped. Having a dedicated "me time" helped. Purposefully making time for my friends and relationships helped. I know part of this process will include other hard moments of grief (such as finally accepting the emotional impact of my grandmother's death), but I'm tired of living my life in shades of grey, when I know how colorful it can be.
At first glance, this entry may not seem as up-beat or as peaceful as my last one did in 2007, but the one thing I really do want to communicate is my hope for the future. I'm about to marry the greatest man I've ever known, and embark on many new journeys in my career. There have been many times in my past where I thought I was living in the best years of my life - but now I know they're just about to begin. And I want to make sure I'm prepared to enjoy them as much as possible!