The Knot

Intro:

In a recent therapy session, I did a reflection with my therapist about my progress and how I feel nowadays, compared to when we started. The metaphor that came to mind is that my mind, my soul, my being, or whatever you want to call it, has felt like a tightly tied knot of yarn for many years now. Rigid, rough, filled with complex knots and unyielding. A mess of string that somehow still managed to roll forwards. And through this past year of therapy I’ve been working patiently at loosening and undoing all the different knots.

I would like to share this reflection with you, my dear reader. Even though I’ve been trying to write this post for more than 5 months now (originally wanted to do this around New Years Eve), it’s important to me to try to give you more context into who I am, and maybe even reflect some of your own experiences.

CHAPTER 1: Before the Knot – A Dream Takes Shape

When I was 16, I watched the Lord of the Rings movies for the first time and fell in love with the music! The choir mourning a fallen friend, those epic heroic shots of riders swarming down the mountain to the rescue, or the intensity of the one ring that you could only ever perceive because of the music.

From that point on, I knew I wanted to do something similar with my life. Enable people to feel emotions through music. Though at the time I didn’t know that and thought all I wanted was to become a film music composer like Howard Shore.

And so from that point on I basically spent most of my middle and high school years practicing piano and flute (in later years 3 hours every day), doing homework and getting my high school diploma and preparing for music university entrance exams. I had instrument and singing lessons, choir practice (we sang Mozart’s Requiem. That was pretty cool!), music theory and composition classes. I cared about little else and saw my time in school as something I just needed to endure to get to do what I really want to do. I didn’t even go to my graduation ceremony and was earning some money washing dishes at a party instead, and I don’t regret it!

After high school we found a year long course called “Basic Film Music Composer”, which I eagerly signed up for! It was held by a german professor who taught part time in a university in the Netherlands that taught film music composition, and the course was preparing us for the entrance exams there.

That year was an amazing time for me. I spent all my time composing, producing and learning more about my biggest passion, and thought it was bringing me closer to my goal. During that time us composition students were also connected with film students from a Los Angeles film focused university (or college? german and english use different terms for this). Their job was it to produce and record a mini documentary during their time in Germany and us composition students were to compose and produce the music for it.

I paired up with a student who wanted to make a documentary about wolves in a wolf sanctuary in Bremen. The two of us and a 3rd student who worked as an assistant went there together, slept in an ice-cold tipi, and spent 2 days filming wolves through a fence. And that ended up as the first mini-documentary I made music for. A huge success for young enthusiastic me, and I couldn’t be more excited to start studying. Everything was going great!

CHAPTER 2: The Beginning of the Knot

2.1 Studying Abroad

The time for entrance exams was finally here!! I was excited, confident and felt like nothing could go wrong:

I book my ticket to Arnheim Netherlands and go to the ArtEZ university exam room.
I ace the theoretical part of the test.
I show the examiners the work I’m most proud of and answer some questions.
I finish the exam, go outside and wait.
and wait!
I see my professor come out with a smile AND!!!

I wasn’t accepted…

…

“Wait… what?”

“Oh, there’s another ArtEZ university with a different course called MediaMusic, and I should take that exam instead?”

“Well… ok. That’s fine… I guess”, I tell myself.

I go to take the exam at this other university and pass. The theoretical part of this entrance exam was even easier than the one before. I get accepted and soon after, start studying “music production & composition for media”. Not really what I was expecting, but good enough. “At least I’m finally studying music”, I thought.

And I WAS studying music! FINALLY! The first two years were so thrilling! I sucked up all the knowledge, wrote lots of music and was doing really well in most of my classes. I collaborated with other students, honed my already existing skills like music theory and synth design (a hobby I picked up in high school) and also learned lots of new things I had never encountered like recording, mixing, graphic design, pop singing, conducting, music technology, music business and more.

It wasn’t all peachy all the time though, and around year 3 some serious clouds started to form. I was living in a pretty crappy flat with a 10 square meter room. Noisy neighbours, kids kicking soccer balls against the wall, mouldy, and at one point our heater in the cellar exploded! At first I didn’t really care. Studying music was more important, and it was cheap.

But I also started getting more isolated and lonely. I wasn’t vibing with the usual student bar hangout spots. It was crowded, loud, with music I didn’t enjoy, I hate beer and was not good at doing small talk. So after a while I just stopped going to those events. I also wasn’t playing in a band since I wasn’t comfortable with pop piano playing, and felt very out of place with my classical flute skills among these DJs, drummers, guitarists and singers. My musical ambitions and thirst for knowledge were being met, but in a way I ended up more lonely than I ever had been during my time in school.

“Whatever.” I told myself. “I’ll soon be done and then I’ll start working and realising my dream of becoming a well known composer!”, I tell myself.

During that time I also released my first electronic EP on Soundcloud. Besides composing I really enjoyed designing sounds with software synthesiser plugins. I was also a huge fan of the electronic artist Deadmau5 at the time and was very happy with the electronic music I had made. I probably mixed and re-mixed those tracks dozens of times. Always thinking I can do better now with more knowledge. But after a while, enough was enough and I put it on Soundcloud feeling pride and excitement. Only to realise that no one was engaging with it unless I took the time to comment on other peoples music. The moment I stopped doing that all engagement just dropped. No likes, no comments, no views….

“Well… that sucks… guess I’m not a good producer… But whatever! My real goal is becoming a composer after all!” I tell myself, and keep going. (a knot forms…)

I reach my breaking point at the end of the 7th semester. I couldn’t get an interesting internship placement which we were told to arrange ourselves, and I failed my music research paper (which was part of year 4) with 5.4 points…. I needed 5.5… (another knot forms…) It felt like I had to do the whole thing over though because what I did was not research and instead a very, very, VERY detailed opinion about why the genre “film music” is too broad and doesn’t accurately describe what kind of music it is. But that’s what it was. An opinion. The whole thesis was flawed and that whole assignment is probably the most boring thing I’ve ever had to do during my time there, but it was a requirement.

So I said FUCK IT! (strands get yanked…). I quit my studies, left without a word and moved back to my hometown in Germany to a new apartment. I felt kind of bored by the 4th year. Most of the subjects I enjoyed were dropped after year 2 and 3, I was feeling aimless, lonely, isolated and I couldn’t take it anymore. So I left, feeling like I wasn’t missing anything and could start walking my own path.

2.2 After College

The first project I got was another documentary that my film maker friend from LA wanted to do. Another short 10 minute documentary about pythons. She had a pet python herself and was very fond of the animals. The second one was a similarly short documentary about an alternative schooling system which a common friend of us was working on who had also been on that USA-Germany exchange.

Both projects weren’t paid, but that was actually fine. That’s quite normal for starting composers, film makers and probably many other creatives. It’s for getting a foot into the door and building a portfolio. So I was just happy to have these contacts which could give me actual material to work on and to show my skills.

A year or so passes without any projects. Then I make music for my 1st video game! Exciting! ”A sci-fi top down shooter, and I get to try to make Daft Punk Tron: Legacy style music for it? Cool! Not paid, but with a revenue share deal? Hmmmm, ok sure. Games earn a lot of money right?”

I produce around 15 minutes of music for the game, it releases AND!!!

no one cares… I never hear from him or the game ever again.

“Well….. fuck…. “ ”Guess that was just bad luck” I tell myself…. (YANK!!)

One year later my friend came to me with a bigger project in mind. She was asked to help produce a Youtube documentary series as a Public Service Announcement (PSA) about California mountain lions. This time there was actually a budget and I got paid 3000$ for all episodes and doing post production sound mixing, since I was the only audio guy on the team. Not a huge amount but I still felt ecstatic about my first paid composing job! And the 1st episode has even been viewed more than a million times by now! It felt like I was on a good trajectory and the next opportunity would surely present itself soon.

After all the episodes were done and published I was invited to a public screening of the episodes at a University in California USA. I’d have to pay for the flight myself but I still booked a flight ticket. The thought of buying such an expensive trip and travelling for such a long time was honestly terrifying for me. I’ve travelled a lot in my childhood and early teens but it was always with parents or the school, or my martial arts club. Travelling by myself is anxiety inducing. ”But”, I told myself “this is a moment to be brave, to show up and to show face! This is California! The state were Hollywood is! This is absolutely the place I need to show up to!”

And so I did and it was a fun and enjoyable experience. I stayed with my friend and saw some of California. Feeling content with just looking and watching everything. The massive amount of space that a German can only dream of, all the big birds flying in the sky, talking to people and experiencing some of US culture first hand, and I connected with an online composer friend in San Francisco.

The trip did not however lead to any more valuable film industry contacts… My film maker friend was the only media focused person there besides me. Most of the other attendants were scholars, professors, environmentalists, conservationists and such. All lovely people, but not the kind of people I was hoping to potentially meet. And besides, while I was enjoying being there, I was also fighting a lot of daily anxiety, trying to stay calm and just go through the experience. I had no real mental capacity to do a lot of small talk and networking. I don’t in general, and I find it very draining.

So I leave California, grateful for the experience but also a little confused and disheartened…

CHAPTER 3: The Tightening of the Knot

3.1 Even More Knots

The following years a bunch of things happened and I’ll keep it brief to not get lost in irrelevant details.

So over the next period the following things happened:

I let go of my dream of becoming a film music composer, because I felt like I couldn’t meet the lifestyle demands that pursuing that career would require. Also, since I didn’t want to leave Germany I saw my chances of landing an interesting project be even slimmer. Nowadays we have really well done german media like “Dark” or “All quiet on the western front”, but back then around 10 years ago, Germany wasn’t producing internationally successful content and mainly did television, which I definitely did not want to do.
I tried my luck with video game music composing again, thinking it would be more international, I could work from home, network over the internet, and the extra challenge of not just composing music but also creating a system that can dynamically adapt to what is happening in the video game. Think of stealth games for example where the music should(!) change to indicate the different game states of being hidden, searched for, or hunted. But what ended up happening is that over the course of 2 years I worked with 3 different projects from different newly starting indie game developers, AND!!!!! …. all 3 projects get canceled… I wasn’t paid for any of them… ”Well…fuck…” I thought. ”I guess I … … …” ”I guess … …” ”I guess it’s not meant to be” I tell myself. (yank, yaNK, YANK!)
One very good thing that happened the same summer after my studies was that I got involved in the wonderful world of Ethno where people from all over the world play and teach each other traditional music from their own country or culture. That community was my lifeline and showed me a whole different way of playing, creating, experiencing music. Later on I was also asked to do live sound engineering and mixing for Ethno Germany concerts, and since 2023 I’m leading the Ethno Studio Germany camp, which is always fun and it was some income at the side. Since I also studied how to record, produce and mix band music, and since most musicians from that community aren’t very technology savvy, I could see an opportunity to become a go to music producer for these kind of musicians and bands. Without going into detail, what ended up happening was that by now, I’ve produced 4 albums/EPs and 2 singles for other artists, and I have earned around 1000€ doing that…
Around 2018 I turned my back on music almost completely and committed myself to my online e-commerce business called Observant Sound, where I make sounds (synth presets, sample packs and Kontakt sample libraries), package them and sell them to other musicians, producers or composers who are looking for fresh sounds and inspiring tools. I was SICK! and TIRED!! of crawling through the internet, begging people for an opportunity just to risk ending up with barely anything again… So once again, I said FUCK IT! ! ! ”I’m going to do what I do well and enjoy, which is experimenting and designing sounds. If you want it, you can buy it. If not, then fuck off!” … I told myself.

And so I did that for 2 years and enjoyed a lot about it. But a lot about it was also incredibly stressful.

I was pulling (maybe literally) my hair out trying to get my WordPress & WooCommerce site to work the way I wanted it to. I understood the world of web design so little back then, and trying to teach yourself without a lot of context using only google was really tricky.
I realised that designing synth sounds and such was really fun and freeing in a way to not be limited by another media… but after the first 40 or so presets, reaching a number like 100 can become mind numbing. And then you do it again for volume 2…ughh.
In order for the shop to work I needed to wear so so many different hats. I was responsible for: R&D, branding, visual design, scripting, marketing, advertising, web design, finance & complicated international e-commerce tax laws, social media management, GUI / UX design, e-commerce payment gates for credit cards and paypal, data management, and much more.

It was, and continues to be, a LOT! (though more manageable nowadays)

Considering how niche and saturated the musical sound design market already was, I decided to try my hands at something big in order to get some attention and hopefully grow my customer base. So at the end of 2019 I started developing the Kontakt library which would later become “Veiled Ashes”. I had already made a tiny Kontakt library before with the help of David Healey’s KSP tutorials, but it was all very basic. The only coding experience I’d had before then was playing with “Robot Karol” and a tiny bit of Python back in high school data science classes. Despite that, I felt confident (or maybe desperate enough) that I could pull it off if I just be patient, learn as I go and just tackle one step at a time.

“This should be a 3 month project tops!”, I told myself.

And then the Covid-19 pandemic came…

3.2 The Pandemic & New Challenges

To be honest, my life didn’t change much during the pandemic. Before, I wasn’t going out much anyways, besides seeing my family and one good friend every week or so. So when quarantine was put in effect, I just held my head down and continued working on Veiled Ashes.

To cut a long story short: The supposedly 3 months turned into a 3 year project… Besides the typical adhd time blindness which makes you drastically underestimate how long it will take to get a task done, I also just had no idea what I was doing.

I had no prior concept of how to translate some of the things I was envisioning into working code. So through painful trial & error I had to build everything from scratch and that also came with tons of bugs that needed to be fixed along the way. So yeah… it took a long ass time.

During that period I was fluctuating a lot between feeling hopeful and depressed. When I was feeling good, I was working. When I was feeling depressed I would usually just get exhausted, and sleep it off until I felt more capable again. But again, it felt like my only choice. Musicians and artists were having a really hard time during the pandemic, so putting my music aside and just continuing what I was doing felt like the only possible path. Even though it was at times agonising, often frustrating, and always lonely.

But then! Finally!! After three years and 80.000 lines of code, it was finally done! Everything was working the way I wanted it to, every bug had been fixed, every design detail ironed out, every quality of life feature I could think of had been implemented, I made 200 good sounding presets with unique creative names, all the promotional material had been designed and scheduled, the website updated, the product page made to look awesome, video tutorials and pdf manuals ready and live.

I was actually… finally… done…. After THREE YEARS of work!

Being a smoker, I obviously needed a cigarette after that. I went outside, lit a cigarette, inhaled the smoke deep into my lungs (yuck, I know), exhaled with a long sigh and barely enjoyed the moment before thinking: ”Well… what’s next?” I took a drag of my cigarette, thought about it for a while. Then I thought: ”Well… next would be… making and releasing Veiled Ashes 2… right?” ”So that would mean… doing the whole process… again…” ”And then doing Veiled Ashes 3, and doing the whole process again!” ”And then making a new product and doing the whole damn process AGAIN!” ”Just me by myself in front of a screen. Alone. From start to finish…”

And then it dawned on me that this is not how I want to live my life…
I liked what I was doing but, I wasn’t happy. I was too isolated, and I wasn’t doing the things that really mattered to me. I think once I realised this, I knew i needed to make changes in my life.

And thus started a process that is still ongoing to this day.

CHAPTER 4: The Loosening of the Knot

4.1 Setting New Priorities

From that day on I’ve been working hard at creating a more balanced life for myself.

I knew music made me happy and connected me with people, and I knew I needed more of it in my life. Not just once or twice a year when visiting an Ethno to play folk music with other people, but more a part of my daily life. It’s what I’ve spent most of my life learning. It’s what I’m good at!

I was set up so perfectly to be able to pursue this path, being both a musician, multi instrumentalist, decent singer and engineer. And even my songwriting was seemingly having a tremendous effect on people. Financially I would also have support if I really wanted to pursue this path.

But by this point I don’t feel like I’m exaggerating by saying that I felt traumatised and paralysed by the thought of investing any of my precious time into writing, recording and mixing music. Over the years I tried many times to do at least a little music at the side, maybe in the evenings, or dedicating a day in the week or a weekend for it, but whenever I tried, I was bombarded with anxiety and I had thoughts like:

This isn’t worth my time.
There’s more important things to do.
What’s the point of finishing a song if I can’t follow it up within a few months.
What’s the point of starting a song if I can’t find the time to finish it.
No one’s going to hear it anyway because I won’t have time to promote it.
No one’s going to care.
I can’t afford to not keep growing my business.
I don’t want to end up both broke and as a failed artist.

Battling all these feelings when trying to produce music was seriously debilitating. Before even sitting down at my desk with the intention of creating music, my body would have fear responses and I needed to do breathing exercises to calm it down. But that calmness usually wouldn’t last very long. My digital work environment was also really messy at the time (samples missing, wrong settings, long load times, using the wrong drives etc.), which really takes you out of the creative process. So yet another hindrance.

The solution my mind came up with for this problem: Carve out a whole month for creative time!

I knew I wanted to make music, and I knew from experience it got easier the longer I stuck with it. Giving me longer dedicated creative time could make it more manageable to enter and stay in the creative zone, as opposed to switching between music and my sound design work on a daily/weekly basis. And, having a whole month could mean I could battle through the discomfort of finishing one or two pieces, get them out there and at least get the ball rolling.

With only one or two months of time there was no place for thoughts about any kind of financial success or sustainability through music, I knew that. But I was starting to see more benefits for at least making just a little music and getting it out there:

I knew the hundreds of musician friends I’d accumulated around the world would enjoy seeing me finally release my music. Many of them have probably wondered why I hadn’t already a long time ago. Knowing at least they would care already made it feel worth it.
The 2 pieces I’d written and can perform live on my guitar were really affecting people. Often there’d be tears or people telling me their own stories, having felt seen by me. If I had a few more songs I could perform live (free from all my technical setup which I would normally use for film or electronic music), that would mean I could force myself to go out and meet people, enjoy playing music and maybe even get paid for it a little. (side note: I say “force” myself to go out because I don’t actually like going to concerts or festivals, and I’m also not good at “just going somewhere and explore”. I don’t know what to do with myself and feel lost. But if I have a good “reason” like “I’m doing this for my career” then it’s easier to fight through the anxiety.)
Through my songwriting and many conversations I’ve had about mental health with people, I’ve realised that there’s more I can do than to “just” be a musician. I can share knowledge, help other people feel less alone, help them process their emotions or put words to them that they couldn’t find, and more. Framing it this way helps me give more importance for the music because it’s not just about me. It’s for other people. And my AuDHD brain has always worked in the way of “120% for other people – 70% for myself”. Not because I’m so altruistic, but because accountability can be a powerful motivator.

I didn’t have all these realisations right away, but the goal had been set either way. I didn’t know how exactly I was going to do it yet, but I knew I was going to find a way.

This process was a gradual change though and took around 2 years until now. Giving up my whole sound design business which I’d worked so hard for and spend 100% of my time making music was not something I wanted to do. A big part of that was fear of course, but I also didn’t want the stress of needing to be financially successful with music. I was working so hard on creating a space of calm for myself to even be able to make music. Putting financial expectations on that would immediately make it too heavy again. Plus, I really did enjoy my sound design work. I just didn’t want to dedicate my life to it.

So in the following 2 years I tried to take it slow and keep steady, having a new long-term goal in mind.

I kept working on my business and as a freelancer sound engineer for Ethno Germany and Ethno Studio and tried to get on top of my piled up work as fast as possible. This was a mountain I needed to climb before I could think about reducing. Music wise I wasn’t ready anyway. I was still agonising about my branding and what kind of artist I even wanted to be. And mentally I also wasn’t ready. The anxiety about producing music was still strong and I was still dealing with regular phases of depression.

Despite doing everything I could think of for my mental health, like exercising, yoga, meditation and gratitude journaling, I was still feeling bad and had the general sense like something was wrong. At the time I only knew of my ADHD which had been diagnosed twice in my life, and it felt like I was having issues that most of my other ADHD friends didn’t have, and that I needed some help. So I decided to go back to therapy.

4.2 Frustrating Therapy Attempts

In my life I’ve visited 4 different therapists. The first time I went to therapy was during the end of high school, I think. She was a local therapist in my small hometown and it helped for a while.

But when she brought in a spiritual healer to our session I quickly left. I needed a proper therapist, psychiatrist. Not some spiritual quack who claims I just need to align some chakras and then I’ll be all better. Nonsense! A disgrace to the profession of therapists in my opinion.

The second time I tried therapy was a couple of years after I’d finished my studies in the Netherlands. He was on a list of therapist who’s services would be covered by my health insurance, and I could reach him via bicycle. I went there for one session and told him everything that felt wrong about me. The unexplained and drastic shifts in energy level, the days of depression spent on my couch crying into my pillow for no apparent reason, and so on. His first reaction to my story was asking me if I’ve tried exercising and getting powered out… I strongly felt like punching him in the face in that moment… What an insulting thing for a professional to ask an adult who was clearly not in bad shape and who has known and learnt about his neurodivergent condition since he was 8 years old. Pathetic… So I left and didn’t try again for a few years.

But things still weren’t great. When things were good I felt like I didn’t need therapy and I can solve my problems on my own. When things were bad I wanted to talk to someone but it’s really disheartening when you’re told that someone will be available in 6 months or so. So giving up hope for help and relying on myself instead felt like the safer option.

But still, bad times kept coming again and again.

The third time I tried betterhelp and actually stuck with them for some time. She was from the US which suited me just fine because I felt very comfortable with my English, sometimes more so than with my German. One session she suggested I might have something called “Cyclothymia”, which I would describe as a milder but much more frequently cycling bipolar disorder. It felt strange, but she’d consulted with a colleague before telling me, and at the time it seemed like the only explanation that even makes halfway sense. So I accepted that label for a time, and practiced “Radical Acceptance” and “Cognitive Behavioural Therapy” (CBT) with her, which did help. One day though she stopped offering her services on BetterHelp so I stopped seeing her.

Things had gotten better. I was on anti-depressants, which helped stabilise my mood, and I got bit better at dealing with stress. But STILL! This feeling of something being wrong was always there… So some years later, I tried therapy again with BetterHelp and finally found the therapist which I’m still seeing today.

4.3 Finding the right therapist + discovering my Autism

On my fifth attempt, I finally found the therapist which was right for me. I specifically asked for someone who also had ADHD because I didn’t want another “have you tried exercising!?” situation…

Turns out, she was actually diagnosed Audhd (Autism + ADHD), which I’d never heard about. (Before 2013 the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition) labeled ADHD and Autism as mutually exclusive, as in you either have one or the other, not both. That exclusion was removed from the DSM-5 in 2013, but the term “Audhd” only started becoming known around 2022.)

After a few sessions of getting familiar and comfortable with each other, she suggested that I might have this as well, instead of the Cyclothymia. At first that sounded very strange to me.

Me? Autistic? Autism to me always seemed like a really severe disorder! I’d read stories about “gifted” people, who were severely lacking in some aspects like proper communication, but who had insane skills, like drawing all of New York top-down from memory. Or I would see videos on the internet that were supposed to be heart warming like: ”Autistic non-verbal boy recognises babysitter and allows her to touch him”. The boy in that video looked severely handicapped, and cognitively not present. His mouth was open and drooling, and he was wearing some kind of helmet or harness, for protection I’m assuming. And this was by far not the only video or story like this.

I was supposed to be like that? That didn’t make sense to me! ”My mind is a bit quick and chaotic sometimes but I feel perfectly capable otherwise. I’m not like that!”, I thought.

Well…

It turns out that I, and most people in my experience, don’t actually understand what autism is. By now, I know that autism can often appear alongside other more severe mental disorders, and that Autism is a huge spectrum.

Over the course of several months we talked more about it, and the more I learnt and understood about this condition of being both autistic AND adhd, the more things started to make sense.

The feeling of being pulled in opposing directions, which I’ve had all my life.
The anxiety I feel in crowds or loud places
The fatigue I feel after every social interaction or when dealing with challenging emotions
The challenges I’ve had with dating and the confusion I’ve felt every time there was someone new and things were undefined.
The fact that I don’t like horror movies, trust falls or rollercoasters. For some people that’s a short exciting moment that gets replaced with something else once it’s done. I would always carry those feelings with me for much longer and not feel safe.
The fact that I never look people in the eyes (I look at their nose) because it’s way too intimate
Food and clothing texture is often more important to me than how it tastes or looks
ADHD wants excitement and everything that’s new. Autism likes routine, for things to stay the same, and doesn’t like surprises. Of course you’d feel like you’re being pulled apart mentally.

All of these things I tried to explain away by saying: “That’s just who I am. That doesn’t mean anything.” For 24 years I’ve lived under the assumption that I only have ADHD but am otherwise perfectly healthy and normal. But apparently i just got really good at hiding or masking my symptoms and telling myself it’s not a big deal.

By now, I have very little doubt anymore. Having reflected both on my past and my present, too many things now made sense in order for this to just be a coincidence. And I was actually getting noticeably better.

Being able to recognise various stressors in my life has made me better capable of dealing with them. I haven’t had a completely lethargic, exhausted full day(s) in a long time, and I’m better at recognising when I need proper rest. I can recognise when a certain situation is challenging for me and potentially avoid it, instead of telling myself I “should” (”should” is such a damaging word!) be able to do this, or that I’m imagining the discomfort. I can now make better informed decisions in my life, feel more calm, have a higher stress capacity, and feel more capable of dealing with changes and challenges in my life.

I’ll probably write more about my experiences with audhd in the future, but what’s important for the story, is that I did a lot of necessary mental clean up work.

And during this therapy work, the metaphor of “The Knot” came to me for the first time. Sometimes during therapy, my therapist would ask me a question, and my mind would race and stutter out a sentence in an attempt to choose the right words that spoke truth, instead of relying on automatic defensive responses. It felt like trying to lift a boulder while at the same time trying to push a string through a sewing needle.

The effort it sometimes took to formulate and speak a sentence reminded me of when people learn the piano for the first time. Show them the right finger movement and tell them to play a scale, and you can actually see their fingers twitch and spasm as their brain tries to lay pathways for a movement it has never done before.

Instead of twitching and spasming during therapy, I sometimes had the sense that I was uncovering old hidden innocence, and that I had to put real effort into undoing some of the belief patterns (yarn knots) that I had built up inside myself.

4.4 Winter / Spring Cleaning

With therapy going well, and my goal for more balance still being strong, it was finally time to make some changes. I think the change that had the most impact on my life was deciding not to do the CD mixing for the Ethno Germany concerts anymore, starting last year.
I was grateful for the work and the side income, and I enjoyed being useful to this community which meant so much to me… but it was just too much work…

Mixing the 2023 and 2024 concerts both took me around 9 months to finish. I wasn’t working on the mixing job full time, but even as a side job, it just took way too long. I think I’m a decent mixing engineer, but I’m definitely not the fastest. By the time I finished one concert, the next concert in August was already around the corner. Then in October I’d be busy with Ethno Studio and mixing the EP we record together there, and then it’s already winter and close to Christmas. It was too much work, for too little pay. So I dropped that job politely and found a replacement for them.

This was such a freeing decision! All of a sudden I had so much more time! And for the first time in a long time, I had time for various things that I’d been neglecting for the longest time.

Thus, I decided to dedicate the last few winter months to cleaning up and making my living and working circumstances better. I called it my analogue/digital spring/winter cleaning.

Here’s a list of some of the things I managed to do:

Painted my walls (I’d been living with holes in the paint for years after having removed some acoustic foam which I glued to the walls)
Redid my entire cable management so nothing was laying on the floor anymore
I set up a linux server NAS for my backup and various files which I’d want to access from various devices
With the help of my mother, decluttered a bunch of stuff, threw out lots of things and reorganised my shelves
Reorganised all my media data so I don’t waste time searching
Optimised my DAW Reaper (Digital Audio Workstation) to my own needs
I learnt more about how WordPress and WooCommerce works and learnt how to use the Rest API, to be less dependent on plugins
I cleaned up my email newsletter data for my sound design business and got better at designing mails
Repaired and finished building a bunch of audio gear builds that were either not finished or broke at some point, gathering dust
Consolidated all of my documents and data from google drive and various OpenOffice docs into Notion
Consolidated a bunch of data from various hard drives
Built a Notion system that works for me for deciding on tasks and not getting overwhelmed
I finished the branding for Searching Nowhere
Took time to understand my image (Affinity) and video (DaVinci) software better.
Started blogging
and more

It felt so good being able to clear so many things of my to-do list, which had grown a lot over the years! There was always other work which was more important to get done. But now, having cleared most of that piled up work, and having more time in general, I feel so much more calm and present.

There’s still more to do (there always is) in my life and my work, but The Knot has loosened a lot by now. I’m better capable of rearranging all the different yarn strands in nice patterns, without having to carry this huge ball around with everything I do. And I feel grateful for all the support that I’ve had, for all the people that I’ve met, and all the good things that have happened along the way. Without those, I’m not sure I would have made it through some of the more challenging times.

But I did! And I’m super excited about moving forward in a new direction.

Chapter 5: A New Beginning

One of the first things I did after the winter/spring cleaning was to finish mixing/mastering my 1st upcoming single “New Blossom” and submitting it for distribution to various streaming services. (The single will be live on the 15th May.)

Clicking that “Submit” button felt like such a huge weight of my shoulders! There’s still some anxiety and worry present about how the reception will go and how it will make me feel, but I’ve finally done what I had been planning to do for so many years. Taking that first step of publishing the 1st song felt completely impossible for the longest time. Now, it is not a dream or a wish anymore. It is something that I have started, and will continue to pursue!

How much and how frequently? I have no idea! But now that the first step has been taken, and with more balance in my life, I suspect it will get easier in the future, and I still have so many things I want to show you!

Outro

Thank you again, so much, for taking the time to read all of this!

If you’re curious about what the musical result of my long path sounds like, then check out “New Blossom” when it lands on streaming services on May 15th 🙂 Or if you use Spotify, pre-save the song so that it shows up in your library the day of release!

Journal, Mental Health