Advice given to writers when they’re stuck and they don’t know what to write is, just start writing. And so, I am. Writing is something I’ve been doing for a very long time. When I was just a small child, my mom would buy me notebooks so I could write stories in them. I don’t know what it is about putting the proverbial pen to paper (or mostly now, typing on a digital “paper”), but it’s just something I’ve always connected with–even more than the visual arts in some ways. With all of the things going on in my head at any given time, writing is like a tub stopper that I can pull and just let things flow out. Writing evolved to become a creative outlet, therapeutic, and a way to share my knowledge and experience with others. And while my writing is helpful to me in many ways, if it can connect with even just one other person, it makes it infinitely more satisfying.

So I’m just going to jump right in and tell you all that I’ve also just had a really exhausting week. I’m sure everyone can relate in some way to the phrase, “exhausting week”, and imprint your own version of what that would be. It also doesn’t help that I haven’t had time to do all the things that boost and protect my own energy. I absolutely should make those things required–like actually put them on my calendar or something, but I get easily caught up, especially when unexpected things happen on the work front. Responsibility is on me to either take care of things, or properly delegate (and some things just can not be delegated). It’s just been a long week. These are times when being an empath can be rough.

I’m sure most people have heard the term empath before or at the very least, the term empathy. The dictionary definition of empathy is simply, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. An empath is a person with the ability to perceive the mental or emotional state of another individual: empaths are highly sensitive people who pick up emotional energy from everyone around them–an empath can understand others and relate to what they are going through.

I seem to have had this ability since I was a small child. The problem was, for years, I had no idea what to do with the ability of feeling all the energy around me. For me, it goes deeper than a surface perception and I can literally (physically) feel energy that strong emotions, physical issues and other things along those lines produce in other living things (both human and non-human). It sounds weird, but I’ve learned to understand it and to take particular note of it. Sometimes it’s like an early warning system. Science hasn’t really explained it yet, so it’s still in that kind of woo woo realm, but there is something to it. Even people who do not profess to be empaths or empathetic in any way can understand things like, “your vibe attracts your tribe”. And I’m sure everyone at some point in their lives has been “bummed out” or “lifted up” by being around certain people. I think being able to “feel” external energy is something many people can do, but some of us are just exponentially more tuned into it.

Navigating daily life and just interacting with people (virtually and in person) is not difficult for me (for some, it is), but it can be draining if my “defenses” are down. Where I really have to be careful is with what’s going on in the larger world. I absolutely care about what’s going on in the larger world, but when there are big things, full of strong emotions, it can also be tough–causing me to kind of shut down in a way and pull back my own energy as kind of a little “shield”.

Back when I was in my 20s, there was a guy who would sometimes DJ with Mario and I. We became good friends and Mario and him even produced a couple records together. He was part of our small collective of other DJs and electronic music producers back then. I still hadn’t really gotten a handle on the fact that I was an empath at that time, but it was about to start clicking. One day, when I met up with my friend, I felt a huge amount of anxiety for no real good reason. It hit me in a physical way–kind of in the center of my body. It was like a reverberation and a tension. I thought something was wrong with me at first. But oddly, I only felt this particular feeling when hanging out with my friend. It would go away when I got back home. I remember mentioning it to Mario and he thought it was odd.

This feeling went on and then one day my friend called me. When I heard his voice on the other end of the phone I started feeling immediate tremors. He told me he has some bad news to share. He was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. And it was like a lightening strike in my head that illuminated the whole space around me. THAT was what I had been picking up on. My friend fought it for a couple years, but in the end, he succumbed. I remember the day. I was at a convention and was suddenly just overcome with emotion so much so that tears just started welling up in my eyes. I told Mario I had to just go out to the car and sit for a bit. He didn’t know what was up but he came out and sat with me and I blathered on about how incredibly sad I was all of a sudden. We both knew our friend had been in the hospital. We called another friend and found out that he passed that afternoon. I didn’t go to see him and I have my regrets about that. That incident strengthened my resolve that if there was a way, I would never NOT be there for someone I cared about who was facing death.

As Mario himself started having health issues, my “feeling” ratcheted up. Unlike our friend, Mario didn’t want to face health issues (all of which stemmed from alcoholism). As I tried my best to help him, I constantly patched holes in my own energy. I got very good at it. It wasn’t until right before the pandemic that I ended up getting rather overwhelmed on an energetic level.

For one, every fiber of my being was screaming at me that something major was about to happen. I’m a bit of hypochondriac to boot, so was paying very close attention to reports of a novel virus happening. All of my friends thought I was overreacting. Mario’s dad and a couple family members were set to go to China for a 2 week vacation. I said, you’re not going. They didn’t believe me. Well, their tour got cancelled and we all know what happened. Prior to this there wasn’t a time in my life that I felt the energy of millions of people all over the world at once, but that was it and let me tell you, it was not good. My emotional “radar” was spinning wildly. And little did we know that by that point in time Mario only had about 12 months to live himself.

Which brings me to February. In these last couple days of a January that has seemed to last far longer than 31 days, I’m not looking forward to February. I can’t believe I’m going to be FOUR YEARS into this widowed journey in 10 days. I don’t know when it stops feeling like, “he was just laying on the couch watching a movie (or doing any other regular old, mundane life thing) last week”. Some of you who are much father along on the journey will have to weigh in on that.

There’s also the fact that my dad’s 87th birthday would have been on February 1st. And let me tell you, since he was my most recent loss, I’m still “going through it” a bit on that front. Last weekend I thought I’d treat myself to an upbeat movie, so I watched “IF”. I liked it, but man did this one unexpected hospital scene hit me in the feels and suddenly, just like that, a huge wave of omg my dad is gone hit me. But that’s the thing with the grief of a loved one’s passing–you never know when another wave may hit.

Anyway, I’m hoping I can get back on track this weekend to doing all those things that protect and regenerate my energy and I’m going to plan a couple fun things for February to offset the depressing, sad stuff that month brings for me.