Dead air

It took me a long time to sit down and write this because I felt too vulnerable to say things out loud. For the past two years, I’ve been holding a lot in. And for someone like me, a deeply expressive person, that silence was heavy.

Last summer marked the start of what I now call my official bottling season. I was navigating a storm of personal and professional changes (more on those soon), and I didn’t have the capacity to show up online in the way I used to. I couldn’t fake another smile or force another piece of content. I was stuck in a quiet crisis, unsure what kind of music I wanted to make, what kind of stories I wanted to tell, or what version of me was even doing the telling.

Financially, things were rough. I was building a business from scratch, entirely self-funded, and losing sleep over money most nights. Emotionally, I felt like I was treading water—wired but paralyzed. For over a year, I resisted a huge internal shift that I could sense but couldn’t yet name. Like tectonic plates were shifting beneath me and I had no idea where to place my feet.

The few times I felt alive were onstage. Performing a rigorous schedule cracked something open for me. Even in the worst of 2023 and early 2024, those moments reminded me that I hadn’t fully disappeared.

Eventually, the dam broke. I couldn’t keep hiding my burnout. I sought real help. And here’s the unexpected part—I ended up training for a year as an ADHD coach. This turned into a total rewiring of how I understood myself. I dove deep into neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and the lived experience of ADHD—not just academically, but personally. I confronted patterns I’d been carrying for years. The emotional rollercoaster. The sensory overload. The hyperdrive and the shutdown. I thought I knew myself before, but this internal work cracked me wide open in some pretty sobering and transformative ways.

It’s taken support, medication changes, a 6-month Gestalt program, and a web of brilliant coaches and friends to rebuild. And while I’m still very much in motion, I finally feel like I’ve stopped treading water.

This blog is part of that return. It’s a space for voice—not polished, not perfect, but real. I’m writing here to reconnect, to process, to share the behind-the-scenes of what it means to live a creative, neurodivergent, and emotionally honest life. Snapdragon has always been about sound and storytelling—but now it’s also about staying human while doing it.

If you’re here, thank you. I hope this space becomes a place where we meet in the middle of the mess and the magic.