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I sold my Motorcycle: Devalued...Grief....and Triumph · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to a Murders to Music Podcast.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Aaron.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, and thank you guys so much for coming back for another week.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, before we jump into what tonight is all about, if you guys didn't get a chance to listen to last week's episode, you should really go back and check that out.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Last week I had a very special guest on the show.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Her name is Kelly O'Sullivan.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Kelly O'Sullivan is the mother to Taro's.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Tar O'Sullivan is a police officer out of Sacramento, California, who got killed in the line of duty June 19th, 2019.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Kelly tells the story of pain, of tragedy, of triumph and hope.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: You should go back and give a listen to that.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: It makes you really value and appreciate what you have today.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, yesterday my daughter called me at work and she's like, Dad, will you get up at 4 45 in the morning with me and go to Dutch Brothers to get some special straw that they are giving away?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And my initial thought, not spoken, was, Are you freaking serious?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm like, Of course I will, baby.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: So last night I forget all about it, and she reminds me at 10 o'clock last night.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, crap, you know, and I'm negative and like I gotta get up at 4 45 to go to the Dutch Brothers to go to some coffee shop to get some stupid straw that changes colors.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: This morning I get up early, a little bit is bugging me, and a little bit is annoyed to go.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And about, I don't know, two or three minutes into that ride, I thought, you know, I bet Kelly would give anything to take her daughter to Dutch Brothers to get a plastic straw at 4:45 in the morning.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And how blessed I am to have such an amazing little girl that wants to spend time with her dad.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that changed the entire view.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: On tonight's episode, we're gonna talk a little bit from the heart.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this podcast opened up oh a year and a half ago, 125 episodes ago or so, and it was a lot of real talk about where I was during that time in my life.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if you go back and listen to it, you can totally see the change between where I was and where I am today.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a whole shift.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of you guys are emailing me and texting me saying that, hey, I'm binging your episodes, I'm listening to them all.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I've gone back and listened to a few of the old ones, and you can totally just see the change that therapy and God and family and hope has made.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's been this pendulum swing, and it's all been for positive, which is pretty cool.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I got to give a lot of credit to my therapist, to my family, and to you, to you people who are listening, who are continually feeding me with hope and inspiration and kind words.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is what allows me to go on.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: I it allows me to continue to help people, even though I'm maybe not in the role that I used to be, but there's a different way to help folks.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you guys so much.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: From the bottom of my heart, thank you for listening to this.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: I want to start off tonight's episode by reading a part of an email that I got from a listener recently.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a listener who found my podcast when she was uh at a low spot in her life, and it it helped her, you know, and through the many emails that we've exchanged, the story is very clear that at some point she heard a message, and it wasn't from me.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not taking the credit from this, but there was a message through the podcast, through the lessons learned, through the help that everybody has given me that provided hope and inspiration in this woman's life.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I want to read this excerpt from this uh email that I received from her.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: It says this, it says, I've heard you say that you know people are out there who can relate and that you hope your podcast will help at least one person.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Your podcast has helped me several times in a variety of areas of my life.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: By listening to you, I've learned that I'm not alone.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: At another time, I'll share what I mean by that.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Aaron, for your transparency and for sharing your faith and your struggles, and listening to your podcast has renewed my walk with the Lord.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's nice to be home.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, and thank you, Jesus.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: My heart is happy for you and your family because through it all, you still have each other, and I'm going to stop it right there.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was very rewarding for me to get this email from her because it's nice to know that people are out there listening and getting something from it.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty cool.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I want to talk a little bit about value, and it's good to feel valued in a conversation.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to feel valued in life.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to come back and explore the topic of feeling valued here in a moment in quite some depth because there's some stuff that I'm working through, and I can't be the only one that may be either feeling this or, you know, we tend to look at problems and we tend to, I'll speak for myself.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: I tend to look at problems and I look for something to blame.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I look for someone to blame as to why this is a problem in my world.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to get into a few of those in a few minutes.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but sometimes if we really slow down and determine what is it that we're missing in this conversation?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that this circumstance is, how did it make me feel?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: What are those feelings that I'm sitting with on the inside?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: And when you break that down and really strain it out, like pour that entire situation through a strainer, what is left in the bottom of that basket?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's some of the stuff that I'm going to get to tonight.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: But before I do, I want to tell you this.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: I sold my motorcycle.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who don't know what that means, it means that there's been conversation on this podcast about me selling my motorcycle.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: You see, I've ridden a motorcycle since about 2010, 2011.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've put lots and lots of miles on them.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: My wife also rides, and we've ridden across the country, ridden out to Mount Rushmore.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: I actually bought one of my motorcycles in Florida and I drove it home by myself.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I did all of this while I was in that law enforcement role.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And in that role, I had a high-stress job and I needed a hobby that was equivalent in stress.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: In that role of a police officer, if I would have come home and tried to read a book, it would have been an imbalance.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: It would have been incongruent between my work life and my hobby life, and there would have been an upset there and an imbalance.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a hobby that was as equally as high stress, impactful, high speed, and I rode a lot of motorcycles.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that motorcycle not only became a good hobby and an activity, but that motorcycle became a way of life and an identity.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And when I came out of law enforcement, my identity of law enforcement went away without my choosing, without me making that decision.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: It got taken from me.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And as you know, this podcast is born on the roots.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: It cut its teeth on the loss of identity and the hurdles and obstacles that come with that.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: But when I think about that motorcycle, now that is a tangible something that sits in my garage that I can hold on to.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a reminder of the past.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's a piece of me, and it might say it's a piece of my identity.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: I might say, Aaron, when you were a cop, you were a manly man.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: You got out, you did cool stuff, it was rewarding, you're on TV, the all the whatever, you're saving these cases, you're in the newspaper, you're all over Google, and you've got this motorcycle, that's a manly thing to do.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: You scuba dive, that's a manly thing to do.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're in a band, that's a fun, sexy thing to do.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: I had all of this going for me during that period of life.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: When I came out of law enforcement and lost a lot of that identity, the motorcycle was one thing that I held on to.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I can tell you that through the PTSD, through the depression, and through the pain, I didn't ride my motorcycle in three or more years.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: It sat in my garage.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: There were many times that I would go get dressed and I'd go stand in front of my motorcycle, maybe even sit on it.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I literally didn't have the energy to start it and ride.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I would say, Yeah, I went for a ride, and I didn't.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: I just I lied.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I would, because I didn't want to lose that part of my identity.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: But inside, truly, I was dying and didn't have the energy for it.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of putting on all of my gear from boots, gloves, helmets, coats, pants, all of it, was exhausting.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't have the willpower sometimes to make it through the end of the day, much less exhaust myself riding a motorcycle.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: But yet I couldn't let it go because letting it go would be a conscious decision to let go a part of my identity that I still wanted to hold on to.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I wrestled with this feeling for three plus years, and I realized that I've got a depreciating asset.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: I realize that cognitively that my motorcycle doesn't make up who I am, make up my identity.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: I recognize that I have an eye condition that literally blurs out part of my vision.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, if I go out and drive, I may not be able to see to the left and get hit by a car and killed.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: But why am I holding on to the past?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And after a lot of back and forth, I decide I'm going to sell my motorcycle.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I go outside, I wash my bike.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is a month or so ago.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And as I'm washing my bike, I'm literally crying.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: I am bawling as I'm washing my motorcycle.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: As I look around, I see every sticker from every place I ever went.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was a BMW, that's what we do if we put stickers all over the bags.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I see the lighting, I see the controls, I see the extra foot pegs, I see everything that I've done to make this bike mine.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm preparing to sell it.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm preparing to accept the fact that my life, that identity piece of me, I'm about to give up more willingly than I gave up the law enforcement.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I list the bike on, you know, all of the places.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And finally I have somebody that comes out and wants to take a look at it.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: He looks at it.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: We go back and forth for a few weeks.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: He decides he's going to buy it.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: He and his dad, he's a 25-year-old man, he and his dad are going to go ride motorcycles.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: His dad's going to buy another one.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: They've owned like a dozen of them in their lifetime, and they're going to ride around the nation together and do motorcycle stuff.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that made it a little bit easier to swallow.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: So he shows up to buy this motorcycle, nearly gives me a full price offer, hands me an envelope full of cash, and he he gets on the bike and he doesn't have a riding jacket.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I give him my riding jacket because it was kind of rainy that night.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want him to go down without any kind of armor on.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I give him this motorcycle jacket that I've got tens of thousands of miles on.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: I pull all my pins off and my stuff out of the pockets.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: I give him this jacket, he puts it on, and you know, he drives out of my driveway.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And as he's driving out of my driveway, my daughter is pulling in, and they stop like door to door.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And my daughter was like, Man, I haven't seen you on this in a while.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it was him, not me.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he told her, He's like, Well, I just bought it from your dad.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: So my daughter comes up and I'm standing in the garage, and I'm uh I'm an emotional mess.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm crying, I'm watching my bike drive away.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And a piece of me is leaving that driveway.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so as I watch that motorcycle drive away, I think to myself, and it's not the motorcycle, it's not the physical bike that I'm having an issue with, but that's what I'm blaming.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm blaming the identity.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm blaming the I've lost my identity, I've happened to give it up.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm blaming the police department for the stress and the fact that I'm out of a career and my life has changed.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's a whole lot of blame going on.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I continue, I come inside and Stacy's in there and she gives me a big hug, and I'm still crying and emotional.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And this sounds, I mean, it may sound silly to some of you listening, but man, it's not.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I gotta think about this and I gotta, you know, what is going on?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I chalk it up to loss of identity and I'm giving up a piece of myself, and that's all I really have of the old Erin, you know.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: So then, so as I work through this, uh, I I go to therapy, and when I'm in therapy, I'm talking about, you know, this identity piece, and I talk about my motorcycle and it, you know, the same story I just told you.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I had about the same response in that therapy session.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I determined that it's something that I needed to explore and investigate more because it was more to it than the bike.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: What did the bike really represent?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said a few moments ago when I opened this episode, sometimes we have a tendency to blame things instead of digging down, straining it out, and seeing what's left inside that basket.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And in this case, that is one topic that I spoke about at therapy.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: I also spoke about my work, my current work.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I feel like I'm not I'm not producing.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: I can be busy, but I'm not producing.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a difference between busy and producing.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can make a to-do list and check them off and be busy.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's producing, which means you're moving that needle towards a greater goal.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're moving an effort, you are contributing to the cause.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: That is being productive.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And in my case, I often feel like I am busy, but not productive.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Then we think about the police department.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think about the police department and the frustration when I left.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when I left the police department, I was frustrated and angry with them.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt a loss and a grief in that.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was grieving, not necessarily the job, but something about it.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: But my blame was not that something.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: My blame wasn't what's left in the basket strainer of the strainer.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: My blame was the police departments to uh to blame.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Mad at my dad at 13 years old, telling my mom during a divorce in front of me that, you know, I'm gonna do it with or without you.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't like it, you can take Aaron and leave.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Mad at my dad for those words.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Mad at the church.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm mad at the music people at the church because, and this is all on this podcast historically, but I was mad at them because uh they wrote me out of the will.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: They I wasn't playing anymore.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody new came in.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: He found other people that he liked, and he's playing with his buddies, and before you know it, I'm not involved.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Then I'm still doing sound, but then slowly I'm not involved in that either.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm blaming them for the frustration and the pain that I'm feeling.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I think that all of this, I gotta do something with it.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So all this comes up in therapy, and now I gotta process it.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I write down my little homework and I go home and I spend the week digging in and processing and sitting with the feelings in all of this.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take, go back to the motorcycle.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: That motorcycle, that motorcycle was truly an identity piece.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's who I felt that I was.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I know that after leaving law enforcement, we can leave our identity behind.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: We can change your identity.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that wasn't the critical, crucial part as to what my issue was.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Then I thought, well, what does the motorcycle represent?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: The motorcycle represents a relationship that I had with my wife and memories that I had with my wife while we were on those bikes together.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: You see, my wife and I would take a couple, two, three weeks a year for several years in a row and ride those motorcycles around the nation and Canada and all of the above, and we had these memories and these connections, and I felt totally connected to my wife in those moments.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: You see, but what was different about that versus then versus now is that then that is the only time I was connected to my wife.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't connected to my wife the other 49 weeks out of the year.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: All year long, I would wait until that motorcycle trip, I would decompress the first week, and the next week or two, I would connect with my wife and I would feel close and intimate, and that was our memories together.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's what that motorcycle represents.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: But what I determined this week, as I'm working through this these last couple weeks, is that through the grace of God and through divine intervention, I'm no longer in that role.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I now have the bandwidth, the ability to see, the ability to self-process, analyze, and regulate my time.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now I am connected to my family all the time.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: God has opened a door for me to be connected to my people 24-7.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: I can be the husband I'm supposed to be, I can be the father I'm supposed to be, I can be the spiritual leader of my home, I can be the provider.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's provided me with the job.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I don't feel valuable and I'm not producing, but there's still a job there.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's a paycheck coming in.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: We'll come back to that in a minute.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: And now I feel valuable to my family all the time.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: I feel connected to my family all the time.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need the motorcycle to connect me to my wife.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: So what I was blaming as an identity issue, or what I was blaming as a piece of me that's lost, really what I won was a full reward of being with my family full time.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need that motorcycle to make the connection to my wife.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: That in itself didn't take away the grief, but at least it helped reorganize my values, reprioritize what was important to me and what I was really getting out at the end of the day.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: What was I netting?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was netting a relationship with my family.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is what the motorcycle meant to me, but it's not till I thought about it that I was able to connect those dots.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: The value of work, the value at the church, the value at the police department, the value of my father.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes value for me is very important for me to feel effective.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: At the police department, I was a valued member of the team.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was a part of a team.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: We worked together, we solved things, I was valuable, I was an expert in my field.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now I got a bunch of pride and ego and a big head and a bunch of nonsense that I wish, you know, wasn't really healthy for me.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know it at the time.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: I know it now looking back.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was talking to my partner this week and we're having this conversation, and she says, Well, Aaron, you know, and we're talking about my current job.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, Well, you like to be the shining star and the expert, you know, and in this case, you're not, and other people.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: People are, and it's just, you know, it's it's just a different environment.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you know, I said, that used to be me.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's not me anymore.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not looking to be the shining star.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not looking to be on TV.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not looking for any of that.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: All I want to do is feel valuable and productive.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: My dad.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: My dad's situation.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm blaming my dad during the divorce.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he made some decisions.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Those decisions affected me, and I chose to get angry over them.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's the response that I had, and I chose to blame him.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: The issue wasn't the words, the issue was the value or the devaluation that I felt when he said, Essentially, you can leave with your mom and you're not worth fighting for.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a whole lot of value in a statement or in a feeling when you feel that you're not worth fighting for.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is also consistent with when I left the police department.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: When I left the police department, they did not fight for me.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: I spent two and a half years of fighting the system, the workers' comp, the city, who literally was waiting for me to commit suicide so they wouldn't have to pay out.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: The same city that told me I was nothing but a number on a profits and loss statement, and their job was to keep the profits column bigger than the loss column.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, they would not be settling with my injury, although they know they caused my injury, they weren't going to settle without a fight.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: That lack of value is what affected me.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: At work, currently, there are times that I go and I feel like I'm holding a conversation, holding my own, and producing with the team.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: More times than not, I feel like I'm a busy person, a busybody, and I don't provide value or move the needle forward.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there is no matrix for me to measure my productivity against at my current role.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: There is no way to tell that if the seeds I'm planting today are going to come to fruition tomorrow.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: There is no way to tell what impact I am having today that may move a very large needle tomorrow.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, I wander around in a world that I'm starting to understand.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm shooting arrows at targets that I don't see.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And occasionally I will hit one out of blind, dumb luck.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what can we do about that?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it takes time to get involved in this before you can become an integral part and learn.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: It takes time to get the larger projects or start project management on these larger things.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing that anybody can do except the passage of time, and they can mentor me along the way.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we have people in my life that are mentoring me.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: But in the meantime, it's hard to sometimes feel like I'm twiddling my thumbs.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't feel valuable, like I'm a part of the team.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: So now that we have identified what my issues are, and you can think about this maybe from your perspective, and I don't have this all figured out, right?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm working through this with you.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: But if there's something in your world, if this has got you thinking, man, you know, I'm blaming somebody else for X, but really, why is it bothering me?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: What is left in that basket after everything is strained out?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I bet that you, like myself, will find that whatever's left in that basket is probably a common denominator to some other areas in your life where you are placing blame or having ill feelings or have your feelings hurt.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, I'm not saying it's your fault because sometimes this is not your fault.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, once we identify what it is that we're missing, in my case, being valued or feeling like a valuable part of a team or that I have value, now we can address that and deal with it because we truly know why our feelings are hurt.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: We truly know why this is affecting us the way that it is.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: In my case, my therapist said, Well, Aaron, you're grieving some losses here, and you need to find a way to replenish that, you know, uh at church.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: I when I would go to church and play drums in church, I would totally worship behind the drums.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't about playing the music, it was about a direct connection with God when I'm sitting behind the drums, playing and worshiping.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you watch any of if you ever saw me play drums or you ever watch the videos of me playing drums, you can read the expression and the passion and the movement in my body and on my face.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: That is something that I sorely and truly miss.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: I miss the connection to God when I'm worshiping and playing drums.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: If I could choose to play drums once a week at church for the rest of my life, and the opposite side of that is I would never have to play anywhere else again, never play secular music again.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or I could play all secular music and never play at church.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: I would choose to play at church once a week and be satisfied because there's so much fulfillment in that moment with that church musicianship and on that church musician team, I was valuable.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: I missed that.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: As a result, I've faded away from church.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: I still go, but I feel like I'm checking a box.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't feel connected to anybody.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not getting a lot out of the message.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not playing music.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not involved in sound.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: I feel completely disassociated from the church.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm literally, if I go, I feel like I'm checking a box.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that is something that I'm grieving.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's a loss that I'm grieving.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Something that my therapist says, I need to find a replacement for.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: I need to find where I can plug in.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of sitting back and waiting for life to come to me, I need to go out there and take the bull by the horns and get in front of it.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Find somewhere that I can plug in, find a church that I can plug into, find community, find connection, sitting back and waiting and bitching about how you don't have this or that, or you don't, you're not valued, or whatever it is, then you're just setting yourself up for failure.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to get into this rut, or in law enforcement, we call it an oodaloop.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a secular pattern, circular pattern, secular, circular, circular, secular.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds like a rap song.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Circular, secular, secular, circular.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's just this pattern that you get involved in where nothing good comes out of it.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: You sit in misery.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've done that with your coworkers, where you start this bitch fest about something, and before you know it, the whole world sucks.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, really, just change your view and your attitude, and that's what I've got to do.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I got to take that bull by the horns.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's as far as work goes, take the bull by the horns, find the positivity where I can.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Find the place where I feel like I can be valued.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of sitting back and waiting for them to bring it to me, make and make a plan, set standards, set goals, set benchmarks.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: If I am meeting those benchmarks that I've set for myself or others have set for me, at least I can look and say, I am making progress towards something.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: It may not be progress towards the big sale.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: It may not be landing the big account.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: It may not be landing the whale of a project.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: But what it could be is I'm making progress towards something and I'm not just treading water, slowly taking on water and drowning.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Something that I miss and felt valued in law enforcement was I was working with a passion and a purpose.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: That is something that I need to feel again.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it will come, it will come in time, and I know that.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: But working with a passion, working with a purpose is something that I'm missing in my world right now.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm a very passionate person.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like if I had hair, it would be blown back when I get involved in something I'm excited about.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's got to be somewhere for me to be passionate in my current role, in my current life, where I can just absolutely kick this thing's ass and move forward and just take the world by a storm.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's got to be a place.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: I've just got to find that way.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: And me taking the victim role of sitting back and just sitting on my haunches and waiting for the world to hand it to me is obviously not working.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I got to get a jump out there and take it.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that is turning into my family.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I spoke about the motorcycle.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: I spoke about the bandwidth of, you know, since I've come out of law enforcement, finding those ways to bury myself into my family and into the ones that I love and the ones that really matter.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: I had a lot of lost time over the years and a lot of self-blame and doubt and pain that I caused my family.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe this is just an opportunity for me to really sink into them, to give back and to be the father and the husband that I wasn't for so, so many years.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because what I've done over the last three years does not make up for what I didn't do for the first 24 years of my marriage.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: What about places where I do feel valued?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: What about places where you feel valued?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: We've spoken about the inverse of being valued.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: We've spoken about being devalued.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: We've spoke about not feeling value in my case.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: And whatever this conversation is in your world, you're playing it through in your mind, hopefully.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully you're thinking, man, you know, I'm hurt in these different ways.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not thinking about it today, maybe something I'm maybe I'm planting a seed right now that will come to fruition when you're laying in bed tonight and you're thinking about it.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: But as far as taking the bull by the horns and figuring out where life is good and where that positivity is, because you don't want to get stuck in that OODA loop.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, times that I do feel valued, I feel valued at times in my current job.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: I feel valued in my band.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: I feel valued at my streamlined events and entertainment when I'm out doing weddings for couples, making the best memories of their life.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: I feel valuable at this podcast, Murders to Music.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: I feel valuable when I get those emails from people that say, hey, you impacted and changed my life, and you drove me from suicide back into the Bible or whatever it may be.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Those are times that I feel valued right now.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of places in my life that have impacted me over the last two years where I feel devalued or I feel like my worth is gone.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that is in work.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: That is in church.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: That is in musicianship at church.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's that is some family stuff.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's definitely areas in my life where there is grief that has not been replaced.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: My goal for me is to find ways to replace those, that grief.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't mean I'm gonna go out and spend money and buy things.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that I'm going to just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: That means that I'm going to be intentional about finding those areas in my life where I feel depleted.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to ask God to come into those places, fill me with His Holy Spirit, guide me, direct me, point me in the right direction.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to seek something positive in my world and not get stuck in the negative oodle loop.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm hoping that somebody out there can make heads or tails of all this stuff that I'm saying.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, it boils down to this.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: My motorcycle had nothing to do about a blue bike with two wheels.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Had everything to do with connection to my wife and my family.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: During the time of law enforcement, that's the only connection I had.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I have so much bandwidth and love for my family that I don't need the motorcycle to make that happen.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: That has been replaced with just my pace of life.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Feeling devalued or not valued or not productive in certain areas of my life, that's life.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: Stuff like that happens.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: But it's up to me with what I'm going to do about it.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: I can sit back in an oodaloop and I can be sad and I can just wait for the world to hand me something on a silver platter, or I can go out there and take it.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I plan on doing.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe in your world there's something else that's affecting you or bothering you, and you can figure out what's in the bottom of that strainer.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I encourage you to seek, to ask, to hope, to pray, to find wisdom, to find a therapist, to talk to your family, whatever it is.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: I got an email this week from somebody that said they were suicidal and that something I said in a podcast drew them away from that and pointed them back in a direction and took them out of the woods and put them back into the light.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope, I hope, hope, and pray that this podcast has impacted you in some kind of way so you can think a little bit deeper.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of placing blame, it shit happens.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of placing the blame, let's look at what our pain is, what is the root of our pain?
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: How can we correct that?
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: How can we take our life back and how can we go in the right direction?
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's not easy, it is hard.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is hard.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Therapy, working on ourselves, getting to the root of the problem, identifying that there's a problem, owning our mistakes, owning our pride, our ego, everything else.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: That is hard.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: But once you do it and identify it and you shed some light on it, things get so much easier.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know all of this.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not your therapist, your priest, your doctor, you know, maybe not even your friend.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I would hope that you like talking to me and hearing me, and you're welcome to email me anytime you want.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, at the end of the day, I'm just a dude who's going through the same crap that everybody else is in this world.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have it figured out, but I want to talk about it because I know somebody else out there feels the way that I do.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for sticking around.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: My podcast is not all positive and bubbly.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: I get it, guys.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: But life's not all positive and bubbly.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: But we're going to talk about the stuff that nobody else wants to, the twists and the turns of life that get us down.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they bring us up, but they get us down, they get us sideways, they make us think things that aren't necessarily true, believe beliefs that aren't real.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the stuff we talk about.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: And how do we get out of that?
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: How do we save ourselves?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: And how do we reverse the rules of negativity?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: That is a Murders to Music Podcast.