The Let-Down Effect

Crafting a low into something good

Dec 31, 2023

I write you from my teenage bedroom in Laredo, where I am laid up in bed, surrounded by a small but mighty mountain of Kleenex.

I had lofty plans for my trip to Texas. Grade papers, edit my thesis, scaffold my spring workshops, and write this newsletter; all of it lodged between bottomless chicken fajitas and Hallmark Christmas movies with my family.

I landed well after midnight on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas morning, as soon as my nephew had torn the last shred of wrap from his Star Wars Legos and cherry-red electric guitar, I holed up in my room and plowed through 28 student papers. I spent the next day hunched over my laptop in a lawn chair while my sister and nephew splashed around the pool, diving for toy cars in the deep end, the way we did when we were kids. Right around sunset, I shot grades off to the registrar and knocked out that night delirious but triumphant; I’d capped my first semester as a professor, and nothing but the warm winter sun and hours of writing lay before me.

And then, I woke up with the flu.

Back when I was touring, this happened all the time. I’d run a 4-week stretch across Germany and Belgium with back-to-back shows and late-night drives, subsisting off of green room pizza and Shell station cappuccinos. Then I’d get home, and as soon as the airplane coffee and jet lag had dissipated, all that compartmentalized anxiety would come crashing down in the form of a wicked cold.

There’s a name for this phenomenon: The Let-Down Effect.

In times of heightened stress, our immune systems buckle up just long enough for us to clear the bar. Then said immune system slips off a cliff, and if we happen to be traveling—say, flying cross-country with 250 humans packed into a giant metal petri dish—the chances of us catching whatever’s in the air skyrocket.

For over a year, I’ve been holding my breath—juggling a full-time consulting gig at my nonprofit that I feared might end, grad school that I knew for certain would, and the tenuous balance of teaching vs. writing vs. relationshipping. Some of my hustle came down to survival—NYC ain’t cheap—but some of it was me, slipping right back into the well-worn grooves of my touring days. Afraid of what I’d be faced with the moment I slowed. What would I be forced to look at?

Little went as planned. The path I’d laid out for myself this year with the utmost precision—this relationship, that promotion—all of it written in water.

Still, the scheming and the letting go taught me so much:

When my work hours were cut back, I launched this newsletter, something I’d hoped to do for years. I didn’t hit my goal of publishing every other week, but I wrote through many bouts of worry that I’d run out of worthwhile ideas. I shipped more writing than I have in all my previous years of college, combined. The best part? Reconnecting with so many of you, who came to shows and supported my records, and popped up in the comments after all these years, as if no time had passed.
When a relationship ended (which, ow), I paused dating and invested my spare energy into nurturing friendships. I hosted weekly Ted Lasso-themed nacho parties and Uptown potlucks and called friends mid-workday to ask how their job interviews went. I tracked birthdays, anniversaries, and OB appointments (overkill?). I’ve always been a horse-with-blinders type of friend—neglecting to stay connected once people are out of my periphery. So, shifting the attention I usually reserved for romantic partners toward my friends left me with a deep kind of contentedness I didn’t know was possible.
When my salary took a hit, panic set in. That’s when I declared 2023 the year I got “good (er, better) at money.” I budgeted like mad (YNAB for the win) and finally, the concept of “High Yield” clicked. Between teaching, consulting, and freelancing, I tripled my savings. Now, I’ve got a financial runway—whether I go back to a traditional job after grad school or take leeway to write.

Some plans came back tenfold, albeit not at all how I’d expected. Some things were just hard. Many remain a question to be lived into next year.

At the same time, so much feels tenuous. Sifting through the news this fall, I’ve been stunned and aghast and unsure of what to say about any of it. Witnessing my friends’ and students’ profound grief and anger was, and still is, sobering. Sometimes, the best I can do I witness. Others, I feel so useless that it clamps the air out of my chest, until I retreat into my preoccupation with my career and my anxieties and my my my.

We cannot go through life holding our breath. It’s one way to make a life—sure, but a solitary one.

See—while relegated to my teenage bed this week, my contract at the nonprofit I’ve loved for the past five years did come to an end. I knew it was coming, I’d prepared for it. But it wasn’t until my last day came and went that it hit me: I loved doing the work almost as much as I loved saying I did the work; I’d tied my identity and perception as a good, worthwhile human to doing it. I got scared that, without it, I wasn’t virtuous, and worse, I wouldn’t be able to support myself—the same way I used to believe my life and my art lacked significance unless I was out on the road, grinding myself to ash.

This week, surrounded by family who couldn’t tell you the name of the last person I dated but love me well enough to ask seven times a day if I need Theraflu, I was reminded of this: I am privileged beyond measure. I have access to education. Safety. Community. None of these are guaranteed. And I will squander every last morsel of it if I continue charging through my days like an anxious-avoidant banshee.

This is a wayward post, I know (blame Theraflu). I think what I’m trying to say is that ego and fear are opposite sides of the same counterfeit coin. I spent much of 2023 busying myself through a state of mild terror, and then I slowed for fifteen minutes and was reminded of why I’m here—and it ain’t to be impressive or scared all the time. It’s to help and be helpful, ideally without bulldozing you or myself in the process. Try and leave this place better than I found it. All of this requires being present long enough to recognize what needs tending to.

This week, that meant delaying this newsletter so I could give my nephew his first guitar lesson, and then become one with the couch while I binged the Hallmark Miracle of Christmas Marathon™ with mom.

I’m kicking off 2024 at rest. Noticing. And when I’m low, asking: How will you make this into something good?

With gratitude and sniffles,

Aly

Aly Tadros

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