Burnout, Identity, & Letting Go of Comparison: Alex on Finding Meaning Beyond Music

Beyond the labels, Alex is multilayered, compassionate, and intellectual (plus animated). Alex shares the many chapters that have shaped him, from growing up in New York City and training in the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Choir, to studying at Penn, working in corporate marketing at PepsiCo, and pursuing music in both New York and Los Angeles. He explains how turning music into a career led to burnout, identity fusion, and painful rejection. He reflects on the toll of comparison and how meditation and Buddhist practice helped him begin to disidentify from his thoughts and reconnect with a deeper sense of self. After pivoting into SAT tutoring and college essay consulting, Alex traveled to Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu in 2024, an experience that further shaped his perspective and sparked a growing interest in psychotherapy.

You can connect with Alex on LinkedIn: Alex Utay 

Transcript

Alex & Rachel 0:00

Hello everyone, and welcome to Unmasked a Beyond Worthy Podcast. My name is Rachel Peck. Thank you for tuning in and for being here. we're gonna take our moment of stillness, just breathe. Notice your energy today. Notice your breath. Embrace this moment to pause during our busy lives. Take one more inhale and exhale intentionally, and then we'll get started. Alex, welcome. Very happy to be here, Rachel. I'm so glad to have you and so grateful that you said yes to being on the pod. Yeah. I just, I hope I live up to the amazing guests you've had so far. Of course you will, and you're already being different than many of my guests because we always start with how you would describe yourself in three words, and this time there's a bit of a twist. I'm gonna bring the words to Alex. The twist is Alex didn't do what he was told. Well, I did prepare because we had a conversation about a week ago when we were talking about the podcast, and you were like, what three words would you use to describe me? So I took it upon myself to think of words. and I came today with seven Mm-hmm. Because I, I couldn't narrow it down, so I'm gonna say them and then you can choose and I'll choose. Yeah. I like this game. All right, here we go. Animated, classic. Mm-hmm. Multilayered. Mm-hmm. Compassionate. Composed slash calm. More composed than calm. Okay. Confident and intellectual. intellectual. I think I'm going to start with multilayered. and I think part of the reason I didn't do the assignment and pond it off to you is 'cause I really don't know Which ones to choose. cause I feel like I have a lot of sides to myself. And sometimes I love that and sometimes I'm just like, ugh enough. pick one dude. or pick three. So multilayered. I would also probably choose compassionate, even though sometimes I know in our classes I maybe Come off as a little bit direct, which is needed. Uh, yeah. Which I think is a balancing function for our, SMBI cohort. but I do think, I feel people's energy quite strongly, and relate to a lot of different people. Have a lot of compassion for people. Part of I think the multi-layered living a lot of lives is I kind of understand where a lot of different people are coming from, and have taken steps along a lot of different paths, as I'm sure we'll get to. all right which ones are left? Animated? Animated, definitely, but not sure I'm gonna choose that. composed or calm, Confident and intellectual. I think I'm gonna choose intellectual. I'm more composed than calm. I do a good job of looking calm for growing up as a neurotic New York City kid, I am much more calm than I used to be and Maybe than most who grew up in this insane concrete jungle. and yeah, I think I'm confident, but also, you know, deeply insecure sometimes as well. so yeah, intellectual, I think, I love ideas. I love debating them. I love getting into the weeds with them I love to learn and, intellectual is definitely a word I would own. own. So you left out animated, which, whatever. I loved that one. Mm-hmm. And the reason why is, 'cause I actually looked up the definition before coming here, just to be like, yeah, what does this actually mean in simple terms? And just from Google, it was full of life or excitement. Lively. And I just, I really do think that is you. Okay. So we'll add that as a little fourth bonus. Yeah, Yeah. But that definitely is me. when the inner child in me comes out, that's very much how it comes out. There are pictures of me as a little kid and like the look in my eyes is insane. I'm like, what is happening in that child's brain right now? either I'm so excited or like I might be the spawn of Satan. I'm not sure. there's this just wide-eyed, crazy look. I give in a lot of photos and the little kid's still alive in me. You might have to share that photo and I'll, I'll tag it. Yeah, I have some examples for sure. I wanna dive more into multi-layered because based on what I know about you, many of the places you've been and experiences you've had have have most likely shaped these layers. Will you tell us about the many lives you've lived? yes, it's really a question of where to begin. I think it starts with just growing up here. that's such a formative experience. growing up in New York City in an apartment surrounded by just the amount of energy and the things that you're exposed to, and. I think I very much identify as being from here, you know? I think it makes, I was gonna say like worldly, but that makes me vomited my mouth a little bit to use that word to describe myself. but I do think, as I said, I was really exposed to a lot, very quickly and, I think like the creativity and the animated ness that I have just comes from figuring out how to ride the energy here and being 11 years old and taking the public bus to school being in my teens and being a delinquent, running around Central Park, that's very much part of who I am. and then let's see, the other lives, being a musician, has been a very defining part of my life. and I was very musical, very young. at age six, my choir teacher pulled my mother aside and said, Alex has A pretty special voice you should take him to audition for the Metropolitan Opera Children's Choir. so then I spent four or five years. in that children's choir, which is its own crazy story. I was in the basement of the Met with like in a room with no windows, probably a couple times a week for like two to three hours with this woman named Elena Doria who would scream at you. she ruled with an iron fist. if you looked at the clock 'cause we're kids we've been going like, no, no no LA off for two hours now. A little stir crazy. You know, I want to, I want to go home. she would throw a eraser at you and I swear to God, she could have been in the major league. She would hit you every time. and yeah, I played violin when I was very young and did that all through high school. it's just been something that I feel deeply connected to and just opens up. I would say a portal to soul spirit. I've related to Erica, our mutual friend very deeply on that as being the gateway to, you know, music made me feel like there was something more. That some world, some way that energy moves that we cannot see but is there, this is jumping around a little bit, but, I kind of lost touch with music for a little while, later in high school. And then ended up picking up the guitar, which I'd played violin before that. And I was like, I don't wanna play stupid classical music anymore. I wanted to be like one of the strokes, which, they were like the gods in 2006, 2008 New York City. Um, Yeah, I lost touch with it and then fell back in love with it through, guitar and then got to college and all I wanted to do was be in a band. I had never really done that before. We had no garages growing up, and I was in one and then was really loving music, but wasn't just gonna pursue it out of college, especially going to Penn where I went it's a very, very pre-professional school, like everyone's doing on-campus recruiting and I ended up doing on-campus recruiting and then ended up in another life being a corporate marketer. for two years, right outta college at PepsiCo Selling sugar water to the kids, in Steve Jobs. famous words. no, but I actually really enjoyed that experience there were a lot of incredible people there that I met and really smart, really creative people. But at that age, I was like 22 and I just wanted to make music. I just wanted to go for it, whatever that, I didn't know what that meant. but I ended up quitting my job at 24 moving home and then being a musician for the larger part of seven or eight years from about 24 to like 31, 32. which you went to LA for. Where does LA fall into this? Yeah, so I quit my job and I'm in New York and I'm playing in bands and I'm playing with some buddies of mine in one act and, A college friend I'm playing with, we started this like Guy girl Duo. So I'm just playing at all the, little New York spots and writing songs with people and just like getting into it. It was so much fun in the beginning. I'm like, oh my God, this is I'm here to write a song today. This is my job. Not that I was making any money doing it, but I. Was blindly confident at that point. so I spent four years in New York chasing, just performing. and writing songs. Like a lot of the way the music industry works that people don't really understand is that most music is not made, especially in the pop sphere. And I was more in the pop sphere, like it's very collaborative. me and my partner would write songs, but then we'd take that song into like a New York City producer who would write some more of it with us and create a demo. And a lot of people's hands would be on it. So you become part of this whole community, this whole like scene of people who are making music. and I did that for four years and then, in the duo, we were offered a small record deal. By this, label called Photo Finish. They had done like Arian Hill and Mr. Wives, some like indie acts that had really gotten a lot of heat and we didn't end up taking the deal. And then we ended up breaking up like right after that because we just couldn't really get it together. We just were having a lot of issues between us and, not a lot of vision as to what the project was gonna be. And at that point I was like, you know what, I don't know if I want to be the act, the artist, the consumer facing person. what I love about this is making music I was really getting into producing and studios and I'd always liked writing. Writing I had always felt was the core for me and I didn't love the social media part. Especially now, I'm sure as well, but even at that time, this is like 2016, 2017, you know, it's just like people, they care about your music for sure. But if you have a million followers, they'll pretty much be like, we can get you good music. We have plenty of people we can take you to that get good music. The hardest thing is to get the beginning of the fan base and the most expensive thing. So it just was so clear that Being a musician was only one part of it. You had to really become an online presence, presence, and I just never liked that it was always very hard for me. so to answer your question, when I decided that I wanted to write and produce, I was quickly told by a lot of people, if you really want to write and produce for other people, move to la that's Mecca, that's where it happens. Wow, Wow. multilayered. And there's still more. I do wanna ask what your relationship is now with writing and music, are you still doing it? Has that fallen off? The short answer is it's definitely fallen off. I said it was fun in the beginning. It really stopped being fun as I got further into it. it's really hard to take something you love deeply and try to make it your career. I think there's a lot of blanket statements, follow your dreams, follow your passion like you'll never work a day in your life the reality more in my experience is follow your dreams and you'll work every single day for the rest of your life. it's a much harder path, at least for me. I can't speak for everyone else's experience, but for me, trying to squeeze money and professional identity out of music just got very wonky in terms of having my sense of self so wrapped up in the creation and interpreting rejection as deep personal rejection also just not really knowing myself that well, in terms of how I would react to that. I thought I would care less, I I grew up in New York City, went to this like private school, then went to Penn, and I was in such a bubble, where they're like telling you how amazing you are and how elite you are the people walking around have such huge egos, et cetera, et cetera. I kind of thought to myself, I'm like, oh, I don't care about any of that. I don't care about being in this environment. I just had this like rebellious streak When I then transitioned to an industry where like. okay, I'm 24 and I'm super cocky thinking I'm just gonna come in and be like, God's gift to the world. And it's like nobody cares at all, you know, you're 24. It's like people who do this a lot of the times have done nothing else. They can't imagine doing anything else. And I remember when I quit my job to pursue music, my mom took me out for lunch. My mom was an actress before she became a lawyer and then became a mom, and now as a psychotherapist to finish that loop. So she's also multilayered and has lived a lot of lives. But, she had always told me I loved acting Alex, but coming in. in every single day to a new audition and just being rejected over and over and over again. You have to have a certain kind of personality to like integrate that to live with that, And she said to me, she's like, the people who do entertainment and succeed cannot imagine doing anything else. And I remember sitting there and kind of gulping, and in the back of my head I was like, yeah, but I could probably do some other things as well, you know, like, and it's funny how in hindsight those moments become very salient because it's like I knew something there that I didn't really want to admit to myself. I imagine it was hard with your experience in music from such a young age through high school and then living in la being able to find yourself beyond being a musician. And then you talk about people in entertainment who couldn't imagine anything else. the identity association that we hold with the things that we do can be really hard to separate from and find who we really are beneath that. When did you discover who you were beyond music? I dunno. Two weeks ago. or start discovering. 'cause I recognize we are all continuing to discover new things about ourselves every day. Mm-hmm. You know, around 30, 31, I just underwent this really dark night of the soul with music where I didn't want to do it anymore. I would wake up and I'd be in a session and I could see that I was having these intrusive thoughts. this song will never go anywhere. This is gonna end up on a hard drive to never be listened to. and I was just getting more and more frustrated. I had also realized that in my. Desperation to make it or just make money or be a musician that could support themselves full time doing music that I had really lost a sense of who I was as an artist, I made too much of a science out of it, or was trying to make too much of a science out of it constantly. Like being like, oh, I should be copying these things as a producer because that's what's on these playlists right now. And I just really bottomed out the pain of bottoming out it's almost like it just forced me to dis-identify from being a musician, or from, not from being a musician, but from equating my self-worth with whether or not, I had X amount of streams, or I got a blue check mark on Instagram, or, you know, any of the currency in Los Angeles. well, it reminds me of my experience in the sporting world because at the end of collegiate soccer, I remember my last game I was ready to throw away my cleats. I was like, I'm done. I was really ready to be done with something that I had spent two decades of my life playing because the fun and the love of it had been stripped away. And It was now more about performance, proving something, feeling worthy, which soured the experience for me and sounds somewhat similar to music. You mentioned earlier that writing music was a way you discovered something greater than yourself it alludes to what people would call spirituality, which is very relevant to us and our program and this master's degree. I wanna jump to Nepal, which you haven't mentioned yet. Because that seems. Very different from New York, la all these things and going to Nepal and experiencing just a different world and spiritual dimension. Will you talk about that as well? Yeah. Well I guess I'll get us to Nepal quickly, please. Um, from kind of where I from bottoming out in music. And I think that will also answer your previous question a little bit more fully. when that happened, and when I just realized, okay, like I need to let go of this dream. it is not serving me. It's not making me the person who I want to be. It's not actually aligned with my deepest values, and it's hard for me to imagine my life long term doing it, I realized that in retrospect there were a lot of really shiny things that I was attracted to, obviously in that industry. But the idea I realized of like getting up and doing that every day for the next 20 years, I just, I couldn't really see it for myself. and then realizing, okay, I've spent seven years doing this and the weight. Of what I felt I'd given up in that time. the weight of the cost of stepping off of a more traditional path, and once we're in our early thirties, it's like I'm seeing my friends who, kept more traditional paths, like really starting to get rewarded for it. And I'm in a dark place my self-esteem is like deeply wounded. Meditation and Buddhism and other forms of, let's call it non-denominational spirituality, really helped me through those times. Um, just being able to sit with myself and take the position of the watcher really dis-identify from my thoughts, it's as simple as I am not my thoughts, I am not my feelings, I am not my thoughts. and training myself to be able to take on that consciousness was so important for me to be able to disidentify from negative thought loops that, I felt stuck in as I navigated this transition. So, Nepal, this, there's now a couple years. In between like stopping music and Nepal, where the whole time I was doing music, I was an SAT tutor to make money. There's the intellect. There's the intellect. I was not the best SAT tutor. no, I was fine. But, out of that, I had a client then ask, Hey, can you help our son with his college essay. And I did that. And then another one asked, and then I was introduced to, one of these, they call 'em independent educational consultants in New York and these are essentially people that are hired by, um, wealthy families in New York to help their kids get into top schools. So I got connected with one of these, consultants who then gave me a shot with a lot of her clientele and I just became the ringer. I was like, do you have a guy? I was guy, like I just, I had a phone number and that was it. And fast forward, two years from burning out music and I'm like making a mid-level tech salary, being a college essay guru. You can't, you know, you can't, you can't really predict this stuff it was great in terms of it was so nice being so wounded from not making money for a long time and all the associations I had with that. Suddenly, I'm making all of this money this great per hour. I'm a my own boss. I'm able to travel around and I'm basking in that, but also with this knowing that I'm not spending the next 20 years being a college essay guru and so I applied to a different clinical psychology master's in LA that would've started July, 2024. And I had gone through a breakup at the beginning of the year, 2024. That was devastating and, I was approaching, starting at this school and realizing hold on, I have some cash. I'm not in any sort of relationship. I I have this start date that I could probably defer and I've always wanted to take a solo backpacking trip to Asia and explore a lot of these, modalities of meditation and just eastern contemplative practice that have been so important to me. that is how we ended up in, November, 2024 at Copan Monastery, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Katmandu, Nepal. Which was an incredible life-changing experience. Was it a silent retreat? It was not a silent retreat. we did a week of silence. and there would be silent times, but it was honestly more like Buddhist summer camp. there were 400 people from all over the world Who came in for this. it's a very well-funded, beautiful monastery on a hill overlooking all of cat mandu. Wow. And so it was such a cool experience. I mean, just being in that space, was so powerful. But also the people. we're from everywhere and it was so cool to step out of an American context and Meet, the kind of traveling du wells of the world and now you're back in New York. And then somehow that led me right back home because that, it's just so perfect. It's very poetic. that whole arc led me back home. And soon. Similar to your mother, you would like to be a psychotherapist at some point. Mm-hmm. What do you think is driving you the most towards becoming a psychotherapist and going into this field? The first thing is that I love people and I'm endlessly fascinated by them. Love talking to people. I love trying to understand where they're coming from. I love trying to figure out why they are the way they are and to be able to do that in a spirit of service where I know what I'm doing really will matter for people and make a difference. combined with intellectually I find it very fascinating to think about. How do we conceptualize the mind? What is it? How does it work? there are so many different ways and I feel like I'm just starting to scratch the surface right now, and I really do love it all. from the most woo to the, most scientific materialist there's such depth to this field, and the ability to really, bridge bridge creativity, you know, interpersonal intuition and, call it like academic knowledge. You also touched on when you were speaking about your friends, while you were working in music, pursuing a dream, and then stepping into SAT Essay, writing Support for Kids you mentioned this element of comparison. Seeing your friends going off in different directions, having built a career, what have you found grounding when comparison creeps into your mind? Seeing friends from high school or younger who are doing different things? How does that feel and what tools do you use to get past that. it's a good question and an ongoing process. having a sense of meaning and direction in my own life that feels heart driven and vocational, something I'm deeply excited about doing that makes me feel more comfortable in my own skin more than any particular practice, just that alignment and, I want to do a doctorate at this point, which is, would put me at being a clinical psychologist at, 41 maybe. and yeah, I'd be lying if I said I don't have all sorts of feelings that bubble up about that but knowing that setting myself up to do something that I really feel matters is really important for me and I think it's, It is a matter of mind training. while it's much easier said than done, I do credit meditation Contemplative practice with giving me the space to go, oh, that's the story again. And every time I name it, I'm not fused with it. That's the story and it comes off slowly and in layers it's not linear And the amount of times I've been like this again, but. I try to measure it, not as does it come up, we get our stuff. I remember one of my teachers said like, the bad news is it's your stuff and it's not really going away that easily. The good news is you don't get other stuff. in terms of kind of the formation, structures of who we are in our character. we each kind of have the roadmap of things that we have to work on in this life. And I do think part of that is karmic. what I was gonna say a second ago is I try not to judge it by, does it come back up? But more thinking about. about how long does it hijack me? do I see it and maybe like become it for a little bit and then go okay, cool. We know where that road goes, and am able to step away from it. And what I can say is that all the work I've done over all these years, I'd say it's less that this stuff still comes up. I still feel it. I still feel the Pang. Even before I came in here, I was saying to you it's, there's a lot of stuff, even in doing something like this, it reminds me of like Interviews I did for music or stuff like that, and this idea of kind of the external gaze and that there's still part of me that's like this frustrated performer, and wants that recognition and like the fact that I sat in my room before coming here and went, oh look, that's happening. That is the work and the rest to go woo for a second. It's like the rest you give it to God, it will come off when it's meant to come off. Thank you for sharing. I have no doubt a lot of people will find comfort in the words you just said. And I'm excited for you and where you're headed because It's clear you're gonna be an amazing psychotherapist. You've done the work, you've really experienced so much of life, and I'm glad that the audience got to hear your voice today. So thank you for being here. Sadly, we're at the end. You'll have to come back and talk about karma. Well, thank you Rachel. Thank you for the kind words and for having me. And letting me Babylon. I hope I didn't say anything too embarrassing or incriminating if you feel so inclined, I always offer up For the audience, if they were to connect with you or wanna reach out. Are you on LinkedIn? are you on Instagram? Anything that you care to share, I am not really on Instagram right now, part of the whole, uh, you know, not comparing myself to other people, gambit. but Sure let's link, let's link on LinkedIn. Amazing. Yeah. Okay. You can find me at Alex Ute. So original. All right, thanks Alex, and thanks everyone for listening. Thanks, Rachel.