Who Am I?

My name is Joseph Joel Baldueza and I will be earning my Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Media with a concentration in General Creative Media. I was a transfer from Leeward Community College's Digital Media program and specialized in Digital Photography. I am also a 21-year veteran of the United States Coast Guard.

So, why this particular subject matter and why I am so suddenly emotionally invested in mental health? I was scheduled to graduate from UH West Oahu at the end of the Fall 2020 semester. But a series of unfortunate and unrelated events occurred in my life simultaneously: My aunt in Oregon, whose daughter was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, experienced a stroke and was hospitalized. She currently does not have full function of one-half of her body. (That daughter, who is my first cousin, just recently passed away.) Another aunt in Northern California had to undergo open heart surgery because of an infection in one of her valves. This particular aunt had her youngest daughter taken away from her a few years ago due to cancer. The laptop I used for all my schoolwork, which was first purchased when I initially started school in 2014, decide to quit on me and was no longer functioning properly. On top of everything else, my long-distance girlfriend and I were going through some serious relationship issues. I could not handle all the pressure at once, so my mind and body decided to shut down. My appetite was suppressed. It was difficult to form full sentences. Whenever I tried to close my eyes to sleep, my eyeballs were darting side-to-side beneath my eyelids. I experienced some type of anxiety attack. I decided to isolate myself from the rest of the world for a few days. No human contact, no texts or calls, and no social media. Within those few days of no outside contact with anyone, I did enough damage to my relationship with my girlfriend that she wanted to move on. I wasn’t in the right mindset to continue on with school, so I neglected most of my studies for the remainder of the semester, and eventually had to take a couple failing grades because of it.

​I wanted to do my senior project on the topic of anxiety because I wanted to learn more about my own anxiety and how to better deal with it, if it should ever happen again. I wanted to learn about how other people experience anxiety, what triggers their anxiety, and how they utilize art therapy as a coping mechanism. I even enrolled in Psychology 100 this semester to learn how the mind works when presented with stressful situations. I am hoping that this entire journey will aide in my own healing process. And if I am able to help others deal with their anxiety issues, or at least open up the conversation about anxiety and mental health, then I would have done a lot of good.

© Copyright 2020 Joseph Joel Baldueza