The Previous Post Was Too Hopeful, So I'm Writing This

(And also because there hasn't been a good rant on this blog in a while...)

My goal this year was to match and double my choreographic output from last year. That would mean creating twenty-six complete works in 2013. When college happened, I decided to lower the goal to just matching last year's output -- that is, thirteen dances. And right now I'm at eleven and a half. So basically I have twenty-two and a half hours to finish my current work and come up with another full dance by the time the year is over. And somewhere in there I have to figure out what I'm actually doing for National Choreography Month because I haven't even thought about that playlist yet...

All this would have been a much more attainable goal if I hadn't spent FIVE HOURS today on one page of glissades transitioning into waltz turns. I never want to see another glissade again in my life. Seriously, they're one of the easiest things in ballet and I spent FIVE HOURS trying to get the dumb sequence to work. Glissades are tricky little bastards... it doesn't matter how carefully you count them and notate them and think through all that has to happen, you always end up on the wrong foot. Always.

But that's beside the point. Point is, it's very likely (if not a given) I won't meet even the lowered goal. Therefore I hate myself right now (I know, I know, the Swirling Eddies say 'don't hate yourself'...). And there's this voice in the back of my head saying, if you hadn't gone and wasted four months of the year on college...

I could so easily have doubled last year. If it wasn't for college (and the dread associated with it as it approached), I could totally have done twenty-six dances this year. I did absolutely nothing during the actual semester because I was drowning in homework, and even before that, my depression over the prospect of going to college took me almost completely out of choreographic commission as soon as it sunk in that my final dance performance was going to be the one this past June. I haven't been on a good choreographic tear since May (and even then I was practically dying of strep throat, so I feel my work then wasn't as good as it could have been).

Remind me again why I'm blowing two (potentially) wildly creative years of my life in academia? It's not like I'm a great student and it's not like this degree is going to guarantee me a job.

This is so frustrating. So frustrating. I wanted to do so much this year. I wanted to have a solid choreographic repertoire by now, and I don't... because of this music degree. If that isn't irony, I don't know what is.