The Annual Goalpost

I love and hate making these posts.

On one hand, I love dreaming up all the possibilities. But on the other hand, I hate trying to guess what kind of goals are reasonable and what aren't. After probably close to seven years of making these annual posts, I still feel that I don't know what I'm doing.

Anyway, here goes. It might look a little different this year.

- At least two new dance films.

I think I know which two. I just have to DO them (this includes memorising!).

- Create a long-ish (15+ minute) dance show.

- Audition for three shows.

- Make a plan of attack to rewrite Kyrie again.

First step is to reread the thing and make lots of notes. I already know Act I has severe pacing issues. I might try adding a subplot or something... I'm actually not quite sure how to fix it.

- Start pitching to magazines.

- Write at least four articles/stories a week.

- Enter a writing contest.

- At least one date night every two weeks.

- Read more (soft goal of nine books in 2024).

- More watercolour painting. I am deliberately not putting a number here.

- Sustainably cut back hours at the day job.

I am so burnt out with my current job it is not even funny. The management has been restructured, and now the workplace culture is so bad that I would literally rather die than work one more day there. I'm also not making nearly enough money there to cover our living expenses so every day I work there I feel I get farther behind. I'm really trying to grow my dance/writing network so maybe I can at least freelance enough to cut my hours at my current job even if I can't quit outright.

- Save $1000 for a house.

STRETCH GOALS:

- Apply for at least one festival (ideally with above longer dance show).

- Take at least three dance classes (or courses of some kind).

- Crochet myself a sweater.

- Make a third dance film.

This year's list is deliberately much shorter than previous years. It turns out it's just not possible to sustain the kind of creative output I was expecting from myself while also holding down an extremely emotionally draining full time job and being married.

The other thing is, the projects I'm undertaking now are a step up from the things I used to do. Ten years ago I was building a portfolio. I was making dances and honing my creative voice on small projects. But now I'm building on that experience to make bigger things. My goals used to be 'choreograph X amount of dances' -- small things that I could easily knock out in a week if I wanted to. But now the goals are more like 'make two dance films.' And learning, shooting, and editing a dance film is a lot more time-intensive than simply choreographing one on paper. Sottovoce took me 58 days -- nearly two months (granted, I am including the choreography time in this), and that was very much a speedrun. Inside Of You -- a much shorter and smaller-scale piece -- was still a solid month of editing even though I only filmed for an hour, and I'm not even counting the astronomical amount of time it takes me to memorise a dance piece nowadays. I'm looking to take some serious steps in this coming year -- bigger, more time-intensive steps, and those take up less space on the page.

This is exactly what I've spent the last ten years or so working towards. Last year I took some big steps. This year I'm looking to build on those steps and take bigger ones.

Tired

I'm tired of being a failure.

I'm tired of being broken.

I'm tired of everything I do being wrong.

I'm tired of being yelled at.

I'm tired of being told I don't know how to do anything.

I'm tired of waking up in the morning.

I'm tired of the same old, same old.

I'm tired of having nothing left to give.

I'm tired of looking into my future and seeing only pain.

I'm tired of trying solutions and having them fail -- often spectacularly.

I'm tired of trying to find purpose and meaning.

I'm tired of trying to find a reason to fight for anything.

I'm tired of losing those who are supposed to love me.

I'm tired of being somehow simultaneously 'too much' and 'too little.'

I'm tired of crying.

I'm tired of trying.

I'm tired FROM trying.

I'm tired of being broken.

I'm tired of being the black sheep

I'm tired of having nowhere to put this pain.

I'm tired of scrimping and scraping for every penny.

I'm tired of fighting.

I'm tired of having my 'friends' abandon me.

I'm tired of not being able to afford to get the help I need.

I'm tired of having to be strong all the time.

I'm tired of living.

A Search for Fulfilling Work

I'm still job-hunting and every day at my current job kills my soul a little bit more. I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. I'm in limbo as far as my training for the next 'level' in the company, so to speak, and even though it comes with a slight (very slight) pay raise, I feel no excitement for it. I'm really just doing it for the money, and I need more than just money to feel that my job -- that my time -- is worth it. I'm not feeling fulfilled at all, and the rush I used to get in making X amount of drinks or burgers in a certain timeframe just isn't doing it for me anymore. The thrill of accomplishment is wearing off, especially now that I'm being more consistent with finishing dance films and I have Kyrie fully rewritten. Those are huge, complex, creative, challenging projects, and burgers are just... burgers.

However, I currently live in a tiny town with no real, fulfilling jobs. I've been applying for remote online 'virtual assistant' and copywriting jobs, but so far I'm striking out.

I've been looking into being a freelance writer more seriously. Until recently, I've been so overwhelmed by even the idea of looking it up that I haven't even Googled it. But I'm started to do some research, and... it actually looks pretty fun. Even some of the lower-end pay rates I've seen would pay many times more per week than my current job. It would definitely be enough to cut my hours at least, if I can get some consistent work. I'm testing out how consistently I can generate ideas and write articles through the month of December, and in the early part of next year my plan is to start actually pitching.

Freelance writing would be the ultimate dream... to wake up at a decent hour of the morning, sit in front of my computer and type for a few hours while listening to fun music, then spend the rest of the day spending time with my husband or working on dance projects. If I'm able to land a dance teaching gig, so much the better -- that's more consistent, something I actually am passionate about, and doesn't require me to get up at 6am and walk to work in the freezing cold and stand on an awful concrete floor all day with managers treating me like I don't know how to do my job and then go to bed at some boring early hour just to do it all over again. And again. And again.

It's not even like I would slave over the computer all day. I can totally put out an 800-1k word article in a half hour and edit it in a day or so. Fifteen years of NaNoWriMo and a five-year college degree have trained me well on that point. I would love my work a lot more, I would be far less tired, and maybe our marriage would improve with the additional time and energy I would have for my husband because it's not being drained out of me at a soulless job that demands so much but has nothing to offer.

Time is precious. I don't want to spend my precious time making burgers that people eat in ten minutes and forget about. I want to spend as much of my time feeling fulfilled as I possibly can. For me, that means writing about things -- helping readers make sense of the world. That means dancing -- the only way I have found any modicum of true peace. That means making crochet projects and paintings -- things that make our world and the worlds of my loved ones just a little bit brighter. Thirty-two hours a week at a job where you're just a cog in a machine is too much time out of such a short life. I could be doing so much with that time and I'm just standing there asking people what they want in their coffee. There's got to be more to life than that. I know there is... I've seen it.

The arts impact people. People carry art with them for the rest of their lives. I want to be a part of that.