Hand-Me-Downs

This summer I started researching hoarding disorder, and it illuminated a lot of things.

 

I have been accused of hoarding (at least half-jokingly) since I was a child. I have always been a 'pack rat.' I have always carried either a backpack or a very large bag everywhere I go. I go through it and clean stuff out regularly for the sake of my back, but I have just always carried around a lot of stuff. You never know when you're going to need a pair of scissors, or spare AA batteries, or a protein bar, or sunglasses.

 

My room was always in a state of (somewhat) organized chaos. All the papers were loose, but they were all in one pile. Half the clothes weren't on hangers, but they were all piled on the same chair. I could still see the floor, and I vacuumed the ever-shrinking patch fairly regularly.  I had a trash can, and I emptied it whenever it was full. I took dirty dishes up to the dishwasher within 24 hours at least (but usually the same day). My parents and siblings knew not to touch anything in that room lest I spiral into a full-blown panic attack about the 'missing' (usually just moved) object. I could find everything I needed.

 

A few months ago, during some argument, my husband accused me of being a hoarder. I fired back that I wasn't half as messy as I used to be (which is true), but the words lodged in my brain.

What if I really am a hoarder?

I started Googling.

My fear was quickly put to rest as I saw the pictures of what true hoarding looked like. Our house was messy, but it was nothing like those photos. We still had surfaces on which to sit, and cook, and do projects. We still had clean, usable floor space.

 

But some of those photos did look familiar. The cardboard boxes stacked high, the empty margarine containers on every available surface, the newspapers piled in corners. That -- that was my grandparents' house.

 

My paternal grandparents' house had always felt small and cramped. I was well into my teens before I realised that their 'tiny' basement was supposed to have a fireplace on one wall -- that's why I could see brick at the top, behind all the cardboard boxes that slowly encroached on the discoloured patch of shag carpet, the old once-blue exercise bike, and the ragged and very out-of-tune piano. I watched, in real time, as the old spare room in the basement that we played in as kids became so full of boxes and old clothes that we couldn't play there anymore. Then the upstairs spare room that we played in after that suffered the same fate. There was apparently a second spare room in the basement that I have never seen because there were so many boxes piled in front of it from before the time I was old enough to climb down the stairs. I distinctly remember the moment I realised that one of the piles in the basement was actually on a large wooden workbench, and I only realised this because I suddenly recognised a wooden table leg amid the visual chaos. The surface was completely gone. Among the clutter, there was a used, vintage KFC chicken bucket. I know it was used because there were grease stains on it. I examined it once and saw a copyright date of 1973.

 

I remember at some point in my childhood asking my parents why my grandparents had so much stuff. My parents explained that they had grown up during the Great Depression and World War II and were so used to having to save everything, just in case, that they hadn't learned how to turn off the instinct. That was enough explanation for me. I didn't connect the dots between my grandparents' house and the phenomenon of 'hoarding' until this year, despite years of their children (my parents, aunts, and uncles) trying to intervene and often congregating to clean out the garage or the basement or the backyard. My grandmother would 'give things away' to the kids, knowing full well the things would get thrown out, but unable to placate my grandfather about it any other way.

 

The more I think about that house, the more I realise how mid-century glamourous it really was. It has a HUGE kitchen (literally bigger than the entire apartment my husband and I just moved from), at least four, maybe five bedrooms, a large basement with a massive storage room and (presumably?) a faux fireplace, a basement exit, 2.5 bathrooms, a large walkout balcony from the master bedroom (which itself took up over half the upstairs), with a sunroom underneath and a huge backyard. If you were to build and sell a house today with that exact floor plan, it would be worth well over half a million dollars. They were sitting on an absolute jewel of a house, but my memories of it are that everything was tainted. I always felt somehow contaminated every time I set foot in there and I never really thought about why. I just knew I didn't like going there. Something about their house always made my skin crawl.

 

Then I remembered the one time I was in my one aunt's house, how stuffed bears and craft supplies covered every available surface. I mean every surface. There weren't even any chairs to sit on because they were all covered in stuffed animals. How when my oldest uncle died of cancer, it took weeks for the entire neighbourhood to help his wife clean up the yard. How my youngest uncle and his then-wife were constantly at odds about all the engine parts in their yard. How my own dad only has goat paths through his huge workshop, despite my (more motivated) siblings cleaning it out at least once a year since I moved out.

 

Then I began to understand my husband's fear. I am nowhere near that level yet, but all the genetics are there, he knows I grew up poor, he knows I have a significant variety of trauma in my personal history, he knows I struggle a lot with boring things like organization and cleaning.

 

Meds have helped me with motivation and I also notice meds make it easier to get rid of things. But I don't know if there's a way to get rid of the genetic fear of going without that has been built into my soul one cardboard box at a time for three decades. 

One Month Of Vacation

Today marks one month since the day we drove away from our decrepit old apartment in the desert and did not come back.

 

I drove past it a few days ago. There were no Christmas lights on the balcony, for the first time in five years... I have always made sure to put up at least one strand of Christmas lights. And they are up... just not at the blue apartment.

 

It still feels like we're on vacation in a beautiful little guest house, with our Christmas tree and my husband's streaming setup and my grandma's rocking chair and my husband's mead-making station and all my plants on their stand. It still feels like one day we'll wake up and we'll have to leave and go back 'home' to the desert apartment with the spiders and the mice and the four-storey hike one-way to the laundry room and the cinderblock walls with no storage that pressed in around us.

I cried when we left... I was shocked at that. While there were memories in that apartment, most of them were bad ones... ones of my husband so sick that he was quite a different person, one who screamed and threw things and allowed his relatives to dictate my life without standing up for me. Those are all memories that dominated that place and dominated our first three years of marriage, before we were finally able to diagnose and cut out a food allergen that was wrecking absolute havoc on his brain.

I am so grateful for this new place, for the storage space and the natural light and the general livability and lack of lead pipes and the quiet streets. We have heard one (1) vehicle the entire time we've lived here. At the old place we were both routinely woken at night (sometimes multiple times) by people street-racing in souped-up Fords at 3am. I sleep like the dead (I have had roommates consider calling 911 because I sleep so deeply) and even I was sleeping poorly.

I'm not sure whether I should treasure those troubled memories of early marriage or if I should be happy to turn my back on them. I don't want to forget how much better things are now. Both my husband and I are coughing less. We can drink the water straight out of the tap and it tastes delicious. We get curbside recycling pickup... there wasn't even a recycling depot in the town where we used to live (let alone pickup) until mere months before we moved. We have more of a social life already than we ever could have dreamed of in the old town. This is an upgrade in every way.

 

I am struggling to set up my dance studio. I have the flooring pieces (although I do want my larger one from my parents' house), and the room is almost cleaned up (it's been a disaster for most of the time we've lived here because it was one of the lower priorities for unpacking and organization). I'm struggling to want to. I don't know if the stress of moving (and work -- currently in the middle of a show that breaking ticket sales records for the theatre as well as launching ticket sales for next season) is zapping my motivation, or just thinking of all the times I've tried and failed to get dance going again since I've gotten married. I have an opportunity to teach in the new year, and I think I might take it... although last time I tried to teach choreography, I was raked over the coals for being 'unrealistic' and my co-worker actively sabotaged my work so I'm very nervous how it will go. I don't know if the flame of dance has died, necessarily, but it has certainly had a large amount of dirt shovelled onto it.

 

I also want to write again. NaNoWriMo 2023 was the last time I wrote anything longer than a blog post. I don't have any ideas, but I'm finding myself poking absentmindedly around for one. I mentioned wanting to write again to my husband the other day and for the first time in our entire marriage, he said something supportive instead of telling me how I'm wasting my time writing. It might be a while before I actually write something, but I'm open to an idea.

 

I don't know if I should post practice videos on Instagram again when I do start dancing. The world of social media changed significantly during the pandemic, right at the time my in-laws banned me from posting on it. It's an alien landscape to me now, all ads and fake positivity, both of which I have always avoided. There's a definite allure now to the thought of not posting a single thing about dance until I create my next major work... maybe during Nachmo? I do have the space for working out choreography now, so maybe I can do an honest-to-goodness Nachmo for once instead of just a thought experiment (I say that as if I didn't choreograph an entire one-woman show during Nachmo 2023 that got screened in their online festival and is now one of my highest-viewed videos on YouTube).

 

So far, both my husband and I are healthier and happier. I had hoped that this move would give us a place of peace where we can heal from the old wounds and grow into a life instead of just an existence.

 

So far... I think it just might be working. 

Nouns & Adjectives

One of my in-laws recently complained how they don't know me. This elicited two responses in me.

 

The first and most overwhelming was 'maybe if you hadn't spent the last six years criticizing every single word that comes out of my mouth we'd have some semblance of a relationship.'

 

The second response was: 'that makes two of us.'

 

I have never known 'who I am.' I have some nouns, most of which encompass verbs I partake in. I'm a dancer. I'm a choreographer. I'm an artist. I'm a writer. I'm a daughter. I'm a Canadian with German heritage and German bluntness. I'm a hockey fan. I'm married. I'm a sister.

 

This disconnect is apparently a fairly common experience for neurodivergent people, but if anything that makes me wonder even more 'who I am.'

 

I have likes and dislikes. I like the colour pink. I like '80s music. I like salt and vinegar chips and Coffee Crisps. I like sunsets and sweet peas. I dislike 'dance' that is mostly acrobatic tricks. I dislike hot weather. I dislike coffee. I strongly dislike hypocrites and people who weaponise the Christian faith as a tool for manipulating the people around them.

 

There are lines I physically cannot cross. I absolutely can not drink dairy because every single aspect of the experience repulses me (however, I can and do eat my body weight in cheese several times a year).

 

There are things that have happened to me in the past that have informed who I am today. There has been death, divorce, abandonment, loss, poverty, and bullying. There have been moments of kindness, love, warmth, and comfort.

 

There are clinical definitions to describe me. I have ADHD. I have anemia. I have asthma. I am autistic.

 

Over time I have been called smart, stubborn, stupid, courageous, lazy, strong, out-of-touch, too negative, good with words, a bad writer, funny, a failure, cute, unloved, annoying, unremarkable, inflexible.

But who am I, really?

These are all facts about me, but I'm not sure they capture the essence. Or maybe I don't have an essence to capture.

 

Maybe this really is all there is to me. Just a couple of nouns and adjectives, only half of which can be conclusively proven.

Gearing Up For A Boss Fight

Several years ago, I choreographed a piece to White Heart's Desert Rose, arguably one of their biggest hits.

 

The song didn't 'take' for me, at first. It was 'too slow' for my high-octane brain, and there were so many other good danceable White Heart songs available to choreograph to.

 

Then I moved to the desert.

 

The desert is, quite literally, the place where dreams go to die. You are surrounded by nothing but brown, all year long. The grass never turns green. The trees... what trees? Those aren't a thing. Rain? Yeah, right. Cloud cover? Never met her. Cool weather? HAHAHAHAHAHA yeah that only happens in fairytales.

The desert is also home to the most formidable naysayer I have ever encountered. The church, the college professors, my extended family and multiple visits from the literal Angel Of Death combined could not do what this woman did: stop me from creating.

 

She stopped me from writing, from having opinions, from dancing, from choreographing, from talking, from thinking, from living. 

She dug me a grave and kicked me into it, then forcibly held me her hands on my throat till I lost consciousness. I have been trapped in that grave for five years. And I'm tired of wasting the breath of my one precious life being silenced by somebody who, by her own admission, knows nothing about me. For the past few months, I have been excavating the ruins of my life, trying to find the faith and courage that was once my sole focus. I'm starting to find the jagged shards and piece them together, like a cosmic jigsaw puzzle. If I can solve it, I'll find my soul again.

For my return back to the stage and the screen, I want to make two dance films: Desert Rose and Hope.

 

Hope has seen a test audience, who seemed to enjoy it. What's more, that means it's already memorised. My idea for that video is pretty simple... probably just a studio video, no fancy sets or costumes.

 

Desert Rose, however, is a lot more complicated.

 

I want to film it in the desert that tried to strangle me and God's purpose for me. I have deliberately curated a bright costume to stand out against the scat brown. Because like it or not, that's what I do. That's what I have always done. I do not and will not fit in. I do not and will not hamstring myself to impress somebody else's imaginary social circle.

Desert Rose has been 'in production' (read: sidelined by my fear of her violent, vindictive oppression) since the summer of 2022. That's over three years now. Every single year, when the weather finally cools enough to even consider being outdoors for any length of time, I look at all my plans for Desert Rose. I think about what it means and how much I want to dance again. I think about how long it's been since I did anything close to fulfilling my dream.

 

Yesterday I was watching a YouTube video about the importance of backing yourself. Most of the points the presenter made were very similar to things I said on this very blog, years ago, that this woman forced me to stop believing. One of the points was 'compare the consequences of doing the thing with the consequences of not doing the thing.'

 

I went to my oft-viewed Desert Rose planning document and wrote the following:

 

'What happens if I DON’T do this?

You will regret it. You already are. You will have no self-respect. You will be disappointed in yourself for not making a way, not trying harder... That $45 you spent on that pink bodysuit will be a waste. This will become just another brick on the road away from your dream. You will never have more time than you do now. 18-year-old you would be angry and disappointed to find out about the fearful pansy you’ve become. She would be so angry that you didn’t fulfill her dream. That you didn’t push through, didn’t follow God, that you have become what she hated and swore she’d never be. You will have crushed her dreams — the only thing she had to live for for so long. You only live once.

 

If you don’t do this, then none of her pain was worth it.'

 

I owe it to teen Kate to get back up, to put on the gloves, to train until I'm untouchable again.

 

I am about to face what I hope is the final boss: the two-headed hydra of the desert environment and the violent, manipulative woman who tried to bury me alive.

 

I will win. And I will win on their turf. 

25 Years

This fall is the 25th anniversary of me starting ballet classes. That means I've officially been performing, in some form or another, for 25 years.

 

Especially in dance, and especially for a 'late starter' like me (I was six), 25 years is fairly monumental. Dancers often age out in their mid to late 20s, so for me to still be going is a blessing I don't take lightly.

 

Don't get me wrong, I feel the years a bit. My back has never been the same since my work injury in 2023, and my ankles are often grumpy in the mornings. But I have a HUGE body of work to look back on, and for the time being, I'm still able to add to it.

I'm currently working on a (non-dance) project that chronicles every show I've ever performed in or choreographed for, and so far there are over seventy-five shows represented.

This has made me look very hard at my constant feeling that I don't know what I'm doing. Imposter syndrome has been a thread throughout my entire life. In everything -- school, chores, work, performing -- I have always felt like I wasn't meeting people's expectations of me. And sometimes this perception was enforced by instructors. My childhood ballet teacher literally told my parents that I would likely get a failing grade on an upcoming RAD exam (I passed that exam with my highest score ever, probably because my parents chose not to tell me what she had said till months afterwards). More recently, my college professors would tell me to my face at least once a week that I 'wasn't even trying.'

 

I've mentioned before how I literally made it my goal in my final year of college to practice myself to death, (and almost succeeded) and the reason I made that goal was to prove, once and for all, that I actually was trying (spoiler alert: as far as I know, that professor still doesn't believe I was trying despite me turning in practice logs of 60+ hours weekly, despite my frequent hospital visits because my body was disintegrating in the wake of the effort I was putting in, despite me being the only one from both of my graduating classes from that college still actively performing). Even though I'm no longer actively trying to practice myself to death, the same feeling of inadequacy that drove me to make such an unthinkable goal still lingers in the back of my mind every second of every day. Living in a tiny, artless, colourless, forgotten, literal-hole-in-the-ground desert town has only strengthened that feeling of falling behind... the lack of artistic opportunities make me feel like the few meagre skills I had managed to cobble together are atrophying.

 

But then I look at my list of shows for my project, and I see how I did four shows in 2024 alone, and have added six shows to my résumé in the first eight months of 2025. I'm getting opportunities. I know what I'm doing, and I know how to learn new things.

 

Maybe I'm not the lazy failure that my professors, the church, and my extended family made me out to be. I have 75+ shows and 25 years on a CV that say otherwise.

Stage Fright? ...Now?

I am two weeks away from tap dancing in an established music festival which could draw up to 450 people. I am high enough in the billing that my name actually appears on the poster that's plastered around town and circulating social media. As far as I know, nobody has tap danced in this festival before.

 

I am rather terrified.

 

This is strange for me. Even as a kid, I never got stage fright. As I waited backstage for my first ever dance recital performance, I waited for the nerves to show up, but they never did. Twenty-five years of performing and they never have.

 

I've tap danced in front of bigger crowds than this. But usually those performances are in darkened theatres with audiences who came fully expecting to see dance. An outdoor mostly-folk music festival that's marketed to a somewhat faith-based and generally older audience is NOT the same thing. When I submitted my proposal, I half-expected to be laughed out of their email inbox. Instead, they offered me a slot.

 

I have spent literal months agonising over which songs to use. They had to be pieces I either already knew or could memorise thoroughly enough to perform comfortably (which limited my options severely), and they had to be accessible for an audience that has almost certainly never seen tap dance before and is at this event for the acoustic guitar music.

The day before the performers were publicly announced, I finally settled on my final set list.

 

I'm starting them off simple, with some classic, upbeat Michael Card. Then we're moving to a similarly upbeat-sounding Steve Scott (but with more pensive lyrics). After that, there is the obligatory DA song, which will make absolutely no sense to anybody in the entire audience (but the tap dancing sounds cool), and then I'll hit them with the biggest risk -- an NF song. Like an honest-to-goodness rap song (*clutches pearls*). It's a huge risk, given the target audience, but my choreography for that song is absolutely show-stopping. I cannot follow that with anything else currently in my repertoire. I have to end off with this one.

 

I keep reminding myself that I have spent my entire adult life launching myself off artistic cliffs... and surviving. I keep reminding myself how so many people look at the barriers I've pushed back on and how they've called me courageous, with a blush of awe in their voices. I keep reminding myself of all the other faith-based audiences I've accosted with my art and how many of them actually loved what I did, even though it was (*gasp!*) dance. I remember how my most recent tap dance performance (in Newsies) brought down the house every single time.

I can do this. I have done this.

 

But I'm still terrified.

The Unborn Baby That Changed History

Content warning: death, child loss, abandonment, family trauma, mention of abuse. 

 

I have long wondered why I can be so angry, bitter, and distant. After 2015, that makes sense, but why was I already walking with an emotional limp before that phone call saying my uncle had cancer?

 

The other day, while cleaning the kitchen, I got thinking about my first experience with loss -- so long ago and at such a young age that until this week I had not categorized it as such.

 

In 2000, not long after the birth of my brother, my parents announced they were having another baby. I was delighted. I loved my baby brother, and I wanted very badly to have a baby sister as well.

 

In the fall of 2000, my mother went for a routine doctor's appointment. The doctor could not hear the baby's heartbeat, so she was sent -- with some urgency -- to the local hospital for an ultrasound. In that in-between time, I was told the truth -- that they could not hear a heartbeat -- but I was also told it was possible that something was blocking the stethoscope, hence the ultrasound. This was explained so calmly and in such a matter-of-fact way that while I do remember praying that the baby was okay, I was mostly convinced that everything would be fine -- the ultrasound would find the baby safe and sound.

Someone took me to dance class, I don't remember if my mother snuck me over between appointments, or if my dad or grandma took me.

 

An hour later, I left dance class and headed to the parking lot. Dad was waiting for me -- Dad never picked me up from dance. Even though I thought it was perfectly logical that Mom was still in her appointment, I knew somewhere in my soul that the baby was not okay.

 

I don't remember when or how it was explained to me -- probably on the car ride. But there was no sugarcoating (even as a child, I hated it when people danced around an issue, and my parents largely respected that). The baby, at 17 weeks, was dead. When I asked if the baby was going to stay in my mother's 'tummy,' Dad explained she would have the baby like normal (I was familiar with the concept from my brother's birth), only it wouldn't be alive when it came out. He also told me that would probably happen that night or the next morning, not in the springtime like it was supposed to.

 

I saw my mother only for a few seconds when we got home. She looked terrible (she usually did when she was pregnant -- she never had a single easy pregnancy, and it was only another year or so before I started to wonder why she kept putting herself through all that awfulness). She retreated quickly back to my parents' bedroom, and Dad put us kids to bed.

 

I don't remember much of the next morning. Dad told us (or at least me) that the baby had been delivered the night before. I don't remember if Mom was there at all.

 

I do remember over the following weeks how Dad would occasionally check in with me about it, to see how I was feeling about it. While I was old enough to understand death and emotionally connected enough to know I was sad, I didn't have the vocabulary or emotional awareness to go much deeper than that. He shared with me that he was sad and upset too. He also told us how his mother had also lost a pregnancy when he was young. He invited my grandparents over for coffee one night to talk about it. My grandmother shared that she had actually lost two -- news that surprised even my dad. She told the stories of both losses. Knowing her, she probably offered a lot of comfort and cried with my parents, but I don't actually remember that.

 

A few months later, my parents announced that they were expecting again. The doctors kept a much closer eye on her this time, but things progressed well.

At her 16 week checkup, the baby had a strong heartbeat and was moving well. At 17 weeks, my mother went to her doctor's appointment. The details in my memory aren't nearly as clear. But I remember her saying she hadn't felt the baby move in a couple of days, and then somehow I heard that this baby, too, had died.

 

In retrospect, this was the one that altered my mother forever.

 

I didn't realise that till this week, in 2025. I had wondered for years what had happened to the fun, kind, gentle woman who raised my sister and me, who took us to the library and baked cookies with us and showed us which blades of grass made the best whistles, why suddenly she was replaced by this screaming ball of rage with an absolutely hair-trigger temper. I'm shocked I didn't make this connection before.

 

The next few months were a whirlwind of specialists appointments as the doctors tried to figure out how my mother lost two pregnancies at 17 weeks within six months of each other after having three perfectly healthy children -- the youngest of whom was barely a year old. We, the living children, spent more time at my grandparents' and my aunt's house than we did at home, and as the oldest, I was in charge of my two younger siblings. My parents became strangers to me. After the first loss, my parents had held space for our emotions even while they were openly processing their own. After the second one, they disappeared. I lost them too when that second baby died.

 

By the time my mother's violent morning sickness started again, she was broken and terrified. She tried to hide it, but there was no hiding her symptoms. At eight years old, I was already a veteran of spotting morning sickness. I called her out, and she swore me to secrecy until she was past the 17-week mark. I kept that secret, and it worked... that baby is my little sister, and she is entering her third year of college.

 

It was around this time, I realise now, that the rage set in. She had always been opinionated and a bit fiery (I had to get it from somewhere), but after my rainbow-baby sister was born, my mother would scream bloody murder at anything that moved. In a house of four children under ten, there were a lot of things that moved. I remember writing in my diary many, many times how she would scream at us if we breathed too loudly. I spent the remainder of my childhood trying to figure out the triggers that would set off her screaming rages, but never succeeded in cataloguing them all. Seven months after my sister was born, I developed depression.

 

It's obvious now that that depression came as a direct result of the loss, abandonment, and verbal abuse from those three years. I still suffer with depression today. It has impacted my education, my friendships, my decision-making, my career (both of the ones that I straddle independently), my faith, my hobbies, and my marriage. If the depression doesn't kill me directly in the end, it will still be etched on my heart when it stops.

 

My mother's rages continued until I left for college at age twenty. My youngest sibling at that time was three years old. That was the longest my mother had ever not been pregnant since before she was pregnant with my brother, the one before the miscarriages. My entire teen years had been a cycle of violent morning sickness; long, dramatic, difficult deliveries, and white-hot rage -- all of it hers. I raised all the post-miscarriage siblings because my mother was either too sick or too angry to do it herself and I couldn't bring myself to let those helpless babies suffer for something that wasn't their fault. I'm still not convinced it's a coincidence that the baby factory stopped when I left home.

 

Thinking back on all of this, it's not as much of a surprise why I all but stopped being human after my cousin died. Something in my soul remembered the deaths of those young babies all those years before and remembered how I was left alone, overburdened, and screamed at for every. single. misstep for a full decade in the wake of those losses, and it knew I could not go through that again.

 

This fall is will be 25 years since that first baby died and my life was irrevocably changed for the worse. I don't know what I can do at this point. Knowing why my mother's behaviour shifted so suddenly is helpful, but it doesn't take away the pain of having to choose which of my siblings to shield with my own body and which ones to leave exposed to my mother's rage -- whose cries I had to listen to helplessly as I was only so big and couldn't protect them all at the same time. It doesn't change the fact that my sister and I have basically no relationship because I prioritised the younger, weaker siblings over her and had to harden my heart against her pain because I couldn't handle being helpless in the face of it. It doesn't change how I've spent decades feeling like I wasn't wanted and that my parents were desperate to replace me with the next new baby rather than be content with the ones they already had. It doesn't change the fact that I dissolve into wild, uncontrollable, suffocating sobs the second anybody raises their voice at me or speaks with the very slightest of harsh tones because all my hear is my mother screaming at us that we're all failures and how she didn't want us.

 

It's nice to have a starting point, I guess, but I still don't know where to go from here. 

Update: Nothing Has Changed (And It Probably Never Will)

I'm tired of being a useless, lazy, stupid, 'entitled,' 'out of touch' failure.

 

I'm in a busy season in my life right now -- a job I enjoy, doing a show that's been on my bucket list since I first saw it in 2018, finally making some measurable progress toward what I've always wanted to do with my life, actually managing to keep up with the household tasks 95% of the time (thanks, meds).

However, despite trying for over three decades now, I have never figured out how to stretch time, or pause it, or beat it, or whatever it takes to pack more activities/responsibilities into every day. And as a result, I sometimes have to prioritise some things over other things. Last week, I prioritised cleaning the kitchen floor over putting away the (already washed) laundry. It's worth noting that every single household chore that I am responsible for got done except for putting away the clean laundry. What did I get for my efforts? An eight-hour lecture that has now bled over into a second ongoing, multi-hour period of silent treatment because I also dared have the audacity to pick the 'wrong' flavour of ice cream for myself.

Yeah. I'm just as confused about this as you are.

I've spent the last 24 hours remembering all those plans I made to disappear, to catapult myself past the wall of sleep, beyond the stars. I stand in our kitchen doing dishes, listing all the reasons I should live... I'm doing a show that I've wanted to do since before I met my husband, I want to go shopping with my best friend again, I don't want to make my parents and siblings have to lose me like that, I want to see all those goals I have set for my dance career get met, I want to see things get better because even after spending thirty years watching my life spiral deeper and deeper into hell with no sign of stopping I'm still dumb enough to believe that it'll get better someday.

I can't talk to anyone about this, I burned all those bridges multiple 'rough patches' ago. Even my best friend snapped at me last time I told her I wasn't doing well mentally, insinuating I was selfish for thinking I was the only person in her life having problems. After that, I realised if I wanted to have any kind of relationship at all with any human being ever, I would have to hunker down and get through depressive episodes entirely alone (my husband made it abundantly clear LONG ago that he was going to be personally offended every time I even alluded vaguely to being depressed). That had worked just fine until now.

Those are all great reasons to live, on paper. But they don't seem to connect with the bruised, bleeding, hacked up remains of my broken heart that's already mangled by third-degree burns. I know logically that those are good reasons, but they don't mean anything to me at this moment, even though I know they do (or at least they should).

Right now, all I can see and hear and feel and taste is how EVERY. SINGLE. TINY. INSIGNIFICANT decision I make is somehow the wrong one. It does not matter what it is, it is always wrong. Even if I ask for clarification a thousand times, everything I do is still somehow wrong. I'm so tired of always having to defend myself and always having to walk on eggshells and giving 275% of myself every single day of my life and still being reamed out for 'not even trying.'

It's just like freaking college all over again. I very nearly didn't survive that. I'm not sure I have the energy or desire left to survive this too. What's even the point? The longer this goes on, the more likely it seems that nothing ever will actually get better, and there's no big reward coming for hanging on to breathing like this.

So how much of my blood do I need to spill to make right the wrong I have done by existing?

Exiting Sleep Mode

One year ago this month, I clocked out from my fast food job for the last time.

I had managed to get somebody to pity me enough to offer me a summer job which wouldn't further damage my already-destroyed back, and I wanted that job so bad that I worked both that job and fast food for a week because the new job could use me that early and I wanted to work my full two weeks' notice and leave fast food on good terms with the management (it paid off... maintaining their respect has already helped me along in life since then).

Since then, I have lived.

I have choreographed three musical theatre productions (in a variety of lead or assistant roles), added four and a half shows to my performance résumé, started crocheting again, reconnected with a couple of friends I hadn't spoken to since before I graduated college, bought a gym membership (and been actually using it), started drawing more often, contributed artwork to a theatre production, finally got meds for my ADHD, started actually keeping the house moderately clean on a somewhat regular basis... and our marriage started getting better immediately because I actually had some scraps of energy left to give my husband at the end of the day. We went from screaming matches every other day to maybe once a month, and even those are shorter and less intense as a rule.

It was literally like waking up from the dead. Even the other remissions I've had from depression were nothing like this. I literally felt like I had just pushed open the casket lid and seen the sunrise for the first time since I left home for college.

Sometimes I go through that drive-thru and I sit at the window and I think about how I used to watch the sun set at night and think to myself, 'before the sun comes up again, I will have to be at work,' and I would be on the other side of that window, my brain in a sort of semi-permanent sleep mode while my body moved through the motions of brewing and crafting coffees almost simultaneously. It literally felt like that job consumed my entire life. Even at only 32 hours a week, I couldn't let go of the stress, no matter what I tried. My life was work, eat, get lectured, sleep, rinse, repeat, every day. By the time I quit that job a year ago, I had literally forgotten how to think. I was a zombie. I had no thoughts, no joy, no sadness, no anger, no hope, no feelings at all. I have suffered from depression since I was nine years old, but this was a completely new level of dreary, drab, and lifeless. At least during my depression periods I could still make art, but during the fast food years I could not. My brain literally shut itself off all conscious thoughts, feelings, and observations in order to conserve energy, because one can literally never have enough energy to work a job like that.

This year, I set a goal for myself to read more books. I set an arbitrary goal of eight books for 2025.

It's barely May and I've read six books. And with every book I read, I can feel my brain waking up, beginning to string words together again, beginning to observe my experiences more, beginning to think again. The books aren't even super think-y and deep, but the mere act of reading is bringing my brain back to life.

I didn't even listen to music in those years. I had no energy. I stopped buying music, stopped importing records from my collection, stopped listening to the music I had, stopped following the bands' websites and social media accounts, stopped participating in the music fan groups I had been a part of.

Nothing existed but work and pain.

I tried to fight back against the encroaching unconsciousness, but that only wore me out more and pushed my brain deeper into complete shutdown.

And now, I'm reading, I'm listening to music, I'm connecting with my husband and the few friends I still have, I'm going to the gym, drawing, dancing, creating art, singing... living the life that freaking college took from me and fast food tried to lock away forever.

Though I don't remember much of those years, I hope I never forget that they happened. I never want to go back to that mental place again. I never want to forget how far I've come and how hard I've worked to get to where I am.

I never want to enter that level of sleep mode again.

Meds And Gym And Shows And Van

I didn't realise it had been so long since my last post.

I'm still on the meds. No side effects, and the faintest whisper of actual effects. The pharmacist told me straight-up when I filled the prescription that I probably would need to bump up the dose. I did notice slightly less resistance to switching tasks in the beginning, and I have managed to stay on top of the household chores since I started taking it -- this is something that has never happened for longer than two weeks. I had a doctor's appointment on Monday, and we have increased the dose slightly.

I also got a gym membership at the end of January, and have kept it up so far -- I'm literally only using it for access to the dance studio. Tap shoes aren't allowed, but $48 a month is still a MUCH better deal than the $40 PER HOUR that it costs me to rent the local dance studio.

 

We are officially halfway through our current show -- my first show in the major city I've been trying to break into since 2018. My husband is also in this show and he's grown so much already as a person and an actor. It's in a beautiful old venue (over a century old) that's just packed with character and stories. The people have been lovely so far and I'm having a lot of fun.

 

An undercurrent to all this has been vehicle drama.

 

On 15 February, on a routine trip to the grocery store, my van suddenly gave a 'reduced engine power' message and did exactly that. Even pressing the pedal to the floor barely coaxed it up to 40 km/h.

 

I limped it home and my father-in-law (our unofficial mechanic) took it to his garage, where it sat in varying states of disassembly for over a month while he cleaned, fixed, tested, waited for parts, installed, tested again, repeat. In the meantime, he graciously lent us his old truck (which, it should be noted, has SIGNIFICANTLY more kilometres on it than the van does) as I was opening a show the following week and was in rehearsal for two others.

 

This was all well and good until the truck requested an oil change. We returned it to father-in-law's place, where he discovered a bad axle and recommended that we not drive it on the highway.

 

Not a single one of these shows are in the town in which we actually live. The literal only thing I was doing with that truck was highway driving.

 

He gave us this diagnosis on a Saturday afternoon. We had a rehearsal 150 kilometres away in less than 24 hours -- the final rehearsal before tech week, and our first in the performance venue. We couldn't miss that rehearsal. My husband despaired, and I, out of some old dusty reflex, began praying of all things. This is something I have not very seriously done since the night my cousin died -- fast approaching ten years ago.

That same Saturday night, I had been asked to work an event (in town, thankfully) at a performing arts venue I occasionally pick up hours at.

 

My former boss (from my last fast food job) was attending this event, and over the course of conversation, our vehicle troubles and the impending rehearsal came up.

 

"Do you want to borrow a vehicle?" he asked.

 

Arrangements were made, and the next morning he dropped off a very nice GMC (which, I noted, also had a lot more kilometres than the van). We made it to rehearsal and back, and within the week the truck was highway-driveable again (which was more than could be said for the van, which had already been declared repaired and highway tested once only to melt down dramatically again the second I touched it).

 

As I write, my father-in-law has taken the van to two separate repair garages in an attempt to figure out what's wrong, as by this time he's replaced almost every component in the thing with no success. The first garage followed a red herring, but the second garage discovered a catastrophic electrical failure (I'm surprised the van was even turning on at all based on the description I was given) and, at last report, were waiting for a replacement part to come in. We will be on the hook for over $800 by the time that part is installed (and we can only hope that solves the problem). That old prayer reflex kicked in again.

I put out a single plea on my social media, linking to my Ko-fi page. We received a decent donation right away, but then it sat for a week... until I woke up Sunday morning to a $500 donation.

All these years I thought maybe I had misunderstood God's calling -- that I had mistakenly attributed my love for performing to Him when it wasn't from Him at all. But He got us to that rehearsal, against all odds. He has brought us over half of the amount we will need to pay for that repair, and is there really any reason to believe the remainder isn't forthcoming?

And, looking further back -- He has provided not one, but three pairs of tap shoes when I needed them. I have not paid for tap shoes out of pocket since 2012.

I let that stupid 'Christian' college convince that God did not care about my pain and was only interested in my pre-existing happiness. I let the ones who claimed to trust God tell me that my 'talent' was only in my head and that I'd never be any real use to anyone -- in performing or otherwise.

 

This does not mean I'm over my cousin's death. I don't think I ever will be. But maybe I can find a way to live -- albeit differently -- in a world without her.

Uprooting My Brain

Yesterday I officially got prescribed ADHD meds. This comes three and a half years after actually being diagnosed.

While journaling helps my memory (sort of), it absolutely does not help my motivation (rather, the complete lack of it). Performing slightly more regularly seems to be helping my memory get back in shape a little bit, but there seems to be no way to trick my brain into accidentally being motivated to do boring things like washing the dishes and sweeping the floor.

Though I have the container of capsules beside me as I type, I won't be starting them till Monday. I'm literally opening a show out of town tomorrow, and if I'm deathly allergic to these capsules I would rather find that out when I'm not supposed to be holding a hundred or so people in a state of suspended reality.

I am very aware that as a creative person who still manages to at least flirt with the performing arts industry, it's likely the fantastically-fast and somewhat melodramatic ADHD mind that got me this far in the first place. I'm worried that the meds will dull my bright, shining (I hope?) artistic ideas. But on the other hand, I am sick to death of the screaming matches with my husband about whether or not I'm making his life miserable on purpose by not keeping the house clean.

I'm also afraid that these meds won't work. And then the screaming matches will continue with no hope of an ending in sight.

I'm not sure what to expect, or what I even want to happen. Is it unrealistic to hope that (most of) our marital difficulties can be solved with a pill? Should I even be seeking to change who I am and how my brain operates to be palatable to the man who is supposed to love me unconditionally (whether or not the change I'm attempting is successful)?

Even if it does help, it's not a magic bullet, and I'm afraid we'll both be disappointed that it's not. This is the last thing I can think of to try, and if it doesn't work... am I just going to have to resign myself to being yelled at for the rest of my life?

I know this isn't a permanent change. If I decide I don't like it, I can always stop the meds. But I worry that what I love about myself and what my husband hates most about me are both growing from the same root and if I kill the things my husband hates, it will also kill the things I lived for.

Creative Residency Update

I'm now two months into my God-sponsored creative residency.

 

I'm over three-quarters done my next major dance work (Smaller).

 

I've managed to get into four shows so far this year, with two more pending.

 

I've read three books so far.

 

I've started drawing in earnest, especially in these past few weeks.

 

I've done a lot of cross-stitching (on both my theatre jacket and my husband's).

 

I've noticed my memory is getting stronger. I'm in my biggest post-pandemic acting role yet, and... I wasn't even the last one off-book. It feels -- at this exact moment, anyway -- that maybe I can still have a viable theatre career despite everything. And maybe I don't have to destroy myself to do it... theatre is no longer my only reason for living. It's a huge part of keeping my mental health in shape and it still brings me much joy, but I don't have to be in four shows at a time to earn the privilege of breathing oxygen.

When there are no shows, I can spend time with my husband, and I can draw, and I can read. I also discovered the Sims, and that's the first computer game besides Spider Solitaire, Ultimate Yahtzee, and Minecraft that I'm both competent in and actually enjoy.

I have been very productive (see above), but I have also managed to learn to ACTUALLY relax, for possibly the very first time in my entire life. I'm a little worried about how re-integrating into the workforce next month will go (especially with my two biggest shows of the year so far ramping up around that same time), but these months off have been a much-needed break so far. I don't think I have properly let my mind, soul, and body rest since I was 18 years old. That was... well over a decade ago. I still wake up in the morning and have to consciously remind myself that I don't have any looming deadlines or responsibilities that day and that I can relax.

I do wish I was doing more creative things sometimes, but at the same time, I'm happy with what I've accomplished so far, and am happy to carry that momentum forward.

I'm also somehow less stressed about money? I did apply for (and receive) unemployment benefits from the government and what they're paying me is comparable to what I was making, but somehow we don't seem to run out of money as quickly. I don't know if I'm just less stressed in general which is carrying over to our finances or if we're being more responsible, or what, but I'm not going to argue. I'm just hoping that peace continues even after I go back to work.

 

The only thing I haven't done yet that I still want to establish before I go back to work is a dance studio. I want to start ACTUALLY moving my body again. I can feel it locking up, and I hate that feeling. But the only way out from stiffness is to get moving.

Nachmo, Day 31+

I wrapped up the official Nachmo 2025 event by finishing choreography for At Sunset. That's not the last song of the show, but that does mean I officially choreographed twelve out of the sixteen songs during Nachmo proper; 39 minutes' worth of choreography out of the 54 total for this show.

I also managed to secure a dance space, at least for now. Tap dancing there is forbidden unless I lug in my portable tap floor (which, at my height squared, might be a misnomer), but it is a dance space where I can move around to music without breaking things (whether myself or important objects). I can at least start learning the choreography in soft shoes for the muscle memory.

I've submitted this piece to a festival that takes place in June. I don't really expect them to accept it, but I had set a goal for 2025 to submit choreography to at least two festivals. I don't need to get in, I just need to submit them. So I'm now 50% done that goal for the year. I'm at least putting my name out there, and at the moment, that is all I need to do. The rest is in God's hands, and I am genuinely at peace with that. I have done my job and I can move forward with the next thing.

This is going to be another dance year, I think. Since getting married, I seem to spend every other year focusing a lot on writing (mostly working on Kyrie), and then the opposite years focusing on choreography things. Even-numbered years are writing years, apparently, and odd-numbered years are dance years. I am perfectly okay with that. Last year there was a lot more overlap because I had actual choreography gigs, but I did a lot of work on Kyrie in the first 7-8 months of 2024, and that was really where my heart was for a lot of the year. This year I have at least four dance films I want to make, some of them larger projects like this one.

Last week, the musical theatre production I was working on opened, which got a huge commitment (and a lot of drama/emotional stress) off of my plate. It looks good (as I knew it would), and I learned a LOT about managing expectations within the production team. I do have an assistant choreographer gig lined up for a different musical theatre show in a few months, so hopefully I can apply what I've learned.

I'm still here.

 

I'm still here, and I'm still doing this.

Nachmo, Day 20 - Process Shift (The Tech I'm Using)

I've been slowly changing how I write choreography throughout the month.

 

Since 2012, I've written all my dances out on lined looseleaf first, then either transcribed them into Benesh Movement Notation (ballet/jazz) or typed them into Pages (tap dances).

This month though, I started using my Rocketbook erasable notebook. Since it's set up to scan the pages directly to my email, that way I could continue writing by hand like normal, and then immediately have no-effort digitization AND email backup in one fell swoop. And it does work well. But the Rocketbook has limited pages and I was choreographing faster than I was uploading/backing up.

 

I sort of accidentally fell into this habit of jotting down choreography notes in the Notion app on my phone whenever I didn't have the Rocketbook on me. Then I'd continue working on the notes in Notion on my laptop, with the iTunes/'Music' miniplayer in the corner.

Two days ago, I discovered that if you hover the cursor over the miniplayer and scroll, you can scrub through the song without having to click back and forth between Notion and iTunes.

That absolutely changed the game.

Now I can keep the cursor in one place (hovering over the scrub bar) and replay 8 counts to my heart's content, while simultaneously typing notes without the extra hassle (yes, I know exactly how 'first world problems' this sounds) of clicking back and forth between the two (and forgetting which one was selected before starting to type). This means I'm losing my train of thought WAY less, and the fact that I'm doing a show on my lived experience with memory loss should tell you how frustratingly easy it is to lose my train of thought... and how difficult it is to find my train of thought again once I've lost it.

This tiny change has launched me into creative hyperspeed. I'd already half-taught my devices not to autocorrect my tap dance shorthand so I'm not facing that friction much. I'm also not sweating the specific counts as much as usual (mostly for the sake of doing a lot of output during Nachmo proper), replacing specific subdivisions with timestamps because those are MUCH easier to find when you're dealing with jazz music. I just don't have the brain space or energy to try to find the 1 and hold a very fleeting idea in my head long enough to figure out which sixteenth count I'm starting the step on while following the saxophone melody. I'm NaNoWriMo-ing this thing. Get it in writing and figure out the pacing later. I've always let the music's own dynamics and rhythms inspire me, so I'm hoping with the help of the timestamps I'll be able to hear what I was thinking later.

As far as stats, so far today I've done almost three minutes' worth of choreography. I've just finished the song I was on, and that officially brings me to the 30-minute mark of the show -- or, my goal for Nachmo 2025. Obviously, we're going to keep going and see how far we get. Maybe choreographing the entire 54-minute show in a month isn't entirely out of reach after all. I hadn't planned to speedrun creation and production the way I did with Sottovoce, and I think it might be harder to do such a thing this time. The things that made Sottovoce so unconventional for me were the things that made it forgiving... I was suffering with memory loss even then, but the lack of set music meant I could hide the blank spots in editing a little bit (that's why the editing in Sottovoce is so janky. Almost every single cut in that film is covering a 2-3 minute mental blank). Here, I am working with set music, and while that may make it easier to memorise, that will mean I actually have to know the choreography, at tempo... all 54 minutes of it.

I do notice that letting my work breathe/not choreographing at the absolute cutting edge of my ability (as of 2019) means I cover more musical ground a lot faster, and hopefully it'll be easier for my broken brain to actually learn it. I'm only hoping it's not too boring for the audience.

Nachmo, Day 19 - Unreality

It's been tough.

 

Things has escalated with the other show. I've been accused of being out of touch with reality and was told I have done nothing for the show. The exact words were: 'calling you a choreographer is generous given how little you've done.' While it is true that I was quite sick for a long period of time and the assistant choreographer had to take on a lot of extra work as a result, I didn't do nothing. But here we are, I guess. Once again I've busted my butt on something I loved and wanted very badly only to be told I wasn't even trying. Why do I keep trying at all if nobody can tell anyway?

 

Of course, this bleeds into my solo choreography work. I'm reminded now why I consistently stop short at asking others to perform my pieces. I'm reminded that none of those glorious 16-dancer pieces I've choreographed in the past will ever see the light of day, because I'm too selfish and lazy and inflexible (that's another one I've heard before) and socially inept and broken to work with other people. I am apparently only capable of choreographing solos for myself.

I tried advocating for myself like my industry friends suggested, but they only doubled down. Inflexible. Lazy. Demanding. Selfish. Out of touch. You don't deserve to be called a choreographer.

I'm trying to use this feeling of rejection and inadequacy to inform the work I'm doing on Smaller, but it's hard to feel that the choreography for Smaller is any good. After all, my work isn't even good enough for community theatre. How can I make a whole show about memory loss with no studio space to bring it to life and (apparently) no business calling myself a choreographer in the first place?

Ten years ago this would have fueled my resolve. I would have sworn to prove myself.

But I've spent those ten years proving myself, and it hasn't made the smallest speck of difference.

Back to the show. I finished the last song of Act I last night. I'm now just over 26 minutes of completed choreography -- only four minutes away from my goal for the month, with 12 days to go. I think choreographing the full 54 minutes of the show in 31 days is still a tall order, but I might be able to get somewhat close.

 

As long as nobody else comes at me telling me what a failure and a fraud I am.

I really don't know how much longer I can -- or should -- keep trying.

Nachmo, Day 15 - Unwanted And Fraudulent

Today basically marks the halfway point of Nachmo. I started today with 15 minutes of choreography completed -- 50% of my January goal of 30 minutes, and 27% of the total show. So we are on pace. I was hoping to come out of January ahead, but I suppose there is still time to do that.

 

I'm not sure how I feel about how the show is shaping up. In my quest to not be too fancy, I feel like I'm being overly repetitive. I'm almost sure this show is going to bore the audiences to tears, if they don't walk out mid-show. Tap dance requires striking such a fine balance between repetition and novelty, and I don't think I'm experienced enough to know where that line is. It's something I'm having to think about a lot in this show... after all, it's about memory loss. How can you show memory loss unless you have a firm, clearly established motif? Only once it's established can I break it effectively. But the more I repeat it, the more my brain screams at me about how lazy and unoriginal I am.

It doesn't help that one of my theatre choreography projects is suffering from some serious issues with the cast -- specifically, they don't like my choreography (even though the production team loves it), and will stop at absolutely nothing to sabotage the choreography, turn the directors against me, and disrespect me and my hard work.

Part of the rift boils down to me not having access to a studio space. And I'm also really feeling the lack of a studio space in this personal Nachmo project. I am currently laid off. I absolutely cannot afford $40 an hour (plus GST) just to noodle around on some pet project of mine -- although such noodling would definitely make said pet project stronger. What kind of choreographer doesn't have a studio? It's like meeting a painter with no canvases. Of course you're not going to take them seriously. And people are not taking me seriously. This is also the second time in two years that I have had the dancer(s) dislike my work so passionately that they actively ruined it just to avoid doing the thing I choreographed. I don't mind collaboration, but collaboration MUST go both ways, and both parties MUST consent. I did not consent in either case.

This is tearing my already-fragile self-confidence to shreds. I took this gig to get experience, and the only experience I'm getting is disrespect and pain. And I have nowhere to put this pain, as my husband refuses to let me vent (because it's 'too negative'... and yes, of course I married someone whose top complaint about me is my pet peeve phrase, because why wouldn't I sabotage myself like that?), and it's 'improper' to air it publicly, especially since I'm starting out and I need to establish a good name for myself.

Sometimes it really feels as if it's a crime to expect common decency.

 

Update: It looks like I'm going to be officially wrapping up Day 15 with 18 minutes of choreography completed. Did all of Cimarron while watching the hockey game and I did the dishes to boot.

Of course, somebody will still find some excuse to call me lazy.

Nachmo, Day 10 - Breathing And Reruns

Rehearsals have officially started for my next theatre show, and we're officially choreographing this show out of order.

Also, yesterday, I hit the 10-minute mark, as in ten total minutes of music choreographed. This is on pace for my stated goal of 30 minutes of choreography during the challenge proper. (The show is actually 54 minutes long, but I'm trying to be reasonable about my expectations for a 31-day challenge.) (Obviously I am going to try to exceed thirty minutes, but I will be happy with thirty if I don't manage any more than that.)

The mouse incident did have me lagging behind a bit, but yesterday I went on a tear and choreographed over two minutes' worth of material. Today so far I've done nearly another minute, but I know where I want to go from there so I should be able to knock out a bit more tonight. I might need the buffer for this weekend, as I have a meeting for a potential choreography gig, dinner with the in-laws, and a long rehearsal with my remote choreography gig.

As for the show itself, I choreographed the first two pieces, then skipped ahead due to overwhelm and did the sixth song. I'm now on the seventh song, and that will take us into the intermission.

Things are starting to take shape a bit -- I've got a couple of motifs, and am trying not to worry too much that I'm grossly overusing them. I'm trying very hard to let the piece breathe a little bit more and not try to stuff tricks and overly complex rhythm changes into EVERY SINGLE SUBDIVISION of the music. That can be impressive, but my pre-pandemic work especially suffers from too much razzle dazzle rather than too little. I hate how slow and boring modern dance is, so I overcompensate by overstuffing the music with a volley of sounds like gunshots on a battlefield. I am trying to recognise this when it happens and pull back on the reins, just a little tiny bit. (I'm hoping this will also 1. be easier on my memory once it's time to learn it, and 2. communicate the whole 'memory loss' theme a bit more.)

I'm really proud of how the playlist turned out. Honestly, I stuck in a couple of early-'90s smooth jazz songs I had, then searched 'melancholy vapourwave' on YouTube. I got exactly two videos as a result, but both videos supplied me with enough music to populate the rest of the playlist. As I listened to those YouTube mixes, I slotted each contender into a rough song order on my Notion tab for the show. When my final paycheque came in on the 30th, I bought the songs and stuck them in the playlist. I listened to the playlist exactly once through, on the 31st. I think I made two or three swaps, but the song order is actually largely the same as originally written down on the fly. The transitions are really smooth, and the 'vibe' throughout the whole show flows and shifts really well (other than the second song, as discussed in a previous Nachmo update). That's incredible, considering I heard some of these songs exactly twice in my entire life before the first of January. (Usually my playlists are full of songs that I have known for years, if not decades, that I am intimately familiar with and could sing to you, note-for-note, in their entirety.)

 

This music takes me back to a simpler time. And one of the biggest things about memory loss that surprised me was how much my brain simply played 'reruns' of memories of simpler times -- memories I hadn't even thought about in decades. My brain played reruns of every memory I ever had at my grandparents' old house in the country (I was not quite five years old when they moved into town), long-forgotten moments in the trailer we lived in when I was a child, and many hours of 2021-2023 slipped past me as my brain kept me sitting in the sunlight in my old pink bedroom (which by then no longer existed as mine, or as pink, for that matter). I couldn't really think any new thoughts -- there were none to think, I couldn't hold onto the concepts long enough to match them together into a new thought -- so my mind just dumped me into my past, as vivid as if I was still there. I completely understand now why old people talk so much about the old days -- as far as we're concerned, we are still living there, still in 1959 or 1982 or 1997, still living in those fleeting moments before everything changed, before wi-fi, before iPhones, before the pandemic, before all the loss, before freaking hipster music.

 

It was a comfort at times to live in the golden years again, but it also stopped me from engaging with the present, from making new works and new friends. I would wake up from driving my old Pontiac Montana down the highway in 2012 and find myself in a year I didn't know in a world I didn't recognise with people I'd never met.

Anyway, that's part of the experience I'm trying to capture in the show, especially as we move into the second act -- that disconnect between physical reality and our mind's reality, and how we don't even know -- or can't control -- that it's happening.

Nachmo, Day 7 - Two Deep

I've officially finished the first two songs for the show. I'm really proud of the first one. The second... not so much. My brain was very much elsewhere (we discovered a mouse running around our apartment on day 3 and although we haven't seen or heard it since then, we have no proof that it's actually dead or gone and apparently sometime in the past four years my dislike has become a phobia so I'm still VERY jumpy).

 

I may end up cutting the second song from the show entirely. I still have plenty of music, and the song is extremely repetitive, plus I'm not proud of the choreography. It's complete, so I can always slot it back in if I do end up taking it out. I haven't actually taken it out yet, but it's definitely on the chopping block.

 

The next song intimidates me, primarily because of its sheer length. It's just less than five minutes, which I have absolutely done before, but it just feels different somehow. Maybe because it's been so long since I choreographed anything? Maybe because there are no lyrics, and till now 98% of my choreography has been to music with lyrics? Maybe because my self-confidence is still shot from college (read: the prof with no emotional integrity who had absolutely zero business being a performing arts professor)? Maybe because last time I tap danced was when I filmed Inside Of You in October 2023 and am TERRIFIED that I have forgotten all the knowledge I had managed to scrape together about tap dance? All of the above?

 

This is also the song I have known the longest out of all the songs on this list. This shouldn't be this hard. Should I embrace the difficulty? I'm willing to do that but I don't know how. The story of my life. All those times I would go into that gutless professor's office and ask how. How do I 'be more vulnerable' (his main demand of me... me, who was losing friends by the dozen because I was 'too personal')? How do I sing better? How do I improve as a performer? How do I get a role, any role -- especially when he has done nothing but tell me I'm such a talented performer?

 

Despite years of trying to break free from his tyranny, I'm here nearly six years later, still trying to break out from under his thumb. I haven't spoken to the man since 2019. I know, on some distant intellectual level, that he had to be at least somewhat inaccurate in how he viewed me. But I still can't get out from under his shadow.

 

On one hand, it's because my in-laws replaced him within a year of me breaking free. But I've seen this before now, and I know not to buy any of their crap. It's a lot easier somehow to brush off my in-laws' opinions than the opinions of the man who told me in no uncertain terms that he held my future in his hands and never quite artistically mentored me in the way that I still wish I could be. I learned from that professor, and I alienated my in-laws before they could get close to me. But that doesn't help that 20-year-old kid who went to college with a heart full of joy and a head full of dreams and handed them over to the powers-that-be and watched those powers repeatedly dash her contributions against the rocks.

This is exactly the emotional place I probably should be at later in the piece -- once the world starts caving in around the protagonist. Maybe what I really need to do is skip to the end and work backwards. I've been listening to the show playlist as I've been writing this and the darker songs are standing out to me.

Worth a try, I suppose.

Nachmo, Day 2 - Joy

Yesterday I choreographed some 44 measures (in 4/4 time, so like 146 counts?). Didn't finish the song, but got just past halfway. And you what? I am absolutely happy with a minute and a half done on the first day, especially in tap dance (it's a lot easier to make ballet take up a lot of time than tap).

 

I can't even explain HOW FREAKING EXCITED I am for this year's choreography. I don't think I have ever been excited for Nachmo proper (M and I used to do a National Choreography Month -- which we dubbed NaChoreoMo -- in May every year, and I usually got way more hyped for that, as I was usually not dying of pneumonia at that time of year).

I'm excited about the show itself, for sure, but I'm also just really excited to be taking part in a creative challenge again. I haven't done one since NaNoWriMo 2023, and that one was really difficult/generally not-fun for a number of reasons.

I guess I forgot how much I love creative challenges, especially in a medium I'm currently 'feeling.' I was so high on life yesterday as I started this project that I wondered if that was what mania feels like. (No doubt my college professor would still have said I was being 'too sad.' But *beep* him. He has no emotional integrity, and you can't be a good artist without emotional integrity.)

 

Tonight I finished the first song of the show, and for the first time since 31 December 2022, I was able to actually add a song to my 'Completed Choreography' playlist (Sottovoce didn't use music, and I don't have the music for the two theatre shows I did in my iTunes library because both companies sent the music through ROCS ShowReady).

For trivia purposes... the playlist alone is now 130 songs, 8 hours and 10 minutes long. That's a lot of choreography, and that doesn't even include Sottovoce (24 minutes) and the theatre musicals. I could start the playlist when I arrive for my day job in the morning, and I still wouldn't reach the end of the playlist before it's time to clock out. That's so much music. That's so much choreography. I've accomplished so much, and I honestly feel like I'm just getting started.

I remember in February 2012 when I swore I would finish choreographing a dance to prove my mother wrong (about how I didn't want to choreograph 'bad enough'), and the elation I felt when I finally finished that piece (Sing Your Freedom) on 10 April. Look how far I've come. I just choreographed a tap dance in two days. At the time I choreographed Sing Your Freedom, I didn't even know how to tap dance.

I'm just so excited that I still get to do this. I'm so happy this is still a part of my life.

Nachmo, Day 1 - Motif

National Choreography Month, Day 1, early afternoon.

 

We're off to a great start. Already 64 counts down, and I believe this is going to be the motif that repeats throughout the show, so in reality this is a HUGE investment as it will eat up chunks of 64 counts throughout the show. It's a fun, swingy motif with lots of alteration potential, and it's not like something I would 'usually' do (and there are few things I hate more than repeating my choreographic self without a very good reason).

My soft goal for today is to finish the first song. That initial 64 counts was nearly 40 seconds, and the song is only 2:48. It'll be a stretch, but it is definitely possible. The motif gives me a good energy to work with and is giving me a lot of momentum. This is the most excited for Nachmo I think I've ever been (I also think this is the first year EVER that I have not had bronchitis at the start of the event, so that is definitely also helping morale).

 

If I have enough free time (and motivation) this year, I would also like to create my own list of Nachmo prompts, as the ones they typically do on their social media/website lean HEAVILY toward random, improv-based modern dance, and that is basically the antithesis of everything I stand for in my own choreography. But we'll see. The actual choreography comes first.

Onward and upward!