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.

Film, Musicals, And Teaching -- A Performing Arts Update

I suppose I should do an update about the thing that drove me to start this blog in the first place -- the arts. Specifically, dance and writing.

 

Right now, I'm actually choreographing my second full musical. This one has a much larger cast (50 people), so I finally get to do big group numbers, like I've wanted to do ever since I first started making up dances in my head in the early 2000s.

 

There's a certain level of fear that comes with choreographing for a group that big in real life. You simply are not going to please everybody. In a group that large is that the gamut of dance experience/ability is quite wide. This is further complicated by the fact that the show is double-cast... and they double-cast all the best dancers. Which means I can't rely on them, as they will only be in half the shows.

 

My husband and I were also in a short film, which was shot this past month, with a tentative release date of next spring. This was our first time on a real film set. It is very different from live theatre, and it does move a lot slower, but the other cast and the crew were all great people, and we had a great time. It's surreal to actually put a real film credit on my résumé after 24 years of almost-exclusively live performance credits.

 

Both of us also just finished up a live show this week, and I have a readthrough on Monday.

I'm also still working in the theatre industry (on the front end), and that has helped my mental health and peace of mind SO much... knowing that my career and my dreams are no longer completely out of alignment. The only wrinkle is that once this theatre's Christmas show wraps, I will be laid off until the end of March, when the 2025 season starts up. I have a very part-time/casual substitute dance teaching gig, but it will be once a month, if that.

As for my own choreography, I have a film in mind that I want to make and I've already cast the dancer for it, but I just have to carve out some time to actually finish choreographing the piece. This is a piece very much made for the dancer and her abilities (that is to say... way too complicated for my own abilities). I am considering having this piece be the first to bear the name of the dance company that I want to start.

There are some teaching opportunities that I am thinking about pursuing, and I have gotten wind of a potential dance space where I could rehearse pieces (lots of things still need to fall into place for that to work out though).

And still I am afraid. I'm afraid that I'll mess it all up somehow. It was so much easier to create when I was the only one taking the fall if it was terrible. But if I start actually choreographing for other people and start making bigger works, then other people's names and reputations are also on the line. It's so easy to look at myself, at my neurodivergence, and think that I have nothing whatsoever to offer this neurotypical world, and how dare I rope other people into this who could have better chances with a neurotypical creative, who has all her emotions in order and a more consistent stream of motivation and is not constantly sidetracked by worrying about money (because for some dumb reason we have to eat food, which costs money, to survive).

Things I Did At Thirty

I never thought I'd make it to thirty. And then when I did get to my thirtieth birthday, I mostly felt washed-up and useless.

If you are coming up an thirty and are feeling the same way, let me tell you that your life is NOT over yet.

After my thirtieth birthday, I...

- Choreographed my first full musical production.

- Submitted a dance film to a major film festival.

- Finally made a sorely-needed career change.

- Made yet another dance film -- my favourite so far.

- Auditioned for four things -- the most since the pandemic, and impressive when you consider the real lack of art in my general area. Was offered a role for two of them.

- Got into a different show without an audition.

- Almost finished rewriting the first half of my novel for the second time.

- Got two crochet commissions.

- Started streaming.

- Started drawing (mostly pencil crayons).

- Injured my back to the point where I could not walk... and then rehabilitated it to the point where I can dance again.

- Acquired three more houseplants (that have survived. There was also a lavender tree that died a very dramatic death almost immediately after purchase).

Morning

I've never been a morning person. Even as a baby, my mother recounts stories of her staying up with me deep into the night -- not because I was crying, but because I was simply awake and wanted someone to play with. I was homeschooled and usually managed to push my wake-up time to ten or even eleven o'clock. College and work have both taught me how to get up early, but on my days off I've settled into a pattern of waking up at about nine... or, still early enough in the morning to actually call it morning.

And... it's not as bad as I used to think it was.

Mornings (on my days off) are peaceful. The cool light of morning is different from all other daylight, and it reminds me of the open skies and rolling fields of my childhood home (as well as that early-morning drive to dance classes). The desert heat is not yet at full force, so it's actually possible to breathe the air with little effort. My husband and I eat a calm, simple homemade breakfast -- sometimes eggs and hash browns, sometimes toast with jam.

I find myself most inspired to write in this light, with the music of decades gone by filling my ears.

After spending the morning and early afternoon on my creative projects, I have enough energy to do some household chores (I try to split these up over my days off, partly to conserve my very-limited mental energy and focus, and partly to lessen the strain on my injured back), and with those done early, I can actually focus on being with my husband for the latter part of the day rather than trying to cram creativity, housework, and relationship all into the precious few hours between supper and bedtime.

My desk has become my creative workspace. Recently I acquired a Croton plant and moved it along with the other two plants onto the 'shelf' above my desk. They won't be able to stay there through the summer, as two of them are desert plants and will very much NOT appreciate the air conditioning unit we put in this room at exactly their height, but for now, they are here above my head while I work, and they are reminding me of the colours and greenery of my childhood home (as opposed to the washed-out browns of this desert landscape). Our apartment doesn't get a lot of natural light, but the morning light seems to cover them well.

This desk is my morning sanctuary, whispering to me of a pink room (now blue, and my sister's instead of mine) that once cocooned me and let me fly quietly on the wings of creativity.

This morning is one of those mornings, and for just a fleeting hour or so, I am happy.

Dance Film, Part 3

The dance film is done!

I'm most proud of this one so far. This is the first film I've made that actually looked as good as I pictured it in my head while planning.  There are definitely some things I would have liked to do differently (like have the thing properly memorised, and have an extra camera or two for B-roll), but I am also completely content with how this one turned out. It's beautiful to look at and fun to listen to. I think this is one of the first times I feel that I've properly showcased who I am as a choreographer and as a dancer.

This is also the first time I've worked with a separate audio track rather than using the in-camera audio -- well, that's not entirely true, as the audio I used is from my B-roll camera. It was positioned closer to both the taps and the music source so both were louder and the sync was better. I've also noticed that my iPhone 13 Pro (now my primary filming camera) is REALLY LOUD. At first I thought it was interference from my tripod light, but even when I don't use the light, it still makes this loud white noise in the background. The sound from the taps was also extremely dead on this camera -- much more resonant on the B-roll (probably because I had an umbrella behind the B-roll camera shielding it from the drizzle).

So I split the audio track off the B-roll and synced it up with my edits as I went. I'm comfortable with sound editing from years of converting my dad's records on Audacity (and from designing the sound cues for Sottovoce), and I think that actually helped me slog through the hour of footage that I shot for a four-minute dance film.

It's a simple, fun piece, and I think the choreography, the location, and the editing all manage to support that. This isn't big or flashy, and I like that. I'm not a big, flashy person. I feel this piece is the closest I've gotten to displaying my heart and soul on 'stage.' I don't expect this to make me viral or put me on the map or anything, but it's definitely my personal favourite.

Watch it here.

April Saturday

Saturday morning.

My asthma is acting up the worst I think it ever has. I've doubled my meds for the last two days (as my doctor advised), but I still feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest and I'm breathing through a straw. It has not escaped my attention that the anniversary of my cousin's death from this same disease is this coming Friday.

At one time (late college), I would have welcomed this -- oncoming death? No more dealing with the world and all its neurotypical BS? Sign me up.

But now, I sit on my couch with a half-finished painting beside me, half a rewritten novel in front of me, and a crochet project that's almost done nearby, and now I think, I can't go now... I'll never see how these turn out.

The painting in particular stands out to me. I really don't like how it looks so far. I would consider it the first failure of my fledgling watercolour hobby. But I want to finish it, to see if maybe the finished project doesn't look so bad after all. My husband likes it so far and knew what it was without me having to explain it, so it's at least recognisable. If I die now, I will never know if it'll turn out all right in the end.

The novel... there was a time when I would have been okay leaving it unfinished. I made several attempts on my life between drafting it and now. But now I'm around the halfway point of a proper rewrite, and I'm invested. I want to know that I can finish it, even if the 'final' rewrite still needs some touching up. I want to send this out to beta readers. I want to send this to an editor. I want to publish it. I want other people to get invested in this story too.

The crochet project is a small one. I've made two others like it this week. But I used less stitches and a thinner yarn for this one, and I want to see how the final product changes with those variables altered.

I'm still stuck in the desert with no real hope of getting out on the horizon, and it's still beyond my ability to explain just how suffocating it is to wake up to this drab, soul-draining view every morning of my life. But if I can still be creative here, then I can be creative anywhere. Right now my main goal is to fill this dead brown place with colour -- and given how vast and stubbornly brown this desert is, that means I have a LOT of work to do.

So I have to finish this painting, this novel, this crochet project. And that means I have to take care of my health -- something I've never properly done before.

2022 Goals Retrospective

I feel more satisfied about 2022 than I have about any year since 2018. I would not yet say I'm in top form yet, but I'm closer than I was.

This year, I...

- choreographed 24 pieces. My goal for 2022 was 14. I literally doubled my output from 2021.

- got 35k into revising Kyrie. The thing I'm most glad about here is how not-overwhelmed I feel about it. For eight years, I would try to revise this novel but my brain would go into nuclear-meltdown mode within literally ten minutes. This year I spent three months making a timeline, then started rewriting entirely from scratch. And we're still going.

- made a Ko-fi page for artistic income... and got my first donation.

- wrote my first poem since before my cousin died in early 2015.

- took an online tap class in which I learned some historical repertoire AND took a summer dance intensive.

- did live improv tap dance for the first time ever and loved it.

- wrote a 50k novel in November.

- performed in two theatre shows.

- got my first paid acting gig.

In many ways, I feel like I didn't do much of anything this year. These were all small changes that (aside from the dance classes) took maybe twenty minutes out of my day, but that was the point. I knew I didn't yet have the mental strength to overhaul my entire life, so I dedicated myself to shoehorning artmaking into my days as they already were, just enough so that I wouldn't lose my skills. It really doesn't feel like I've done much, but I look at this list of things I accomplished in just 365 days and I'm surprised at how big some of these things really are. A full novel? A paid gig? 35k into a project that stymied me for nearly a decade? Twenty-four pieces -- over an hour and a half -- of choreography? At least half of the things I accomplished here were not on my original list of goals for 2022, and all of the rest -- save NaNoWriMo -- were achieved in ways or to an extent I very much had not expected.

All I hope for is for this to double again in 2023. I would be completely happy with that.

Honesty

3 April 2022, 5.37pm; 2 May 2022, 7.53pm.

I've always been a brutally honest person. This is probably one of the most obvious manifestations of my ADHD/autism and is definitely the neurodiverse trait that loses me the most friends/potential friends. I say exactly what I mean, not the social nicety beat-around-the-bush say-the-opposite-of-what-you-actually-mean code for what I mean.

This means, as someone with depression and an encyclopedia's worth of tragic backstory, I am VERY open and honest about depression and emotional pain. This led to my ex-church telling me God couldn't love me (this after telling me for eighteen years of my life that 'honesty is the best policy?' Make it make sense), as well as my program director deliberately sabotaging my Bachelor's degree -- I was 'too negative,' therefore he in his infinite wisdom decided I, as a deeply wounded and actively grieving person, was not worthy of holding a postsecondary degree and did everything in his power to make it so. While he did underestimate my stubbornness and sheer force of will, I would be lying if I said that he didn't erode my confidence.

The two nails in the coffin came from my now in-laws and one of my bridesmaids. In-law has decided to take offense with EVERYTHING I say. And I do mean everything. Anything I post online, handwrite, or say out loud is fair game. No matter what I say, they WILL find something 'wrong' with it. And their definition of 'wrong' is very different from the rest of the world's definition of 'wrong.' Oh, but they're never criticising... they're "only trying to help" and it's not their fault if I'm "too stubborn to let people help" me. If the definition of 'help' now means 'set fire to the Titanic on the way down,' then yes, they're doing a bang-up job.

The second one was someone who I thought was a very good friend. So much so that not only was she one of my bridesmaids in my very small wedding, my husband and I donated a fair amount of money to help with her medical expenses less than six months ago. Less than two months later, she blocked me with the excuse, 'my mental health is too fragile to deal with your problems.' So much for her assertion that she was always going to be there for me and that it was 'okay not to be okay.'

So I hid. I cut contact with literally everybody except my husband, my parents, my siblings, and one (1) friend. I essentially stopped using social media, and I kept work conversations strictly work-related. If nobody wanted to hear from the real me, they weren't going to. I even stopped talking to my in-laws except when absolutely necessary. It took almost thirty years, but I had finally gotten the message. I -- the true, authentic, real me -- was NOT wanted. Anywhere.

This worked for six months. I even stopped talking to the people who I hadn't actively cut off unless they talked to me first. I was just so tired of being rejected and guilt-tripped and bullied and abused just for being honest about myself and my experiences. I could feel my soul shriveling and dying, and I was quite literally praying every single day that God would just kill me. If I couldn't be honest, I didn't want to live anymore. I was actually dismayed when I realised that my sudden spells of vertigo were actually a concussion, not a malignant brain tumour as I had hoped.

Then it came out during an argument that I had been keeping how bad my mental health was from my husband. He was so upset he didn't speak to me for three days (as if that was going to make me want to die any less). Under threat of divorce, I promised that I would be honest, but warned him it wouldn't be pretty. He was so upset he agreed.

At this same time, I was actively working on an outline for Kyrie so I could maybe finally properly rewrite it. The ENTIRE plot of this story hinges on the main character's ruthless honesty. Turns out it's really hard to write about a brutally honest character when you can't be brutally honest yourself.

Then, I had the opportunity to sit in a zoom class with Dianne Walker -- the Dianne Walker, the Ella Fitzgerald of tap dance. And near the end she spent TWENTY MINUTES emphasizing how important it is for the tap dancer (really, the artist in general) to be honest, brutally honest, even if that's not the happiest place in the world.

When that class ended, I sat there and wrote in my journal for half an hour about how angry I was that I had let so many people beat the honesty -- beat the artist -- out of me. How angry I was at my in-laws especially for trying to run my thought life (funny how the 1984-style conspiracy theorists are the ones who are most concerned with controlling how people word things and how people are 'allowed' to think). Here is an excerpt from my initial reaction:

I spent five years of my life having the honesty gaslighted, shamed, and manipulated out of me at a ‘Christian’ performing arts college, of all places (after all, aren’t Christians supposed to be honest? isn’t art supposed to be honest?). My spirit suffered beyond what words can convey. It led to an eating disorder and a very troubled marriage. All I wanted was to die. If I could not be honest, then there was no other alternative. To live is to be honest. To share life with people is to be honest. All I ever wanted was to be honest and to share my life with honest people, in a spirit of giving, receiving, accomplishment, and growth. I knew as a young teen that honesty was paramount in art, but I let [college program director] and [church deacon] and [in-law] beat it out of me with their manipulation and vile, vicious words.

I used to say great art was beautiful, but now I say that great art is honest. My greatest art has come from honesty — not pain, specifically (though sometimes that is what I must be honest about), but honesty.

Sehnsucht, One More Time, Joy And Suffering, Kyrie, and, in a burgeoning way, Emotional Tourist all came from a raw and honest place and THOSE are my greatest accomplishments.

My creative output slowed not long after Brittney and my cousin died, and stopped entirely after M died. I thought it was the fact that they died that stopped the creativity, but now that I think about it, it wasn't the deaths themselves, it was how much I was bullied for openly grieving about their deaths that stopped it.

It's funny how people get so offended about grief. Not 'uncomfortable,' downright OFFENDED. I have had my career, my academic future, my friendships, and my marriage threatened by people who couldn't handle my honesty -- even if that includes honesty about grief or my mental illness. I don't understand that, because the very nature of honesty means you are honest at all times. 'Selective honesty' is not honesty -- that's manipulation.

Enough of that. I want to be an artist again. I want to live again, and to live is to be honest.

An Open Letter To Those Who Love Me

Written 28 September 2013, 8.07pm.

I found this deep in my drafts folder the other day. I thought it was the perfect manifesto to start off this year. It has not been edited since July 2017.

(I'm not actually as depressed as the title makes it sound.)

Dear people in my life,

I think by now ya'll have noticed that I'm not exactly following your dreams for me. You know, the corporate dreams of me being some big-time lawyer or doctor or some other kind of genius. You have told me so many times over the years how smart I am, how smart I am, how smart I am. I get the sense that you figured I was some kind of a child prodigy or something. Cha-ching. Don't think I don't hear those cash registers in your heads.

Now, that may be true. Maybe I am a genius. I don't know. It depends what you're talking about, really (because if we're talking math, I am most definitely not a genius). But whatever the case, you all see me as intelligent. And I am not living up to your expectations of me.

I may be wrong (correct me if I am, I really do want to hear your honest take on this), but it seems to me you expected 'more' of me. I was to graduate high school and then go to college for perhaps a psychology or a medical or law degree. Something that would accentuate any speck of intelligence I possess. Something you could brag about to your co-workers to make you sound like you had some serious connections. And then, after spending four or perhaps ten irretrievable years of my years institutionalised, I would be ready to take on the world, to be the messiah, and you would have the privilege of saying you knew me before I was 'great.'

But it didn't work out that way. I graduated high school with... I don't know, integrity, I guess. I was willing to admit I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. And, perhaps more damagingly, I was not willing to commit to what I didn't know. I did not want to go to college for a degree that I wasn't sure I wanted, only to decide after three or more years' worth of money had been sunk into it that it really wasn't what I wanted to do after all. And then I would have been dishonest -- to you, to the school that would have had the misfortune of hosting me in such a case, to myself.

And I cannot be dishonest.

For two years you secretly hoped and outwardly 'spurred me on' (to put it politely). And then -- a miracle! -- suddenly the announcement came. I was going to college. Your hearts pounded. You were so excited. Finally I was going to live the life you had planned for me. Finally I was going to make good use of all my brains that I had been wasting for so long...

And now for my side of the story.

I have never been interested in committing more time than necessary to anything I am not fully interested in. Even in grade school: math. Math never interested me (nor did it make sense, but that's a different discussion), so I hated it. I would do whatever it took to do as little as possible... to waste as little of my life as I had to on such a pointless pursuit. (I know now that there is a point to some math, but that was my perspective at the time.) Second example: You all have had the misfortune of trying to make small talk with me. I'm not interested in small talk. 'Share how you really feel or shut up' has pretty much always been my guideline for conversation (for better or for worse). I'm not interested in small talk -- I hate these little social lies we tell each other -- so I don't do it. Like, at all.

By the time I graduated, I was keenly aware of the fact that I have one life to live. I have already used up twenty years of it just getting to this point. That leaves me with roughly sixty years remaining (give or take a decade or so). And there's no promises that I won't die earlier -- say, from an accident or something. Is it really wise to spend four years of those precious remaining years on school? School that I don't really want and may never need?

This was my logic behind not going to college immediately. I wanted to think it through first. I wanted to be sure what I was doing with my life, then decide if college would be necessary for that.

For two years I thought about this -- believe me, I thought about it. Hardly a second went by that I wasn't thinking about my future, praying about it, asking God what He had created me to do. It looked to you like I was just being lazy and mooching off my parents. Believe me, this was not the case. At the very least, it was not the intent.

Two years I pondered this. Two years I agonised. Two years I prayed.

I have to drop this train of thought now and back up a bit.

You didn't know this -- nobody really knew this till recently. You know I have been dancing ballet since I was six. What you did not know was that I have been making up dances in my head since I was seven. I didn't know it until those two years between high school and college, but I had found my passion by the time I was seven years old.

Choreography. Imagining dancers on the stage, coming together as a choir of movement, creating beauty. It captivated me.

At seventeen I began to take this seriously. At eighteen I choreographed and wrote down my first complete dance. Here is where this news began to leak out... that I was doing choreography.

You didn't know it, but I did. I had found my passion. This was my calling.

In those two years, I researched so much about careers in the arts. You have no idea how much I tried to spin it different ways, wanting the worst-case scenario so I knew what to expect, but wanting the best-case scenario so I could tell you something you could be proud of. So you would stop taking jabs at me for being lazy or stupid. Because I was not being lazy or stupid -- in fact, that was exactly what I was trying so hard to avoid.

I will tell you straight. Even the choreographers for big-name TV shows make about $20,000 a year, often less. And it's straight commission. If you don't have a project that month, you don't get paid that month. You are your own boss, and there's not a lot of demand for a choreographer. There's a reason you don't meet a lot of choreographers. It's because we don't need a lot of choreographers. Because nobody cares about the arts anymore. Ballet (true ballet, not this 'contemporary ballet' crap) is fast becoming a lost art, and hip hop, the dance of choice today, is largely choreographed by the performers themselves. When a classical ballet company does tour, they often mount the old classics -- Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker, Swan Lake... There is no need for a choreographer; those works already exist.

In fact, this is reality for the arts in general. Artists are overworked (mostly as volunteers), and they are severely underpaid. Some of the most talented artists of the past century languish in a furiously creative flurry... unnoticed. Loved only by a loyal handful, but misunderstood and rejected, then ignored, by everyone else.

This is the life I am called for.

I am called to live a life that not only has no retirement plan, it has barely enough money to buy the groceries every week.

I am called to toil in obscurity, perhaps for decades, not because of the quality of my work, but because perhaps God has seen fit that I choreograph for only a few.

I am called to a life of intense loneliness. No-one can understand what it's like to create a dance from scratch until they have done it. And even then, those without the passion cannot begin to imagine the thrill of the soul that so captures our imagination that we dream of pointe shoes at night; that demands we return, again and again, to the music, to the stages in our imaginations.

I am called to a life that no-one on this planet will ever understand. It will look intensely foolish to anyone who has never tasted the wine of creativity, and in this day and age, that's almost everyone.

I am called to daydream with a vengeance.

I am called to a life throughout which it is highly probable that I will be broke or near-broke, lonely and largely ignored, obscure and taunted by those who do not understand. I will very likely struggle, not because I'm not smart, but because this is my God-given passion and the gift He gave me. And when God gives a person a gift, they can not and will never be truly happy doing anything else.

So I will choreograph. I may dance, I may sing, I may play an instrument. But no amount of criticism from you will make me change my mind. I will not be happy doing anything else. Let me be happy doing this.

Can you live with that? Can you accept the fact that I will not be a doctor or a lawyer with a 'thriving' multimillion dollar practice? Can you accept the fact that I will sometimes ask aloud where my next meal is coming from -- when I know there are other, higher-paying jobs out there?

Rebuilding (again... maybe...)

For my birthday this past August, my parents bought me Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. And working through that book has begun to remind me of all the things I loved about being an artist before everybody died.

I loved sitting in my bedroom in my parents' basement as the tree-dappled southern sunlight poured in, lighting the pink walls aflame with warmth and colour and kick-starting my imagination. I loved sitting at the desk, feeling the keys beneath my fingers or the pen scratching softly across the looseleaf. I loved sitting on the pink carpet, dreaming up huge, intricate dances for a dozen dancers, even though I didn't even know that many serious dancers in real life. I loved seeing the characters build the novels right before my eyes -- people often said that reading my writing felt like watching a movie, and I think that's because that's how my works often come to me. I watch the events play out like a film in my mind's eye and I just write down what happens. I choreograph the same way -- I put on the music and write down what the dancers in my head do. I do love the rush of satisfaction when I finish a project, but I also love the challenge of answering the perennial question 'what's next?'

I'm starting to make art again. I'm not choreographing whole dances or writing entire scripts in five days like I used to, but I'm still choreographing, and I'm starting to write posts for this blog again. I'm hoping that's the starting point for writing fiction again.

Despite being out of college for over two years now, I've still been feeling blocked. The first year was because I quite literally almost killed myself trying to prove to a bunch of gaslighting profs that I was actually putting in the work to get that degree, plus I did two major moves in three months and started a major romantic relationship with somebody who did not live anywhere near ANY of the cities I moved to. The second year was the year I planned a wedding during a pandemic and then moved to an entirely new town (because living with one's husband is a thing) and tried to figure out married life after exactly one (1) year of romantic-relationship experience -- total.

My goals are very small. Between the housework, my actual paying job, spending time with the man I married, sleeping, and basic personal hygiene, it often feels like I have no time for myself other than the three-minute drive home from work every day and I feel like I have no time for my artistic pursuits anymore. Nobody tells you that being a wife is a full-time job by itself. I knew motherhood was, but nobody warned me about plain old marriage. Basically if I can't accomplish my daily goals on my 30-minute work break while I'm eating a sandwich with one hand or during my bathroom breaks at home, they aren't going to happen.

So my goals went from 'make twelve full-blown dance videos this year' and 'practice for three hours every day' to 'choreograph two sets of eight every day' and 'read for fifteen minutes.' I'm telling myself that those two sets of eight every day will add up over time and eventually become a full dance piece, and that one chapter a day will result in finished books. Just like Duolingo has you learn a language ten minutes at a time, I'm actively trying to sneak in my creative pursuits in furtive five-minute bursts. I have no idea when exactly I'm going to write 50,000 words in November because 1,667 words per day does take slightly longer than a bathroom break, but I guess I'm going to have to figure it out.

And maybe having small goals because of my time and space limitations right now is the best way to reintegrate myself into the creative world, especially after all the harm that college did to my creative brain. If I had set a big goal like 'twelve dance videos in twelve months,' I wouldn't have even started. The goal would have been too big and overwhelming. But I can trick myself into two sets of eight. I can wheedle myself into fifteen minutes of reading. (It also really helps to track how many days in a row I've managed to do this -- I am VERY competitive and would hate myself for the rest of my life if I broke a long daily streak.) I've already finished two library books (and returned them on time -- no renewals. This has literally NEVER happened before in my entire life), and have put in consistent time on a couple of dances. I am telling myself consistency is enough right now.

Art and Fog (The Raft In The Sea)

I forgot how much I love the performing arts.

I'm into my third week living alone in a bigger city than I ever have before, and last week did NOT go well. As I suspected would happen, I felt unseen and unheard and trapped, not in the concrete/steel jungle, but in this huge empty house. I didn't (still don't) even have gas money to go out to a bookstore or something (nor would I have had money to spend at said bookstore). Longtime readers know this is a recipe for disaster, and by this past weekend I literally did not care about anything. I think I ate a total of three actual meals from Wednesday till yesterday (Tuesday), supplemented by Pop Tarts, watched TV for literally three straight days, and went off my asthma meds completely (mostly by accident, but that did not help matters).

At some point during that fog, between episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I followed every actor/dancer/theatre Facebook group I could find in my new city. Between those and some groups I already follow from elsewhere, I found a handful of auditions, and most of them would accept video auditions.

Most were due this weekend and I'm gone this weekend, so I set aside today to film all of them in one go (I discovered if I pray enough, that piece-of-trash memory card does work intermittently. At this point it's better than nothing). And afterwards, as I sat sipping my peanut-butter smoothie, I felt... just a tiny little bit better. Acting and dancing for the camera all day had distracted me from the dark fog long enough to catch a breath.

I've hinted at this but never actually come out and said it publicly -- in April I decided to quit the arts. I had three shows outstanding at the time I made this decision, and I planned to finish those and then... fling myself into the artless abyss, whatever that looked like. I literally do not have any interests or passions outside the arts. Literally none. I assumed I'd die shortly after finishing my last show (which I suppose is still not outside the realm of possibility as I haven't finished that show yet). I stopped auditioning, I stopped looking, I stopped practicing, I stopped trying.

But today, having spent all day acting and dancing... I don't know if turning my back on all that training and joy is wise... or even sane. I often think I'm exaggerating when I say I can't live without the arts, but today reminded me that's actually true. It keeps me at least somewhat afloat in this dark heaving sea of life and depression that pulls me down into its depths with full intent to smother me.

To quit the arts is a literal suicide mission. But so much of the performing arts is dependent on someone actually casting you.

Say what you will about autonomy and self-sufficiency and independence and all that crap, my life is in the hands of the local casting directors.

Investing

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have a fixed amount of money and that amount is rapidly diminishing.

I managed to peel the entire front off my vehicle, managed to land an audition with a fee that the company conveniently neglected to mention until I'd already committed to the audition, and probably should get counselling as I spent the last four or five days in a pit of suicidal rage. That will pretty well take care of my savings, and I haven't even paid rent yet.

What really annoys me about this (I realised while ranting into the void), is that I can no longer invest in myself. Self-care for me includes dance class, it includes driving around listening to music, it includes wandering shops, it includes photography, it includes writing, it includes auditioning, it includes counselling, it includes creating things.

But dance class costs money. And I need new tap shoes (again), which costs money.

Gas costs money. Wandering around shops usually costs money because I usually find at least one costume piece. Lord knows film and development cost money and my dear Pentax is in desperate need of service.

With Lila broken, my writing is severely curtailed. If I had an income, I could justify buying another word processor on eBay or something but I have no income so I can't.

Auditioning often requires me doing video auditions, and that requires me having a memory card for my video camera -- mine is full, so I went out and bought another but it turned out to be a piece of trash. A good memory card runs into the $100 range... I cannot justify that in my current financial circumstances. And heaven knows counselling costs money.

I can't create anything. I can't do anything. And as mentioned before, that makes me feel really useless. I want to make dance and writing and photos and art and maybe one day that will be a source of income. But right now I'm in a place where I can't continue with any of that until I can make these investments. But can I really justify these investments when I can barely afford rent and gas to get to rehearsals (I haven't really eaten in a week in order to cut down on food costs). I have no assurance that these investments will actually pay off... out of the literally dozens of auditions I've done so far this year, only two actually cast me (and one was with the school so they kind of had to shove me in somewhere though we all knew the director would rather have gouged out his own eyes than work with me).

I want to do all these things. I want to pursue these things, even though they're mere hobbies at the moment. I want to continue to hone my skills and develop my stage presence. I want to keep auditioning and making dance films and writing novels. I want to get counselling. I want to do and enjoy all of these things. But I can't -- I can't justify spending that kind of money on literally zero income with no assurance of return on my investment.

JCS Debrief

I was recently in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

I initially turned down the role (for several reasons) but two and a half months after the show was cast, just before rehearsals started, the producer asked me if I would reconsider my initial refusal. I agreed to reconsider and within three days I committed to JCS. At the time I had heard the soundtrack exactly once in my entire life (the day before I said I'd do the show).

Even at first, I didn't particularly enjoy the show. The ensemble work in the first act felt like paper to me -- happy, happy, light, light, fluff and fairy floss. I am not any of these things and I kind of despise shows that require me to be that because life is not that.

Then I had to take a week off from JCS to open my concurrent show (Sound of Music), and when I returned to JCS, they had blocked all of Act II. I saw it for the first time in rehearsal on a Sunday night. I was coming off of nine straight days of rehearsals plus the opening weekend of Sound of Music (which, Nazis aside, is arguably one of the lightest and fluffiest feel-good shows ever written) and I was not prepared for what was about to hit my heart.

Even in the high school auditorium we rehearse in, even with a dollar-store toy gun for a stand-in prop and the cast still dressed in jean shorts and assorted show t-shirts, the second act completely arrested my attention. I watched unblinking as the priests surrounded Judas, then left him to spiral alone, the scream, the clatter of coins falling... that was the day I began to get excited about this show.

I knew going in that I would be stretched vocally (and heaven knows I needed the help), but as we got into opening week my acting abilities were also challenged... as ensemble in the show, I was part of the mob that screamed for Jesus' crucifixion. We were told to spend the second act in a state of joyous murderous glee, enjoying the trials and the whipping and the death -- "you don't have television -- this is your entertainment. You're loving this," the director told us. And somehow that clicked in my head. I developed an alter ego, a person who grow more evil and twisted with every rehearsal and every show of the run. The sardonic smile grew bigger, the screams grew louder, the facial expressions more judgemental. I'd watch, breathless from the weight, as Judas died in agony and thirty seconds later I'd be out on the stage, watching in a dark and horrific glee as Jesus was whipped.

The crucifixion grew harder to watch every night. Even though I knew it was acting and I knew the man on that cross on the stage wasn't the real Jesus, it still took all of my concentration to keep up the persona -- to keep laughing at the cross. It wasn't the remnants of my religious upbringing making it hard -- it was the experience of watching this kind man suffering and struggling and then ceasing his writhing, that sudden awful stillness. The line from the show that haunted me most was Jesus, on the floor before Pilate, gasping, "Everything is fixed and you can't change it."

Usually after I've done a show I have to abstain from hearing the music for at least a year after the show closes because it's been so overplayed (even if I like it... I have a VERY low tolerance for overplaying music), but within a week of closing JCS I was listening to the soundtrack again. I have never, ever done this with any show I've ever done before. This is how deeply this show impacted me, even as a performer -- I can't imagine what it was like for the audience, to go in blind and have the full, finished product radiate out in its full intensity from the stage. I fully believe that it would have taken an audience more than one viewing to fully comprehend the depth of what the director did with that production.

By the end of the run, I felt that I'd grown in my acting abilities, but it was only a subconscious feeling -- I didn't dare admit it even to myself. I shone bright and big -- that was my goal and that was what I did. I was screaming for his death, darn it, and it couldn't be half-hearted. To be so into the role scared me a little, but I convinced myself to press into that dark space, just for the week, just for the run, just for the stage. But I didn't dare acknowledge that this might have been growth -- how many times do I think 'wow, I've grown a lot in this area' and then someone tells me I'm the worst actress/dancer/singer they've ever seen? Better to not even have the initial hopeful thought than to hope it's true and then have that hope torn to confetti.

At the cast party, one of the other actors -- who I'd only met during this show -- looked me dead in the eye and said, "You are amazing. I'd always watch you from across the stage... I really think you should keep acting. No -- actually, I don't 'think' -- you NEED to keep acting." I didn't have the heart to tell him I'd already planned to quit the arts. But my friend who did know I was planning to quit was sitting right beside him, unnaturally quiet, undoubtedly listening, most likely making an 'are you hearing this?' face at me. I could only manage a 'thank you,' from the deepest part of my heart. He barely knew me. He didn't know I'd planned to quit. But here he was, not just hinting -- literally telling me not to quit acting.

I don't know yet if I'll heed his advice. It's been a difficult year in many ways (including but not limited to performing). But I'm glad I got to be in this production. It was one of my greatest artistic experiences and if it does turn out to be one of my last, then I'm glad to go out on such an incredible note.

The Annual Goalpost

I kind of dislike the annual goal-setting. It's hard. Part of it is because a lot of these goals are pretty abstract and difficult to measure progress in, but part of it is also because I genuinely have no idea what province I'm going to be in this time next year. I graduate (hopefully) in April... and then what? I have three viable options, and at the moment it's a waiting game to see which will pan out.

As far as that goes -- I want to stay in the performing arts. I've already got a few auditions lined up for 2019 -- the second is in less than a week. So I guess that counts as a goal. But what do I want to do around that -- when I'm not actually at rehearsal or practicing or performing? What do I want to work on in practice?

First -- dance.
If I do end up moving, goal #1 is to find a practice space. I'm spoiled here right now -- I have relatively unlimited access to a studio a five-minute walk from my house, and I have a connection to another studio in the next town over if I need it. I've had the opportunity to practice literally every day for the past two years and I would not be where I am now as a dancer if it wasn't for that. In dance, perhaps more than any other discipline, daily practice is absolutely CRUCIAL even just to maintain technique. Dance technique/ability gets lost faster than technique in any other discipline I've attempted.
Goal #2 would be to find classes (and a job to pay for them). If I can't find a studio to practice in on my own time, this would be the next best thing, plus it's also important to have a trained teacher looking at my technique and giving corrections on a regular basis even when I am practicing on my own regularly. I know at this point a career as a full-time classical ballerina is not likely, but I would still like to train toward that level, just for my own strength and enjoyment (and also to prove to those who said I couldn't that I can).

I want to do more choreography. Of course this includes National Choreography Month in January, but it also includes more dance videos. For 2018 my goal was to make multiple new dance videos (I believe I actually said 'one per month'), but unfortunately I only accomplished one (plus two live videos). I do want to continue the videos into 2019 though. At least two videos? I hope? Hopefully more, but realistically (financially) I might only be able to pull off two. I'd like to do at least one ballet one (to show that I'm not just a tapper -- then again, I'm definitely stronger in tap than ballet and I don't want the ballet videos to suffer artistically because of my lack of ability).

Talking of choreography, I've been wanting to make a longer story-show for a while now. Like maybe a half-hour to an hour of dance that somehow follows a cohesive story or at least a theme. I'm not sure how to approach it or what exactly to tackle, but I would really love to do something like this at some point in my life -- why not lay some groundwork for it now? I've already begun work on this a bit -- choreographing the first side of Daniel Amos' phenomenal album Doppelgänger as a long(ish)-form work to start.

I want to make a proper memorial dance for M. Ideally I would also like to actually have the opportunity to stage it (still haven't been able to stage Brittney's, my cousin's, or my grandpa's...).

I want to start doing more live (dance) performances. Right now I'm thinking competitions, coffeehouses, talent shows, et cetera (in addition to the one college recital). Just to get more audience response to my performance and choreography so I can see what needs to improve. Plus it'll keep me comfortable with live performance as opposed to the safety net of video editing.

I want to continue working on my flexibility. I feel less tight than usual (overall), but so far it's not translating into actual flexibility. This is still my greatest hindrance as a performer. Not just as a dancer, as a performer, full stop. I have had theatre directors pass over me even though I'm technically excellent, fairly expressive, and relatively strong simply because I'm not flexible. I'm so so close to my left front split and it's absolutely driving me crazy that I can't get those last two inches (I've been stuck there since probably about late September/early October).

I need to work on allegro more. I have some level of natural gifting for it, but I don't push myself in it nearly enough. It's hard to get up that much energy when practicing by oneself.

I also want to work on my wings (in tap), both single and double-foot. I'm decent at them actually... what I need is stamina. On that topic, I want to work on my stamina in general. It's MUCH better than it was when I started college (I couldn't even get through the first side of the Intermediate port de bras without literally collapsing), but it's still not great. Again, if I would actually just do allegro instead of avoiding it all the time...

I'm realising lately that I have a lot of mental tension around dance, of all things. I think at least part of the reason I don't push myself in allegro a lot (*cough* at all) is because I'm not confident I'm doing everything correctly (which is why I need dance classes with actual teachers, not just self-directed practice...), so 1. I'm scared I'll get incorrect technique in my muscle memory, and 2. I'm scared I'll injure myself. The one and only dance injury that ever actually sidelined me (ankle) happened during allegro. I'm also starting to wonder if mental tension is at least part of the plateau in my stretching. I notice during one stretch in particular that I can push myself farther without pain, but when I do, I just really, really dislike how it feels in my body -- so much that I actually feel slightly sick -- so I ease off it. So far I've only noticed it in that one stretch (on only one side... the other side I can push it fine), but maybe there are others I haven't clued into yet.

Regarding voice...
It's hard to set goals here. I still know very little about singing and what I should expect of myself. What's reasonable? What do I even want? I don't know. Until very recently, my only goal was to not suck. Now that I'm getting past that point, I don't really know what's next. I'd kind of like to learn more opera and musical theatre (mostly to challenge my acting skills, actually -- since I don't really know what to strive for in actual sound/technique).

And piano...
Oh yes, by the way, I started piano this past semester and absolutely fell in love with it. I took one semester at the beginning of my college career in 2013, but I was too angry and tense and perfectionistic and easily frustrated to enjoy it so of course I didn't really get anywhere in my abilities. Now I'm in a better place to receive the joy that playing piano brings me. I really just want to learn as much as I can. I just get lost in playing, and before I know it, a whole hour will have slipped by. The only other thing I have EVER done that with is dance.
Over Christmas break I've gone through my sister's earlier piano rep (she's a few grades ahead of me) and pulled out probably about a dozen songs that I feel are around or not insanely far above my current level of playing. I'm trying to think of a piece that I can set as a reasonable goal for the end of the year that won't be too easy for me to get by April, but also won't still be completely out of reach by November. I feel like I don't have enough of a sense of my growth trajectory yet to really make any solid long-term plans here so for now I'm just trying to take this a few pieces at a time, while consistently challenging myself.

Writing...
Of course I'd like to do NaNoWriMo in 2019 as well, but I'll ponder that more after graduation (I usually start percolating ideas around June).

I want to continue work on Kyrie. I had some momentum on it before NaNoWriMo this year, and it actually influenced my NaNoWriMo novel quite a bit because I couldn't quite get out of Kyrie brain during November (at one point during the month I said 'this novel is basically Kyrie but less good').

Theatre...
Basically the plan at the moment is 'audition for ALL the things!' I'm currently lining up my audition schedule for the next few months (I have one next week) and I have to say, I am VERY excited.
I want to work on my acting skills. I don't quite know how that looks yet. I'm trying to figure something out, but it's hard when I don't really know what the goal actually is, or even how you 'practice' acting.

Goals for life in general... These are the ones that are hardest to attain. The performing/artistic ones can be so easily incorporated into a schedule -- go to a practice room/studio for a few hours. But these are harder -- 98% of my life is wrapped up in the arts, so to do anything outside of it feels clunky and unnatural (well -- more clunky and unnatural than my artistic endeavours).

The biggest one is keep in contact with my friends.
This is a hard one. Due to depression, the way I was raised, and the way I was treated by my peers during my teen years, I have this deep-seated belief that nobody has time for me (and this belief is strong in my mind whether I'm in a good headspace or not). People have better things to do than spend time with me. So 99% of the time I don't even try to initiate contact with other people, even my closest friends. I'm terrified I'm going to wear out my welcome and then I'll be truly friendless, and I don't ever want to go back there again. I'd rather have a 'friend' that I'm too scared to talk to than overdo the talking and end up with no friends at all.
I think a subgoal of this might be to quit apologising that I'm spending time with them on the rare occasion that I actually do convince myself to spend time with them.

The other one is to not move back home immediately after graduating.
As much as I love my family and my friends at home and my home dance school and the city and the landscape, I don't dare go back too soon and settle back into my pre-college rut. I did that after I graduated with my Associate in 2015 and it almost literally killed me -- I had a $60,000 degree that I was doing literally nothing with and I was living the same dead-end life that I had before I went to college. I wound up feeling like my life was a waste and that I was a waste. There's an overpass I drive over on the commute from my home dance school and I cannot even count how many times over that next year I almost pulled over and jumped onto the busy highway below. Knowing this, I need to make a life for myself outside of both home and school, at least for a time. Once I know that I can survive on my own without school to set my routine, maybe I will end up back around home, closer to my family. But if I do it too soon, all the growth and excitement of what I've been learning out on my own in college will fizzle and I'll dead-end again. And that's so dangerous for me. I need to keep forward momentum, and I won't be able to do that if I move back home immediately after graduation.

I need to nail down my 'why.' Why do I perform? Why do I keep practicing? Why do I do this? 'Because I love it' is a good start, but I'm not convinced that it's really enough (it sure isn't when I'm struggling to motivate myself to practice an allegro that I know nobody will ever see me do). That reason seems inherently selfish to me, so I feel guilty about it. Which of course makes me second-guess myself which makes me tense and frustrated which of course means I continue to suck at performing. I need a strong reason to keep slogging through when it's tough. I am definitely the type of person who absolutely WILL NOT do something unless you can give me an extremely good reason to do it/do it this way. 'Because I said so' has never worked on me, even as a kid. 'Because it'll make this easier/sound better/look better/give you a better foundation for what's to come' resonates with me. Tell me why and I'll do it gladly. But so far I haven't been able to tell myself on the hard days why I do this. I love it. I do. I have never known joy like the joy I (usually) have during performance runs. But somehow that doesn't feel like a good enough reason, and it's keeping me hesitant.

Post-NaNoWriMo Debrief

This was the hardest novel I think I've ever written.

Mind you, I don't particularly remember the trenches of writing my other novels. But usually I have a pretty good sense of which novels are decent and which are... not. And this one is trending to the latter camp.

First of all, my plot only percolated for about 36 hours before I started writing it (usually it's simmering in my brainpan for five or six months by the time November hits), so I felt like I didn't really know the story. It was like trying to eat an unripe fruit. It might have been good, but I was asking too much of it prematurely. My mystery story was a mystery even to me, and in fact, the plot grew murkier as the book went on. When I started the story I knew exactly who the murderer was, and by the time I hit 50k I had narrowed it down to three people. (No, that's not a typo.)

It was also hard writing without M. Even in the years when she didn't write a novel herself, she still commiserated with me as I wrote mine because she knew from the inside the madness that is writing a 50,000 word novel in thirty days and got, more than anybody else, the strange heady mix of elation and hilarity and angst that co-exists in the speed-novelist in those thirty days. But this year, I couldn't message her my characters' latest escapades and have her laugh along with me instead of taking a vague 'smile, nod, and back away slowly' approach like most everyone else does. I didn't have any of her insightful/funny comments on my NaNoWriMo Facebook posts. I never got to see her dramatic updates of her own novel. I didn't get to offer her ludicrous ideas and steal ridiculous plot points from her.

Artists -- true artists, who follow their calling with such passion and intensity -- are so rare already, and although we are often perceived as working alone, the fact is we can be pretty closely knit and when we lose one of our own, it's like taking a support beam out of a building. Although M and I worked on our novels in our own separate rooms, communicating almost exclusively online, she was integral in my own creative process and now that she's gone, my own work has grown paler, simply because she's not a part of my life anymore. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and I would also argue that it takes a village to create art. Take one person out of the picture, and the whole composition of the photo is altered. Colours are missing -- the blue eyes, the blonde hair, the bright clothing. The light is different -- the reflection of the sun on her face, the sparkle in her eyes. The shape is different -- one less figure, one less shadow, the loss of shape and symmetry, a literal hole where there used to be a whole fascinating personality. You can tell me to get over it because she was 'just' a friend all you want (as opposed to a spouse or a child), but the fact is, she coloured my life and by extension my artistic output, and now with one of the arteries of my art severed, my art -- and therefore I -- can't help but suffer.

I digress.

I did make 50k though. I completely filibustered the last 10k. I had about four plot points of any kind, so I basically dropped one in every 10k and then milked it in great repetitive word-padded detail for as long as conceivably possible (and then some) before dropping in the next tiny plot point and milking that cow absolutely dry and so on. I lost my motivation somewhere around the 25k mark and honestly it was sheer force of will that got the book to 50k (I'm not calling it 'done' because nothing's wrapped up because I don't know how to wrap it up). I have never been so thoroughly, consistently uninspired for a novel. Even my 2016 novel (which only made 37k that November) wasn't this difficult to write.

Maybe in eight months when I get around to re-reading it I'll feel differently about it, but right now I'm not looking forward to that day. I can't complain too much though... my main goal coming in was not to write an amazing book (although that would have been nice), it was to write 50k in a month for the first time since 2015. And I did that.

Next writing project: back to revising Kyrie.

Darkness and Creation

Mentally, at this specific moment, I am probably in a better place now than I have ever been since before depression first hit me when I was nine years old. I blame actually tasting my performance dream in real life for this improvement (and probably also being in an environment well away from my negative church/extended family).

Here's the thing though.

After skipping NaNoWriMo last year because I was so uninspired, I'm now wondering if I should attempt this year. On one hand, I haven't really done anything creative in a very long time and I miss that. NaNoWriMo could be just the thing to kickstart my creative brain again.

But... the only story idea I've come up with so far that I might actually squeeze a novel from is a story that basically deals with the subject of abusive churches.

On one hand, it could be good to write this. Having gone through some stuff in previous churches (and heard stories of others' experiences) means I definitely have a place to write from, and goodness knows I feel strongly about this topic. It's possible that writing about the topic could help me deal with my own experiences. Writing is definitely a cathartic thing for me, and the times when I was at my worst emotionally were the times I couldn't write because I didn't have words to encompass the pain.

But on the other hand, I'm actually in a fairly good place mentally. I've pretty well severed myself from the ones who inflicted so much damage on me in the name of Jesus. Dare I dredge all that up in my memory again? I've mentioned before how writing well is not much different from method acting -- the best way to resonate with the reader is to actually feel what the characters are feeling. This includes their pain.

When I was filming Rift several months ago, I was already sort of on an upswing, mentally. But I deliberately sort of 'kept' myself in a dark, frustrated place until I finished filming because I wanted that dance to capture, as authentically as possible, the pain and frustration it was intended to convey. I think the rawness and honesty of the piece did benefit from that and I don't think I regret it. But now that things have gotten SO much better... do I want to deliberately go back to a dark place for the sake of my art? I'll probably end up back there soon enough anyway -- dare I risk hastening it? Is it possible to dip into it for a couple hours each day (during writing sessions) and then 'switch it off' and return to my current content/joyful state? Or is that playing with fire? Will I be able to switch it off?

And if I decide not to risk plunging myself into the depths again, even for the sake of art -- then what do I write about? That's literally the only story idea I have right now. Characters and plots and allegories used to spring to my mind fully formed as I went through the motions of life, but now I can't even remember what it was like to have a story consume me the way stories like Reuben, Rebecca's World, Chasm, and of course, Kyrie did.

I miss that.

The Effect of Perelandra

Almost finished reading C.S. Lewis' Perelandra.

READ. THIS. BOOK.

I am not kidding. I do not care who you are. I don't care if you normally hate fantasy fiction (I do, actually). I don't even care if you normally hate reading. READ THIS BOOK. It gets off to an incredibly slow start, but once it gets going it grabs you by the soul. Not the throat, not the heart -- the soul. What the Chronicles of Narnia has lost by being so immensely popular, this trilogy has retained by being almost completely unknown.

Ordinarily I would start thinking, what can I take from here to improve my own writing? But to try to strip writing advice out of a work so -- there are no adequate words -- intense is to strip it of its weight and meaning. And perhaps that would be an unnecessary exercise anyway -- as I was just saying to my brother not long ago: whatever you're reading will, for better or worse, show up in your writing. Your output will begin to reflect what you're putting into your mind, your spirit, your soul. You don't even have to try for it, it just happens. I was telling somebody the other day that as soon as you start trying to be sincere, you're no longer sincere. That particular discussion was in the context of interpersonal relationships and communicating feelings through writing, but it also applies to art -- as soon as you 'try' to make something great, it automatically loses some of its potential to be great.

Instead, I'll try to document some of what this story has done to me.

For it did do things to me. I was reading Buechner the other day and he said something to the effect that things like painting and music are subcutaneous arts -- they get under the skin and slowly seep into your being. But writing is an intravenous art -- it goes directly into your bloodstream, in minutes, undiluted. If I ever doubted that, Perelandra has proved it to me.

I've never really been one to read trashy novels. My mother was a huge book-lover, a teacher, and a bit of an intellectual. My earliest memory of her is of her reading to us. We, her offspring, read copiously as children and teens (that was just what people did in their free time, wasn't it?). And because my mother was very aware that what you read influences how you think, she ensured that we had access to books of substance. Those were what she bought and read to us, and so those influenced our tastes as we began choosing our own reading material. As a writer myself, I can't stand trashy junk-food novels -- the mass-produced brain-clogging recycled intellectual and emotional pablum that serves only to give your eye muscles a little exercise but not your brain. But even though I haven't even been reading trash, this book makes me think 'this is what stories are supposed to be.' This level of intensity, this real, this rich, this deep, this poetic/allegorical to the mysteries of real life. It's like every story I've ever read to this point in my life has been a cheap facsimile of a real story.

I needed to read this story now, at this point in my life. It speaks to so much of what I've been thinking about and going through lately and puts a lot of it into perspective.

For a while now, I've been realising that I'm different, on a fundamental level, from most people. Even writing that sounds a little boastful, and I don't mean it to be. I mean it only as an observation. I'm beginning to realise that not everyone sees what I see (intellectually/spiritually/emotionally) -- they don't make the connections that I do. When artists say 'people don't get it,' they actually mean that -- people really, truly, do not get it. And it's frustrating because to me it seems to obvious, so simple, so logical, if only you pause and think about it a little. It's like I can see -- however dimly -- what goes on behind the curtain of the empirical world while most everybody else seems to not even realise there IS a curtain.

And although the layperson might think it's cool and fun to see things others don't -- I used to think the same thing till I realised I was one of them -- it's actually so frustrating. You can only converse with people in shallow terms on shallow subjects. As soon as you try to steer the conversation to something that actually does interest you, challenge you intellectually, they check out and tell you you're getting 'too personal.' It's like how a mother feels when they're cooped up in the house or the car with their two-year-old all day long -- it's like you can feel your brain atrophy because of the lack of conversational/intellectual stimulation. Except I experience this adult-in-a-room-of-two-year-olds phenomenon indefinitely -- the only person who seemed to 'get' what I see died three and a half years ago.

It's not something to brag about. It's more of a curse. (Yes, I do realise how cliché that sounds, but it's an accurate description.) It's like I'm doomed to forever be misunderstood and patronised. I've written before on how I often feel the weight of other people's pain and concerns -- things that don't bother my life but weigh on them -- so heavily that often I physically can't breathe.

Every so often, usually at a time when the weight seems heavier than normal, I'll ask God, 'why me?' Why did He choose me to be one of the misunderstood, one of the special ones? Must I be alone in this heavy calling to see so much -- and be completely unable to do anything with that information?

(Spoilers ahead.)

There's a scene in Perelandra in which Dr Ransom grapples with the same question -- why must he fight the spirit that threatens the planet's sacred, fragile innocence? Why not Maleldil? Why not anybody else? Why him? He's nothing special. And I recognised, on a gut level, all those questions because I have asked them myself. Why me? Why am I the one chosen for such a lonely life? Why must I be so completely and incredibly alone, in every possible sense of the word?

This, naturally, turned my thoughts to my own half-finished novel Kyrie. The main characters touch on similar questions within their own experiences. Those two characters represent a friendship that I long for in real life -- that platonic intellectual thing that is completely at home and comfortable with the other person in their questions, exactly where they are at, engaging with them but not lecturing. The entire novel is basically me laying out the kind of friendship I long for in real life but -- I'm realising -- may never actually have again. It's the relationship Ransom has with the Green Lady of Perelandra -- intellectual and innocent.

This further turned my thoughts to a specific friendship I'm in -- one that I hoped would turn into 'something more,' as people like to put it, but so far has not. Yet we somehow have remained good friends. This person has seen me at some of my most broken and vulnerable moments and was content to simply exist alongside me in those times, without lecturing or proselytising, just existing and listening (exactly the thing I need that apparently seems to elude everyone else despite my detailed explanations that this is the thing I want to you to do if I'm struggling). Lately I've been wondering if this is, in fact, that deep comfortable companionship I've been longing for. Perhaps we have been denied romance because romance would cheapen (or needlessly complicate) what we have. I have been trying to be more content with our relationship as it currently is -- not focusing on what I want it to be. In the words of the Lady, "The fruit we are eating is always the best fruit of all."

And there's the other question: am I alone?

In that same scene, Ransom eventually hears from the darkness what he must do and despite his fear, he knows (somehow beyond explanation, but I 'get' it because I've experienced that deep certainty myself at times) that he will succeed in his task. It's no secret that the voice out of the darkness is Maleldil, and it's also no secret in the novel who Maleldil represents.

Something in me still doesn't want this answer to be enough (a held-over scar from the Year of Hell), but it's a question I can't not even consider.

(Possibly more thoughts to come as I finish the story.)


REFERENCES
Buechner, Frederick, The Clown in the Belfry, 1992.

Snapshot - What's In My Head

I am exhausted.

I am discouraged.

Though I don't want to admit it, I'm sick too (recurring respiratory infection).

And yet I must not stop.

I keep pushing, practicing, working, trying, pleading with God, do it again, do it again, one more time, one more time.

Maybe one day, by some miracle, I'll be good enough to earn your attention.

But in a way I doubt it'll ever be enough for anyone. You always want more, better, faster, stronger, more flexible, everything except what I've already got.

Am I on a hamster wheel? Will the carousel ever stop? Will you ever be satisfied? If I were to collapse dead on the floor from the amount of practicing I'm doing, would that sacrifice satisfy you? Would that dedication finally be enough for you? Or would you still demand more, better, faster, stronger, more flexible, more practice, more work, 'why aren't you trying harder?'

Drain the blood from my veins -- apparently it's no good to me. Maybe that is sacrifice enough. Maybe then you'll be satisfied. Cut my beating heart out of my chest. Maybe then you'll finally have what you wanted out of me. Touch my cold, dead body and my rigid unfeeling hands. Maybe then I'll have tried hard enough.

Maybe when I've paid the ultimate price you'll finally want me.

(NOTE: 'You' in this piece is a broad, general reference to both Christians and the art world. I have tried so hard to do everything they asked, everything they wanted, and still they cast me out. Still they tell me I'm not good enough. Still they ignore me.

Part of this was also written out of frustration with myself and my own continued lack of improvement and traction in the arts. I feel very much like I'm spinning my wheels and I'm so tired now. I want to give up. I'm not actively suicidal as I write this, but I'm trending toward it. It's so hard to think you're worth something when your own still-young, well-nourished, well-trained body refuses to do what you ask of it despite endless, consistent, hard hours of practice and training and stretching. I'm doing everything right. What more do I still lack?

I see very, very few bright spots or rays of hope tonight. I'm reluctant now to even look for them. Hope is so fragile. Just when you think you've caught it, it melts away in your hands. I would rather live in darkness than waste my fleeting energy chasing a disappearing light.)

On Encouragement

'Encouragement' is a concept I've pondered a lot since I began to take my calling as a performing artist seriously.

We as artists say we want to encourage people. We as Christians say one of our goals is to encourage each other.

So how does an artist encourage someone? Especially if you're a dance artist -- one who performs without words? Anyone can write a song with the lyric 'don't give up,' but how do you communicate that clearly in dance? Do you bother trying to say something so abstract so clearly? What about all the art that deals with the hardships of life -- the stuff that actually resonates because it touches on things so deep yet so common? Can only sugary sweet, 'safe and fun' art encourage?

Yet in my own artistic intake I continually find myself going back not to the happy, smile-a-minute songs, but to the ones that acknowledge -- no, press into -- deep pain. My favourite Terry Scott Taylor album of all time was written out of the loss of his grandfather and his oldest child within months of each other. It was in these expressions of melancholy and frustration and deep pain that I found solace. It was these songs, these albums, that gave the me courage to keep going. It was that knowledge -- that at least one other person on the planet, at at least one point in their life, had felt this despondency -- that kept my own despondency from swallowing me.

I came up against this concept again last year when, in the most intense and prolonged mental/emotional/spiritual struggle of my life (thus far), my church hung me out to dry. They told me I was too negative. Many stopped speaking to me, and those who didn't made no secret of their frustration with my despondency and repeatedly told me, 'you need to be happier,' 'you should be over this already,' 'you're not trying hard enough.' One person in leadership actually told me (in writing), 'Kate, it is your responsibility to encourage people by being happier.'

I was dying -- literally dying. And all they told me was 'it's your fault we don't give a crap about you.' They wanted me to earn what they should have been giving freely.

The other day, out of nowhere, the thought struck me: does 'encouragement' exclusively mean 'making someone happy'?

If so, then why do I get more encouragement out of one song born out of deep pain than out of an entire album that is so cheerful it causes a sugar coma? Why does one make me take a deep breath, wipe the tears from my eyes, and say, 'thank you,' while the other makes me writhe in near-physical pain from the confounded cheerfulness of it all?

Why am I encouraged by the things that acknowledge the brokenness and sadness?

Maybe because 'encouragement' is actually not so much about joy as it is about coming alongside someone -- walking with them, whether the journey is easy or not. Think of Sam coming alongside Frodo. It was dark, it was difficult, it was by no means happy. But Sam was an encouragement to Frodo because he was right there, literally beside him, sharing the experience of the darkness, even though he could easily have checked out and gone home. Maybe encouragement is about companionship and empathy, not fake smiles and fluffy words. Maybe encouragement is a lifestyle -- a commitment -- not something that gets switched on and off. (And I am almost certain that it's not dependent on whether you think the other person 'deserves' it or not.)

I've always said, since the very beginning of my career, that I wanted to do for others what my favourite artists have done for me. So that's my goal: one day, I want to be able to give the next wounded soul the same companionship and comfort -- the same encouragement -- that my favourite artists have given me.

Mental Health and the Performing Arts

It's difficult as a performing artist to know what to say. How much can I talk about this? I feel relatively little stigma from my general friends and acquaintances (although I think a lot of that is because at least a few of the people I hang out with struggle with similar things), but in the professional performing arts world, how much can be said? Any health struggle, mental or physical, can preclude you from getting roles -- getting work. No director wants to hire someone who may be unreliable -- even if it's something out of the actor's control, like their health. How do you reconcile 'the show must go on' with 'I have a chronic condition'? In the performing arts world, you are supposed to be able to do absolutely anything at absolutely any time. 'I'm tired/I'm not feeling well' is not a valid excuse -- ever. We've all heard stories of dancers who have performed on severe sprains or actors who have done shows hours after huge personal tragedies.

I get that -- I do. Our literal job as performers is to become someone else, to create another world. The audience comes so they can forget about their own problems, not be saddled with mine. So then how do you know when to just escape into your character or into your practice routine and how do you know when to say, 'I can't do this today or I will relapse'? Maybe this isn't as much of an issue for some as it is for me... for me, my life is literally staked on being able to do this performing arts thing. My counsellor and I were talking about this at my last appointment. He asked me, "Pretend for a moment that you decided to the do the easy thing and get a 9-to-5 job. What does it look like? What would happen?"

I said, "I have two reactions to that... On one hand, I can't even picture not being in the arts. It just sort of feels inevitable. It always has, for as long as I can remember. But on the other hand, if I had to live that life, to do the same thing over and over, meetings and phone calls and reports... I would actually kill myself. It would be SO boring and pointless." And I actually found myself tearing up as I spoke. I couldn't really picture myself living that life -- but for the fleeting seconds that I did grasp a vague image of it, my heart plunged into a despair that terrified me and I got the words out and banished the image before I could descend any further. It felt like I had been standing on the very edge of a black hole and tripped. I've attempted suicide twice in my life and I have still never felt anything as black and breathless as that vague fleeting image of myself not in the arts.

I've said things to that effect on this blog for years and years -- how I could never do a 9-to-5. But now it's really beginning to sink in that my life literally depends on whether or not I can stay in the performing arts. Because I know that if I can't, I will literally die. And that puts a lot of stress on me when I try to practice (never mind perform) because I feel this immense pressure to improve even more, to become the best the fastest, just so I don't fade out and become disposable -- so I don't get replaced by the next starlet who doesn't have depression (and also can do a developpé up to her ear and sing without sounding like a strangulation victim).

On one hand, you are asked to probe the depths of your pain and bare it on the stage, and on the other hand you are asked to shove it aside and pretend it doesn't exist. Is it any wonder so many artists break?