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).

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.