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.

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 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 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.

Creative Residency Plans (Or: The 2025 Goalpost)

I've been laid off my day job.

 

Since my body (and my mental health) can't handle the rigours of fast food, I will not be going back, even temporarily.

My employers anticipate they will call me back in late March/early April. This gives me just over three months to sit at home and think about life, for the first time since I graduated college.

I have a couple of side hustle ideas. Neither of them will likely replace a full-time income, but if they work out, they'll at least slow the financial bleeding.

That said, this is now a glorious opportunity to work on all those creative projects I keep saying I don't have time for. I've been thinking about my goals for 2025, and I want to front-load the year either hitting those goals or at least getting myself well set up to hit them later in the year (keeping in mind that the summer months from Hell in this town are usually pretty uninspired and dormant seasons for me).

I am trying to frame this as an artistic residency sponsored by God. (And for the record, God may work through other people or through my own efforts.)

So without further ado, here are the goals for 2025!

DANCE

- At least attempt teaching two (or more) dance sessions.

- Make two dance videos this year.

I made this goal in 2023 and got it. Made the same goal in 2024 and didn't even manage one.

- Create a long-form dance work.

The plan is to use Nachmo/National Choreography Month for this (post with more details forthcoming).

- Submit to at least two dance/choreography festivals.

Notice I said 'submit,' not 'appear in.' While obviously I would love to actually present work, I can only control how many festivals I apply to, not how many actually present my work. I always consciously choose goals that I personally can control -- that way if they don't happen, it's on me, and I'm not driving myself crazy trying to check off two 'presentations,' when that facet is out of my control. I want to focus on doing the work and showing up every day and leaving everything I can't control to God. If I submit to two festivals, I will have done my due diligence, and whether or not my work is accepted, I will consider myself happy with the fact that I put my name out there.

- Secure a practice studio.

I have two potential options at the moment. I really just need to gather my courage and send a couple of emails.

WRITING

- Write some short stories/poetry to submit.

Could be tricky, as I have been in a writing dry spell for YEARS at this point.

- Finish the current Kyrie rewrite.

 

 

PERSONAL GROWTH

 

- Go for a walk (or some kind of exercise) at least three times a week.

This is a goal my husband and I have set together.

 

- Become more comfortable with using that Instant Pot that has been sitting on the shelf literally since our wedding.

This is another goal for both my husband and I.

- Read more.

I've got probably like 70 books in my Kobo wish list, and even a few that I've already purchased that I haven't read yet. I got a Kobo gift card for Christmas, so time to put it to use (as soon as I figure out which Michael Card book I want).

I did make this goal last year and read about six books, which is definitely more than I've read since graduating college.

- More Bible reading and prayer.

I made this goal last year as well and I managed to be fairly consistent until about August.

FINANCIAL

- Save at least $500 for a house.

- Get in contact with at least two people about selling my crocheted items.

- Run at least two dance class sessions.

- Promote my Ko-fi page on social media somewhere at least once a month.

- Apply to at least one job per week.

The hardest thing here will be finding jobs to apply to that 1. are within like 200 km of where I live, 2. pay enough money to cover gas for my vehicle at the bare minimum, 3. won't re-injure my back or my ankle, and 4. won't make me want to drive off a cliff.

It's still early in the pre-New Year week, so I might still tweak these. But this is at least my starting point, and since I'm already off work, I guess the creative residency starts now.

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.

Brain Dump/Goal Update

Really lacking motivation, as usual. I keep trying to power through it, but I'm running out of reasons why I should be powering through. I'm trying to tell myself it's because I've been sick all month (had COVID immediately after Christmas, and now have long COVID symptoms so yay for that), but I know that I wouldn't be any more motivated if I wasn't sick. How on earth did I ever manage to focus long enough to get a Bachelor's degree?

So I thought I'd write a blog post, since nothing else is working. Maybe blogging about my problems will help me find the solution.

There's a scriptwriting contest nearby that closes on the 30th, and I'm trying to write something for it, if only to get my name out there (but hey, getting it produced would be a nice bonus). I came up with a theme, but it's supposed to be a one-act play. I've never even watched a one-act play in all my years of theatre, let alone written one. When you Google what a one-act play consists of, you get WILDLY different answers. Like literal opposite-ends-of-the-spectrum answers. So I just picked one and am hoping it's right. Self-doubt is not a great companion to have in a situation like this. I have no real pretensions of winning but -- man, wouldn't it be great if I did? It would look amazing in my portfolio.

I wanted to be writing articles and getting to a point where I would write an article draft one day and then editing older ones the next and repeat. I haven't written (or edited) a single thing in at least two weeks, despite really only working half-days due to ALL of the health issues. I just have absolutely no motivation and absolutely no ideas. How do I think I'm going to do this full-time when this happens all the time? It's so frustrating. I'm the only person in this household able-bodied enough to work (or at least I was before my back injury in September), and that's slipping away from me fast. I have always wanted to be self-employed and here's my chance and I'm just... doing nothing. I'm so frustrated with myself. Everyone else can do this. Why can't I? I know, I know, it's the ADHD. But that makes it worse. This only reinforces the idea that I am a dysfunctional human being and I'm too broken to bother being fixed. It's hard to want to try when you just feel so broken and forgotten.

I've submitted two pieces -- one to a magazine, and one to a flash fiction publication -- and haven't heard anything back. The magazine said it could be 9-12 months (yes, months), and the flash fiction should be announced in the next week or two. I have a half-decent draft I wanted to send to an online culture publisher, but I can't seem to pull the trigger on it. I'm so terrified they'll think my idea is stupid.

I have a vague idea of what needs to happen in Kyrie to fix the very-bad pacing issues in Act I, but I haven't figured out how to actually implement that... it's just a vague idea in my head at this point, but to actually write it into scenes? Pffft. No clue. No idea what those scenes would look like.

I've done some fine art -- mostly pencil crayon, actually, and I've almost finished a piece in marker. Those are fun and they've turned out decent. My main problem here is lack of ideas. I usually think in words (writer) and feelings (dancer), not easily-drawable images. The images I do think of are WAY above my skill level and I know it would just be an exercise in frustration to even try.

I haven't even touched dance. Not one dance thing. I want to make a trailer for Sottovoce so I can submit it to MDFF, but I just... can't, somehow. I want to type up the choreography so far for my (hopefully) next tap dance film to see where I'm at and what's left to choreograph, but again, I just... can't. I'm afraid I'll struggle with memorizing as much as I did with Inside Of You -- it turned out all right, but I've GOT to stop going into filming knowing literally none of the choreography. It just makes shooting take a thousand times longer and it makes editing so much harder than it needs to be. I dread starting memorization. I really do. I think me not typing up this choreography is me trying to avoid starting memorization -- which, of course, will make the problem even worse because then I'll have less time to memorise. I know this. I've always known this. But I can't seem to just DO it.

The one goal I've actually made a good start on is the reading. I've finished one book and read another cover-to-cover last night (it was a beta read, actually, and it was SO good. Will probably be talking about that book here a good bit when it's released -- the author accidentally hit all my special interests and it was really well-crafted).

Rehearsals for my show are going well so far. The cast seem friendly, but it's hard for this broken human to initiate conversations with them. They're a good group, and there's always laughter at rehearsal. It's also really nice to go on long drives again (it's a forty-minute drive one way -- about what I used to do four days a week for dance before I got married).

I still don't have any motivation or ideas (well, maybe one, but it's a baby idea and it needs to incubate a little bit), but it did feel nice to actually type for a while and have my thoughts organized like this.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading.

NaNoWriMo Teaser

I had almost decided not to do NaNoWriMo this year. Not because I had a bad experience or anything, but because I'm so weary. I'm tired of fighting for every scrap of creative time and energy. I've accomplished such big creative things in the past year and a half or so, but I still feel disconnected from the act of creating. I don't get to sit and enjoy it for hours on end like I used to. I have to sneak it in behind closed doors and on work breaks, only seconds at a time, maybe ten minutes if I'm lucky. I don't get to lean into it and really explore the way I used to. And I guess to me, that was the part I liked most. Finishing projects is great and all, but I loved the process of sitting down and just disappearing into another world for hours and then emerging with something tangible.

Somewhere along the line I decided to leverage that weariness.

So I'm writing essentially an autobiography set in a video game world. All the bosses are the people and situations that broke me.

Of course, I have no idea how it ends, since I'm still in the middle of three boss battles simultaneously.

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.

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.

NaNoWriMo - End Of Day 21

Still struggled a lot this week a lot with the 'I know where this story needs to go, but I don't know how to get it there,' thing.

I knew who the villain was, and I even managed to plant some half-decent clues, but all the clues point to why the brother was murdered. I could not figure out how to plant a clue (or even what clue to plant) to bring the detective MC back to the kidnapping case that she was supposed to be working on. I've written kidnappings before, but this one seemed more difficult somehow. Maybe my standards are just so much higher now. I haven't even written a scene from the kidnapped kid's perspective in like 20,000 words because I just don't have any ideas. All she (detective) had was this 'sense' that they're connected, but absolutely zero proof of that, and I didn't know how to provide it.

MC was making a ton of progress on her brother's case though -- you know, the one she was not supposed to be working on.

It's turning into another church drama, which I guess was the point. Apparently I really like those -- exposing the sins of a so-called 'perfect' institution. This was a theme in my writing even before the church ever really hurt me. For this story I'm drifting from my usual Baptist one (Baptist churches are the worst for sweeping crap under the rug and spraying lethal amounts of Febreeze over it when it starts to stink) to a more word of faith-style church -- which I think is what a lot of Baptists have bought into anyway and that's why they treat people so badly and are so resistant to change or even admit that they might possibly be wrong (how many Christians on your news feed are both anti-vax and anti-mask right now?).

In addition, my formerly trusty Neo 2 word processor, Lila II (she was the second one), died on Day 17. This means that I can't write at work (I would get anywhere from 300-800 words in a single lunch break), and this has upset my momentum significantly. I went from easily making over 2k per day to struggling to make it to the minimum 1,667. I am still way ahead in my total word count though (currently at 45.7k, goal for Day 21 is 35k). Some very kind souls in the Discord forums sent me some resources, so I may be doing some Neo surgery come December. By my own diagnostics, it's either a loose wire or a broken/damaged trace, although I'm going to try replacing the button cell battery that I didn't know Neos had until said kind souls sent me said resources. I was at least able to back up all of her files to my computer, so I won't lose anything. If surgery goes well, I'll try to resurrect Lila, my original Neo 2, which died in 2019 following similar symptoms.

Also, the word tracker is SO helpful. I'm really glad I'm using different colours because it really makes the tracker easier to follow. And it's still really satisfying to colour in the progress bar every day (even though it's so long now that my hand gets tired. I guess that's a good problem to have). It's also come in handy when talking to people about the project -- all I have to do is flip to the spread and show them what the minimum goal is, and where I'm at in relation to it. It's all right there in one graph, and it's easier than trying to explain all these numbers to people who have little to no context for them (it also makes being 10k ahead far more impressive). I've actually had people ask to see it by way of an update. Definitely going to be doing the tracker thing again next year (and I would also really like to figure one out for National Choreography Month in January).

(And now, back to our feature presentation...)

Last night, my husband and I were talking about my stuck-ness and he mentioned footprints at the scene. And that was all I needed.

I planted the child's footprints at the scene (which also boosted my word count because then my detectives had to figure out/explain why they didn't see the footprints the first time they studied the scene) and also got the idea of the detectives re-interviewing the kid's best friend. He is proving to be much more informative than he realises -- he unwittingly gives them not only the name of the villain, but the motive behind the kidnapping.

I also know exactly how justice is going to come about now. I'm at the point now where I've tipped the starting domino of the climax, and my job from here on out is just to write like the cold snowless wind outside to keep up with the coming cascade of events. This part is one of the best parts of National Novel Writing Month. I still remember the Day 30 rush of writing 10k in one day back in 2012 not because I was that far behind but because there was so much coming together and it was beautiful and fascinating to watch. That's the moment I live for every year. That's the reason I put myself through writing an entire novel from scratch every year. And that was what I've been missing for the past seven years.

NaNoWriMo - Intro

National Novel Writing Month.

I started last year and petered out before I hit 20k. I was depressed, I was struggling both emotionally and in my marriage, the creative well was completely dry. The two years before that, I hit 50k only by pure determination and I hated every word I wrote. The year before that, I took a hiatus. The year before that, school commitments cut me off at 37k (though I did go back the next July and add enough to push the novel over 50k). The year before that was 2015 and I wrote 50k of a half-decent story in a fog of indescribable pain and grief. The year before that, I wrote Kyrie.

It's been seven years since I was able to enjoy NaNoWriMo. Seven years ago, M and Brittney were both still alive. Seven years ago, the world was pregnant with possibility and I had not yet become this broken, hardened, cynical, angry shell of the vibrant and hopeful person I used to be. Sometimes I wonder if it's even possible to write anymore. That Kate is so far removed from who I am now, and I wish that wasn't so. I miss who I used to be, and I don't know how to go back.

But we're going to try. Maybe that Kate hasn't completely died -- hope springs eternal, apparently.

So, about the story...

I got the seed of the idea from a 'plot bunnies' NaNoWriMo forum AGES ago. I think I still have the username written down somewhere, so that if I ever do publish it I can give credit where credit is due. As it stands now, the plot follows a police detective who's just lost her brother in a drive-by shooting. Said brother frequently volunteered at the youth drop-in centre run by the local megachurch, pastored by a larger-than-life man who has been a pillar in the community for several generations. Police detective is obviously not allowed to work her own brother's case and is instead redirected onto the case of a child reported missing by her foster parents. But the more she digs into the girl's case, the more names she recognises from her brother's life... She begins to suspect that if she can find the girl, she can find out who killed her brother. But of course, she can't take her suspicions to her superiors, because then she'll be taken off the girl's case and won't get another chance to bring his killer to justice.

It's a story with a few big twists. It's also very much in the same vein as my 2016 story -- a modern-day parable following a child who society would rather ignore, highlighting how backwards the world can be... the ones who should care and protect are the villains, and the 'evil' ones do the right thing.

I have a bone to pick with Christian evangelical leadership, and since I've been expressly forbidden to do so with other human beings or on social media, I'm going to do it in my own private novel that nobody will see for approximately 65 years (and that's if I do end up publishing the thing). Writing has long been my only safe place to say how I truly feel about things (that's actually how this blog started), and I guess that's going to continue. Maybe when I'm dead my best friend will send it off to a publisher and then people will understand. Or maybe it's just going to languish on my hard drive and in flashes in this year's NaNoWriMo forums and this blog. It has the potential to be a really good story, but I just don't want to face the inevitable backlash from my in-laws (my biological family has long since gotten used to my 'quirks' and have stopped trying to change me into a hyper-positive Barbie doll because they've recognised that it is literally NEVER going to happen). This story is for me, at least for right now.

I'm still scared to do this without M. I don't know how to write 50k without her (even though I've done it twice). I guess it's more that I don't know how to enjoy (or even have) the wild and crazy process without her right alongside me.

But I've noticed that my choreography after her death took on a richer emotional depth and resonance. They come fewer and farther between, but they are richer and deeper and seem to touch people more. Maybe that'll be the case for my writing too.

Do I think it's a good thing that M died? No, absolutely not. If I had to chose between writing better quality work and having her here, I would chose her. It's not fun to write good quality work all alone.

I have, however, recently joined a couple of NaNoWriMo Discord groups. I'll never, never, ever be able to replace M and her impact on my life, but maybe I can find a couple of comrades here.

I have enough plot. But do I have enough spirit?

Tune in next time...

I Jumped On The Bandwagon

Originally written on 26 September 2021, 4.08pm.

I've recently started a 'bullet journal' (I use the quotation marks because it looks NOTHING like a 'typical' bullet journal). All it is is a dollar store notebook. I made an index at the front, a basic habit-tracker, lists with goals for September and October as well as the rest of 2021 as a whole, a page for tracking all bank account activity this month, and I'm doing a daily two-page spread for to-do lists, play-by-play of everything I did and said, and general infodumping. I'm also using it to track the crochet legwarmer pattern I'm currently developing. I haven't drawn in a calendar because it's too much work and honestly, I don't have much of anything to put in it until we've finally gotten the upper hand on COVID-19 and can actually revive the performing arts again.

I had five coloured InkJoy pens lying around that someone had given us. I'm not usually one for coloured pens (my weapon of choice is usually the PaperMate FlexGrip Ultra in black, with a cap, not a clicker, although a somehow picked up a black InkJoy 100 from somewhere and it has been making a very strong case for itself), but I use them to fill in the habit tracker and I've given colours to certain things like mental health status and choreography. I have to admit, the extra bit of colour is nice. This 'journal' is also MUCH lighter than the previous notebook I'd been carting around in my purse and I'm actually using this one as opposed to the last one.

One of my (possibly autistic) obsessions is notebooks. I literally have an entire apple box of UNUSED notebooks and journals at my parents' house, and probably at least a dozen at our place. I also suspect the act of handwriting is a stim for me. I've always felt a sense of security and comfort holding a pen, or even just having one nearby. I have a dozen pens in my purse at any given time, in case one dies or gets lost -- even though I am meticulous about where they are at all times. If someone borrows a pen from me, I will literally hunt them down for it the second they're done writing. If I lend you a pen, that means I trust you a LOT, and just know that my heart is in my throat from the second that pen leaves my hand until it returns to my hand.

All this to say that the rush of adrenaline that comes from having a brand new notebook in my purse that I can (and should!) write in all the time with pretty colours to boot is absolute euphoria for the very understimulated ADHD brain and the familiarity of notebooks and writing is soothing for the autism brain. Is the journal itself actually helping my ADHD symptoms? That remains to be seen -- I haven't been doing it long enough to find out yet.

That being said, reinstating a basic habit tracker into my life (I was doing one in my last year of college to prove to my profs I was actually practicing/trying to improve my skills -- it didn't convince them, of course, but it did help me stay on track and kind of feel better about myself... and Lord knows with those clowns as my profs, I needed all the mini-mood-boosters I could get) is helping a lot with getting back into choreography, specifically. There are other things I'm tracking, but that's the one seeing the most dramatic improvement so far. I've set the bar low (two sets of eight per day) so as to not scare myself off of any seemingly-impossible goals.  If I have ideas for more than two sets of eight, then I choreograph more than two sets of eight. But if not, then I will be happy with only two sets of eight, and I will count that as progress. I need to get my brain back into choreographic shape, the way it was in the summer of 2013. I went to college to improve my choreography, not kill it. Time to bring those five years of knowledge and experience (mostly experience) to bear.

(For example, just now I've been writing this entire post to put off my two sets of eight for today. I literally had my headphones on and my iPod and page of in-progress choreography in front of me, but I didn't have any ideas and was trying desperately to procrastinate. I've done the two sets of eight now and it literally didn't even take me ten minutes -- and this was a section I was struggling with. It's so easy once I just do it... I just had to persuade myself to make this one tiny goal. And if I hadn't made this one tiny goal for myself, this page would have sat there for literally months, if not years.)

I digress. I didn't really have a point to this post, I just wanted to write something (for once) and I felt like telling all the ghosts of people who used to use Blogger that I started a bullet journal experiment. I'll try to make progress updates, but we all know how good I am at those...

Lockdown, Day 2

I've been officially house-bound for almost two days now (though I was severely limiting interactions before that, but I can't say I was in lockdown yet because I was still working until the middle of this week).

Ordinarily I would have jumped at the chance to have so much free time -- all the dancing! all the writing! all the music! all the choreography! But after the past year or so, burnout talked louder than the joy of opportunity.

I knew the lockdown was coming, though, and slowly I came to terms with the idea of creating things again. I started with a crochet project -- no-one's ever told me I was worthless for crocheting, so it was a safe but still creative option that at least kept me from scrolling Facebook 24/7.

After two days of planning to do it, today I officially started the rewrite of Kyrie. Not 'adding scenes,' not 'revising,' rewriting. Top-to-bottom rewriting the novel. I'll insert the newly polished scenes as I come to them, but I need to write the entire story out in chronological order again. Doing it out of order does not make sense in my brain and I have accepted defeat on that front. (Also it's much harder to see where the holes are if you're piecing it together anyway.) I have a month-by-month timeline of the novel's events that I'm referring to, and let me tell you, that's been a massive help so far -- knowing at a glance what to plant and what to foreshadow and where to do it. There are almost no flashbacks in this entire novel, so this should work fairly well.

I was telling my fiancé about it over FaceTime today while on a writing break. As I was talking, I realised I had never really verbalised the core of this particular story before. I've done that with some of my other novels, but this one I kept very close to my heart. I rarely -- if ever -- refer to it in real life (though I talk about it almost incessantly on this blog). I warned him at first that he might find it sad (because 99% of what I create is sad and this is starting to bug him), then plunged into it.

After I'd explained the general idea, he said, "That actually doesn't sound very sad."

I was surprised. Two of the characters suffer depression and one dies. "Really?"

"Yeah," he said. "It sounds like something a lot of people could relate to. I'd buy it." He went on to say that he liked how the main character changes for the better because of the story's events and how he eventually stands up to the villain. He seemed quite excited about the whole thing. And for the first time in a very long time, I began to think this might be a story worth telling.

After five and a half years of tweaking and changing and half-living-in the same story, I was starting to think my concept was unoriginal, if not overdone. I wanted it to sound like a story that really could happen in real life, but with that comes the risk of writing something unremarkable. But even the subtle change in the protagonist excited my fiancé, which in turn excited me. Maybe this isn't a dumb story. Maybe people would enjoy it.

And maybe this is the year I actually get a complete second draft of this thing done.

Life Update

Written 16 November 2017, 11.52pm.

It's November and I haven't posted a single thing about NaNoWriMo... for the very simple reason that for the first time since 2009, I'm not participating.

I wanted to -- I really did. But I had no story idea whatsoever. The last two years of the event were a huge struggle for me already... I felt so little connection to my 2015 novel that I often forget it exists, and in 2016 I failed to make 50k for the first time ever. On the back of those two years, I knew I would not be able to force a novel out of myself this year (though I have more free time to write now than I think I ever have).

I decided to do a self-imposed 30-day choreography challenge instead. I made a rule to choreograph no less than 32 counts (four sets of eight) per day and post the results on my Instagram page (for accountability). I'm not even halfway through the month and I'm seeing huge amounts of growth in my technique and creativity (I figured out nerve taps!), but the response of the public has been growing steadily less enthusiastic.

On a personal level, this was just the challenge I needed. I've been wanting to choreograph the 77s' Ping Pong Over The Abyss for forever, and I finally did it this month. I've also done some of Michael W. Smith's Christmas music, a sizeable chunk of Prodigal's I Don't Know Who You Are, and a duet that my sister requested. Currently I'm working on The Kimberlites' Gigajig and -- although it hasn't hit my social media yet -- the Piano Guys' Where Are You, Christmas? I've wanted to do this for a while as well, to encompass how broken Christmas feels with so many people missing. A lot of loss has surrounded me in the past while -- my own, certainly, but a lot of others around me have lost people close to them too. I've had two friends lose their fathers unexpectedly in less than two weeks. The growing, rushing waves of grief in the instrumental half of the song pretty accurately capture the yearning and fury that swirl around us who grieve; who have to put out one less table setting at Christmas dinner.

School is okay. I'm quite frustrated actually. This was supposed to be my penultimate year, the year when all the hours and hours of hard work (especially last year) would finally begin to pay off, to blossom. I had a few pretty lofty goals, and previously attaining difficult things has not been a big problem for me. I hoped to land a place in the elite-level choir, to get a larger role than last year in the massive Christmas musical, to maybe even get a singing part in the Remembrance Day and opera shows. The opera show remains to be seen (it's in February), but I didn't even get called back for the choir, and not only did I not get a larger role in the Christmas musical, I actually got a significantly smaller one. No lines, nothing. It's a half-step from no role at all. In my angrier moments I'm almost tempted to drop out and not even bother. I asked the director how to improve my acting in general (because I would assume that at least most of the people who actually got roles must be better at acting than me) and long story short, he literally told me to be more cheerful in my everyday life (this directive makes more sense in the context of multiple conversations we've had over the past year).

I was so desperate I actually tried it. It worked for a week, and the effect was dramatic. Both the director and my voice teacher commented on the difference in me. Even I was beginning to see a difference in myself.

But a week after that conversation with the director, at the end of my first week of actually trying, my dear friend attempted suicide. In one text, everything that was still going for me was undone. If she could kill herself, why couldn't I? What was to stop me finishing what I had started last March at the side of the highway?

I broke. There was no point to anything. I was going to die anyway and it's not like I would be missed... it wasn't like I had a role in anything. I gave up, and the director saw that immediately though he didn't yet know what had happened. Because of the nature of the whole thing I was not allowed to say anything about it to anyone -- including literally all the people in my support network who I would ordinarily go to immediately to keep myself from spiralling down again. Because I couldn't tell anyone, it all just kept rattling around in my head, growing quietly bigger in the dark silence that was imposed on me.
But I did say something, two weeks later -- I was so messed up by the whole thing that I was at the point of physical collapse. I'm a master secret-keeper (I was suicidal for twelve years before ANYBODY knew about it), but privacy rules or not, I could not, for my own safety, keep this inside. It was affecting me far too deeply. If I kept quiet, I was going to end up dead. My heart was literally starting to fail. So I brought one of my instructors into it. She brought the director into it. There were repercussions for me for telling either of them about it, but I was beyond caring. My own suicidal thoughts had strengthened and multiplied and I was caving very quickly in the onslaught. To say nothing kept me out of trouble and kept everyone happy. But to break the rule -- to say something, even to a very select few, kept me alive. Which was the more preferable option...?

But I can't help but think that now it's too late. Because of my dramatic improvement and equally-dramatic crash within the space of ten days, I succeeded only in proving myself as wildly inconsistent. And the inconsistent performers are the first ones cut from the list of potentials. I have five months left in the fourth year of my undergraduate degree. And it's very possible that I have destroyed my second chance at the only thing I ever wanted to be -- a performing artist.

I instituted the choreography challenge partly as a way to distract myself from my own desire to die and to get away from the sound and the press of everything crashing down around me. Since I'm not in any upcoming shows, I have no lines to learn or rehearsals to attend to keep me distracted so I had to manufacture my own distraction. And since apparently nothing's going to be handed to me on any kind of a platter -- never mind a silver one -- I have to manufacture my own fanbase somehow. It's on me now to create my own job experience, to develop my own craft on my own time, and drum up interest in my creative endeavours without any outside help or promotion. I'm not sure how it's working because, as I mentioned earlier, the enthusiasm on both my Instagram and Facebook accounts seems to be fading fast. Maybe they're all just 'hiding' my posts and not even looking at them at all...

But the process itself is keeping me distracted. And I have accomplished a fair bit. Maybe one day this will all be useful and one day all these long hours of thankless practice and all those tears (so many tears) will be worth something to someone.

State Of My Choreography

The picture that inspired this post:

Full choreography sketch for a song, conceived/written in the time it took to listen to the song straight through once (three and a half minutes). This is a testament to how far I've come: less than a year ago the same amount of choreography would have taken me a full week.

Choreography, I've found, is part inspiration, but also part experience. The more experience you have, the quicker the inspiration comes (and really, this is applicable to a lot of the arts - I see this in my writing as well). You discover what you like and where you like it. You develop a sense of where things should sit in the piece. You get a feel for the art form and you start to be able to tell innately what does or doesn't work, even if you can't explain why. No amount of book-learning can do that for you. (It kills me to say this, because I love learning through reading.)

That's why if you want to be an artist, you have to be dedicated. You have to put in the years of work before you get good. You can find quotes from artists in any discipline to the effect that you have to write a hundred songs before you begin to learn how to write a song; you have to paint or draw a hundred pictures before you really begin to understand how to draw or paint; you have to put in ten thousand hours of work before you can say you have begun to master something. Choreography is no different. I've fully choreographed 78 songs (and probably started and not-yet-completed that many again, plus I have about a dozen that I'm actively working to finish) and I'm only just starting to feel like it's coming naturally. This has been fully five years since I finished choreographing my first piece, and I was choreographing snippets of things in my head long before I ever finished that one.

That said, I would be remiss if I didn't note that I was taking ten hours of dance per week last calendar year, that I was practicing tap every day except Sundays through this past summer and again since January, that I've been watching a TON of tap dance on YouTube in my spare time, that I have a subscription to Operation: Tap's online lessons and those have been invaluable in jump-starting my practice sessions, that my tap teacher at the college this year pushed me hard (because I asked her to), that I've been clapping rhythms to almost literally every song I've heard in the past six months, playing with different patterns. A lot of groundwork has been laid in my foundational tap dance technique over the past year and that has gone a LONG way in allowing my choreographic voice freedom of expression.

The next step is to figure out what exactly it is that I want to express.

Peaking

29 February 2016, 11.50pm.

It seems all my inspiration is going. In the past year and a half, in nearly every avenue of creativity I work in, I've found myself making something really brilliant, something that helps me process and deal with something fairly big... and then that's it. There's no more. It's almost like I make something brilliant and that's my last thing. I mean, it's great that I'm ending on a high note, but... why am I ending at all? Life goes on. Isn't there more to process, more to learn? I'm certainly not done yet -- am I?

But it feels that way. Even though I have written another novel after Kyrie, Kyrie was truly my magnum opus. Ghost Of The Heart (the one that came after it) certainly shows promise, but it meant nothing to me. I would have been exactly the same person if I had never written it. For all intents and purposes, Kyrie is the last thing I've written.

In ballet choreography it's the same thing. Just after National Choreography Month, I wrote a heartbreaking duet in which I basically distilled my entire friendship with Brittney, including her death, into one three-minute dance. It was sad and gorgeous and tragic. The characters were the most fleshed out that I've ever created for the stage, and the story was likewise the most cohesive I've ever done -- especially as it was an instrumental piece and I usually tend to rely heavily on lyrics. It was without question the most beautiful dance I've ever written.

But that's it. I have nothing left where that came from. I've tried several times to choreograph a ballet piece since then, and nothing happens. I don't even have much of a desire to choreograph songs anymore. There's just nothing. They're all purely technical exercises now. There's no feeling, no hook to draw the audience or even their creator in, nothing to capture the soul of the viewer and stay with them forever like the music of David Meece and Terry Taylor has with me.

Is this it then? Is this all I'll ever create? Is this my going out with a bang? I've hardly just begun. That ballet dance was the first piece I've done where I really felt I knew what I was doing. Do I only get to have one? Have I peaked so soon?

This is particularly scary because tap choreography is all I have left now. I'm significantly less mature in that (in comparison to ballet and writing) so theoretically I have a larger window of time before I peak and die there too, but... what if I don't have as time there as I think? This in turn has made me more hesitant to choreograph tap even though right now it's all I have left -- I don't want tap to end too. I'd rather quit while I'm ahead and still have something left in me for later than run myself absolutely dry and live the rest of my life emotionally dead. I can't bear that. I need to know I have something left in me.

Is it just the fear of not being able to measure up to the likes of Kyrie and the dance that's made my brain shut down? If so, how do I get over it?

If this really is it, where do I go now? I've spent my life working toward this. Is this really all there is? Is this the end?

The Why

17 March 2016, 4.57pm.

Lately I've heard a lot of people talk about 'finding your why' -- why you commit to healthy eating, weight loss, dance, writing, or whatever else. It's something I've always struggled to define for myself as an artist. The closest I ever came to verbalising it was something I wrote on a scrap of paper what I hoped would eventually be a poem. The poem never materialised, but the final line still rings in my head: why do I write? I write so you can't see me cry.

Was that it? Was it simply my coping mechanism, my life support through the deepest recesses of depression? And is that why my inspiration is gone now? Has it served its purpose? Was that my 'why' -- to stay alive? It's very likely that without being able to use writing as an outlet for my suicidal fantasies, I'd be dead now.

Or was my 'why' to prove my relatives that I could do what they blatantly told me I couldn't? I got so tired of them squashing my dreams before they were even fully formed that I started doing exactly what they said I couldn't, for the sheer pleasure of proving them wrong. But now they've (more or less) realised that telling me 'you can't' not only means I will, thank you very much, it also means I get REALLY cross with them, so now they don't tell me I can't do things. But it's left me without moorings. Now they're so afraid of kindling my wrath (I don't blame them) that they have absolutely zero opinion whether or not I'm on the right track, even when I plead and beg for their opinion whether or not they think I'll like it. Basically, they quit telling me I was stupid in favour of ignoring me completely.

So now that the suicidal thoughts are gone, and my relatives don't even deign to tell me I'm stupid anymore, I have no motivation. My 'why' is gone.

The problem is, I still want to make art.

Now what?

I have to find something to strive for, some reason to keep creating things, some goal, however abstract. For someone with my upbringing, the obvious answer is 'to bring glory to God.' Indeed, most people in my realms of influence don't even ask why I dance or write or anything, they just fill in the blank with this answer. It actually irritates me a bit, because I know it's not true. Admittedly that's what it should be, but I'll freely admit I am not at that point. I can say that's my why till I'm blue in the face, but I know in my heart that it's not.

Lately I've been saying I dance because I love it.  This is a perfectly satisfactory answer for friends/relatives/the general public, but I personally need something more specific than that, if only for my own clarification.

Why do I dance? Why do I write? Why do I create? Without an answer, I will likely plateau. The fact that I can't even come up with an answer haunts me.

This Is How We Die

Written 29 September 2015, 11.38pm.

I mentioned in a recent post how all my creativity is gone. As if it was never there -- just gone. NaNoWriMo is coming up and although I'm coming up with the occasional one-sentence plot idea (which is almost always enough to get me a full-blown novel), none of them capture me. None of them offer characters, setting, motivation -- just a sentence of a potential plot with everything to offer and yet nothing. Usually I can't write fast enough in my notebook to keep up with the thing.

Part of it, I think, is that my novel last year (Kyrie) was so different, so intense, so poetic... it's far and away the best thing I have ever written. And I know that the next thing I write will not come close to that level. I like to think I'm okay with that -- maybe I am, maybe I'm not. But the really different thing is that even though I wrote it almost a year ago now, that book has never let me go. I have literally re-read it once every couple weeks ever since I finished it. I find myself needing to re-read it, even though I practically have it memorised, typos and all. Something about that book was the true me -- the one I've never really been able to find. It synthesized all my hopes and dreams and fear and pain and I keep coming back to it because it understands me like none of my other work has. Today, in fact, I wrote an epilogue to it (in typical Kate fashion, I didn't actually write an ending for it at the time because I couldn't think of one). Until today, I had not added a single word to that book. It's the original November 2014 rough draft that I keep re-reading.

But part of it, I think (and this now includes choreography and photography, not just writing), is that reality hit me this year. I was talking with a friend the other day and we were talking about how I often feel like I have my head in the clouds. And she said something along the line of, "Yeah... but you're at least aware of the real world." This year, though, I saw people die. I watched several marriages die, and nobody cared about them. (We should give funerals for marriages. A dead marriage kills the couple and any children and siblings(-in-law) and parents and nieces and nephews. When a person dies, it's one person. It's awful, of course. But when a marriage dies, it's akin to genocide.)

The thing is, yes, I was aware of reality, but I ran on sort of a parallel track -- a track with dreams and passion and love and hope. I touched the real world, but I wasn't locked into it. I could pull back when I felt I should. I could observe it and step in when I felt the occasion required it. Maybe it was escapism, but it kept me sane. And anyway, I wasn't pretending the real world didn't exist, I was just a step removed from all the hysteria that constantly seems to consume people (have you SEEN a Facebook news feed lately?). But now, with all those deaths in such quick succession with little to no warning, I can't get out of the real world. I can't step back into my imagination, my creative brain, my world of participation in the arts, no matter how hard I try. It's as if a door has been locked, and I'm on the wrong side of it without a spare key.

And today I realised -- this is how it happens.

This is how people become the soulless cold unfeeling drones that I so dreaded becoming. This is how it happens. People die -- real people; people you love. And then so does the artistic brain. I always thought people's spirits died when they went to college or got a 9-to-5 job. But now I've done both, and although both made my life significantly busier, it did not kill the spark of creativity, of love for life. The divorces in my extended family, however, did. Suddenly I realised nothing would ever be the same, there would always be someone missing, and no amount of art can replace them or bring them back and bridge the chasm between what should be and what is. So what's the point? Maybe there is none. (This is another one of those things which I swore I'd never say.) Maybe I just toil out the next mile at hand and I pretend the lively Kate never existed -- not in this world, because in a way, she never did. She was one step outside of it. And that one step represented an entire world of inspiration.

(Tangent: maybe that's why Kyrie resonates so much with me. The story takes place over the course of a year and a half, and it chronicles a college junior's friendship with a freshman named Kyrie, from the time he meets her till the moment of her death. It's sort of Mary Poppins-esque. And throughout the book -- mostly due to the first-person narrator -- Kyrie is often depicted as a tiny bit otherworldly. She, too, ran on a parallel track to the rest of the world.)

Childlike Wonder

Something clicked for me the other day. Why I do this. Why I want to do this -- this art thing. Creating things.

I was listening to Michael W. Smith's brilliant orchestral piece Glory Battle. I have wanted to choreograph this since I first heard it this past summer. I have blocking and theme all figured out -- all I'm lacking is time to flesh out the actual steps. But that day I was listening to it, trying to wake myself up so I could study. I never realised before how consistently that piece gives me chills. I swear I listened to it twenty times. I sat there on my bed for literally forty-five minutes and just kept hitting the back button every time it finished. I couldn't stop. I kept thinking, Okay, one more time. Okay now, last time. Now this really is the last time. But I kept hitting that button like an addict. I wanted to hear it again, see the dance in my mind's eye again, feel that orchestra again. Like a little kid watching his favourite film or playing his favourite song over and over and over again because it's so captivating and big and can't be experienced all in one go.

Once that little kid was me. And the song was David Meece's This Time. I could not get enough of it. It wasn't a 'kids' song,' but it absolutely captured my four-year-old mind. Perhaps it was because it wasn't a kids' song, deliberately dumbed down to pander to a younger mind. It made me feel happy and sad all the same time, and one listen could not sort through it all. I distinctly remember even as a child trying to articulate why I liked it so much, what exactly it made me feel -- but I couldn't. In a way I still can't. You can analyse the song structure and the theory and production all you like, but it doesn't explain why my soul seems to get bigger and simultaneously smaller when I hear it. It doesn't explain why the world shrinks and expands before me, why snowflakes seem to glitter brighter and yet so do the stars.

This is why -- or at least part of it. I want to give a little kid that moment -- that moment where the soul is simultaneously crushed and flying. Even if the old people don't care, if there can be a little kid that will watch this choreography on YouTube obsessively not because it's my work, but because it awakes in him a wonder and awe he can't explain away, that will be satisfactory. Emotionally, at least. (I do still need to put food on the table somehow. I don't know how that works yet.) I want to give them the same experience I had -- that sense of awe and wonder, as I build on the foundation of those who gave me that same experience. And then may the child go out and do the same for the next little child.

But is it art for art's sake? Wonder does fade. But that path back to the great artists of history that started with David Meece turned out to be a good one. From there I ended up largely in the hands of artists who knew that the wonder they create is elusive and fleeting and that it fades. They had already found -- and directed me to -- the source of the awe and the wonder that never fades. May I build on their foundation and direct the next generation of artists the way that those before have guided me.