Wednesday, November 30, 2011

How are you?

Yes, I have been absent once again. But I have been busy, plugging away at submissions, still trying to get stuff happen. Still wishing that stuff would just happen without me having to put so much work into it. Still realizing that as hard as I think I'm pushing it, I could be doing so much more.

Yesterday I posted on facebook that never hearing at all is much worse than hearing "no". Which is true. A lot of people like to say "Oh, you get so much rejection in this business", but to me it seems like you're lucky to even get rejected. Most of the time, you just don't hear back one way or the other. I usually try to give myself a drop dead date for projects I'm really hoping for--after that date, I must agree to let all hope die, and put it out of my mind.

That sounds harsh and depressing. It's not, really. It just helps me keep moving on to the next thing.

In other news, I am almost finished Christmas shopping, which is great, and nowhere near finished figuring out the Christmas dinner we are hosting, which is less great. I'm finishing my last submission for a couple of weeks today, but then realized that I promised a director a rewrite for mid-December. Oops! I am also not nearly finished my Christmas knitting, which is something I should go plug away at right now.

But you. How are you?

Monday, November 21, 2011

Taking Yourself Seriously

Hello, friends...
I'm here at work where we are having a rather shitty day due to all technological systems epically failing. Prior to that, I was at the dentist (did I mention I have severe dentist anxiety? Going regularly has actually helped.) where I made it through the whole cleaning and they were like "let's just get the dentist to check this one spot" and it turned out to be a brand new tiny cavity, and they said "hey, let's just fill this right now, no anesthetic needed!" and before I knew it, I was getting a surprise dental filling. Surprise!

But I digress... I've been thinking about how to learn to take myself seriously. A serious topic, no?

In my voice lesson on Saturday (with my lovely and amazing new teacher), she kept reminding me to "find my singer"--which essentially is shorthand for standing up like a human and using breath support--and I realized that I was not-so-secretly thinking to myself that no one would take me seriously. That if I just over-casualize things, I'll be at no risk of people thinking I'm actually trying to do something.

Because... I don't deserve to be heard?
Because... it's safer than taking a risk of possibly failing?
Because...?

Which is kind of a random realization to come to. A bit of a heavy realization, really, if one suddenly understands that this applies to many aspects of one's life.

"Oh, don't mind me, I'm just kind of goofing off, don't even look, because I'm not really trying to do anything."

Right? No possibility of success, no possibility of failure. Which is rather lame, since I DO want to do things, and be taken seriously, and apparently a major issue may be to convince myself that I have as much right to be here doing my thing as anyone else. What if I've just been lamenting that no one takes me seriously, when I've been sabotaging things by not taking myself seriously?

Does this even make sense? I may come back and clarify when I'm no longer in a post-dentist-adrenalin surge.

ETA: I did come and clean this up a little. So there!

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Good Things, Bad Things

Of course, I recovered from my overly dramatized insomnia. And along with Daylight Savings Time comes the flip side of getting to sleep in an extra hour--darkness by 5:30. In my particular corner of the world, we are fortunate enough to have some kind of daylight from 5am to 11pm in the summer, but the other side of the coin involves December--when it's dark when you arrive at work, and dark when you leave. Incredibly depressing. The ridiculously frigid temperatures don't help much, either.

All this talk of the flip side is bringing me back to my youth--that song "Living On The B Side" or whatever it was called. Does anyone besides me remember that?

Good things about this weekend:
I started my play. I am 10 pages in (mostly monologue, so it's a lot of writing), and still managing to outrun the "this is crap" thoughts and just write. I have promised myself that if it will be an utter embarrassment, I won't submit it to the thing whose deadline I am forcing myself to write toward. We'll see if I am qualified to judge that.

I got asked "Are you skinny?" today by a good friend who hadn't seen me in a while. Apparently I am looking quite a bit skinnier, even to a boy who is usually unobservant about these things.

Our awesome jar system seems to be working well for our finances. Tons of healthy groceries purchased, and some money left for the rest of the week.

I got a flu shot.

I finally got some more copies of one of my other scripts printed to send out to the companies who don't do electronic submissions.


Bad (or Less Good) Things About This Weekend:

I haven't been to the gym in almost 2 weeks. I was legitimately sick for about a week, and then circumstances/lack of motivation conspired to keep me away from the elliptical. Oops. The many mini chocolate bars at my disposal were not allies, either.

I managed to take two whole days off and spend them working. Not on my day job, which I'm trying to get a little distance from, but on my editing gig (we can really use the extra cash for the holidays), and this stupid play that may not really be a play. I have this thing where I feel restless and guilty about "not doing anything", but feel frazzled and overworked when I allow myself to do as much shit as possible and get everything accomplished in my free time.

Although I now have the money (or at least, thrift store money) to get some new pants, I didn't manage to squeeze clothes shopping in this weekend. Must do that this week, since my work clothes look silly.

Have not practiced singing nearly enough.

This week, I have a lot of things to do: send out at least one script, keep working on that elusive first draft, get some new pants, get some singing happening. And get back to the gym! Snow is supposed to start happening this week, which is ick, although we're already 3 weeks behind schedule.

What are you doing this week?