Goodness. Where to begin…
When I was last here, I was in a slump. I’m just now seeing my way out of it. I attended the Austin Film Festival the following morning and had one of the best experiences of my life. I’ll do a special post on my time there, this is just to remember what’s happened since.
Well, almost.
On my second night in Austin, after meeting some wonderfully welcoming people and attending panels that inspired, I had an epiphany. The environment I was subjected to in my day job was not where I wanted to be. It had not only become a hinderance to my dream job, I hadn’t written in a very long time, it was also emotionally stunting and draining. This maybe, probably, most definitely, added to my funk. I nearly wrote my resignation letter right then and there.
I had been contemplating the idea for a while. Since February, actually. Some of you may remember my rant about, what I will refer to as, “the incident”. It was the beginning of the downward spiral when I realized so many things about a place I had put a great deal of time and energy into. But I decided to suck it up and figured I could make it work, knowing that in a year our lease would be up (The Sis and I had already decided we weren’t going to renew again), and I could hang in there a year more, right?!
The answer, which grew in intensity, was a resounding no.
It all became clear, and so upon my return to reality, I finally took the leap and quit my day job to pursue my dream. It’s been about two weeks, so after a reset, I’m ready to move forward.
In the midst of this new path, The Sis and I have begun the Whole30. This requires a post of its own as well. Needless to say, we’re feeling better, have more energy (most days), have already lost a bit of weight, and are experimenting with new recipes. We had sort of been in a food rut too. We had planned a trip to Disneyland for the holidays, but the thought of not having a churro or a candy apple, or dare I say a cocktail because of the offerings of adult beverages at California Adventure, were not the things either of us wanted to shy away from.
Then there was the definitive decision to move out of state. So now the unloading of all the unnecessary items has begun. There’s the sorting of all our belongings, the consolidation, the research, the stress. There’s also excitement at the prospect. Ah, the new and unknown.
And finally, let me touch upon the fact that now I can write. Have I? Other than this post, sadly no, not yet, but I have been thinking a lot about the rewrites I have to do and some new story ideas, so there’s that. The Whole30 takes up a lot of time and the move has shifted my focus, temporarily, because there are only so many hours in the day, but in the back of my mind, things are happening. I’m making some changes to the routine I’m so fond of and how I want to approach my career.
I’ve read a number of articles on time management and many offer similar techniques so I plan on incorporating some of them in the hopes I will be more productive and be able to use this time I’ve been given taken to its fullest. If any of them show promise, I’ll be sure to share.
If any of you have chosen the “follow your dreams” path, I’d love to hear how you handle that while trying to handle everything else.
Happy Writing!
Last week I wrote an entire blog post after learning that my pilot had not advanced in the second contest I had entered. I was sad and the overall tone was not the happy-stay positive-reach for your dreams-vibe I try to maintain here.
one movie shy of my goal as I write this). I’ve rewritten two acts of one of my screenplays, I entered my TV pilot into 7 contests, I’ve come up with a new screenplay idea that I’m excited about (let’s just add that to the backlog of ideas currently nestled in the recesses), and I bought my airline ticket and badge for the Austin Film Festival screenwriters conference. So…yay!
I feel like I know who I am as a writer. I don’t outline much; I “generally” know where it’s going to go though, before I sit down. I like happy endings, my characters are often sarcastic and they’re always do-gooders (the protagonists anyway), and because of my genre choice, I have some freedom to let my imagination run wild. I listen to my characters. I alternate between procrastination and binge. I like to write some things by hand (my fanfiction has almost entirely been written by 
hand, oddly enough), but the computer monitor allows me more space to “see” (hence, all my screenplays have been written via the modern age). Plus I type much faster than my hand can write to keep up with my brain (which is why some of my fanfiction looks like chicken scrawl).
times, I discover alternate paths and ideas that I never would have seen had I not allowed my story to just unfold. I have literally found myself astounded with what I’ve unearthed this way.
I’d like to start up the Writing Prompt Challenge again.
At the beginning of every year we each decide what we’d like to accomplish, what we want to change. The dreaded New Year’s Resolution – gyms are overcrowded for a month, a flurry of spending happens while we’re excited for a new hobby, mentally we prepare for the first of the year as if it were a magic reset button, but usually it’s all in vain. We say things like, “This year, it will all be different.” “Kiss last year goodbye and say hello to the new one and all the newness that comes with it.” We set goals, we make resolutions, only to lose momentum a fraction of the way through the year.
It was a little over four years ago when The Sis and I had a conversation.
A Writer's Discrepant Memoirs and Other Tales 