I want to write a blog about how tired I am.
About my chronic exhaustion.
About the new level of energy depletion.
About how hard I am finding it to find money to make new work.
About how behind I feel.
About how old I sometimes feel.
About how this level of inequality is aging me so fast.
About how angry this makes me feel.
About how I feel I am running out of time.
About the lack of support I often feel.
About how I don’t apply for things because I don’t believe we’ll be successful.
And when I do I am told someone’s else was preferred so it reinforces the notion that my effort is futile.
About the hostility I meet so often.
About the gaslighting.
About the lack of funding.
About the lack of energy.
About despair.
About what it actually takes to lift things off the ground.
About getting the tiniest bit of cash and about how that cash is conditional on getting other cash.
About that vicious circle.
About how none of it is enough.
About how building back better is an idea so far in the past.
About how when I am asked about my ideal and I say a full production budget, people just laugh.
About how that is not funny.
About not being able to fund it.
About that fear.
About that responsibility.
About feeling let down and being let down.
And about how ultimately tired I feel.
About that chronic exhaustion.
But I know I’ll be told I am not the only one.
I know this.
But being not the only one doesn’t make it any better. It’s not helpful or useful.
It’s systemic.
So, I don’t.
I won’t write that long blog.
I will only allude to it here.
But of course, those feelings don’t disappear or go away, they resurface again and again, they accumulate and accumulate. And they disempower me. They narrow my imagination. They shutter my hope.
So I retreat into further isolation. Because there I find some more safety. And those moments of safety and I repeat to myself….
It’s not the work, it must be me that they don’t like. The work is good, the work is my power.
It’s not the work, the work is good, the work is my power.
It’s not the work, the work is good, the work is my power.
It’s not the work, the work is good, the work is my power.
It’s not the work, the work is good, the work is my power.
It’s not the work, the work is good, the work is my power.
It’s not the work, the work is good, the work is my power.
It’s not the work, the work is good, the work is my power.
It’s not the work, the work is good, the work is my power.
It’s not the work, the work is good, the work is my power.
It’s not the work,the work is good, the work is my power.
It’s not the work, the work is good, the work is my power.
It’s not the work, the work is good, the work is my power.
Hold Your Nerve!
Hold Your Nerve!
Hold Your Nerve!
For how long am I to try holding my nerve?