privacy freak

for most of my life i been a privacy freak. when i was still in single digits i was gifted a gorgeous [to my then self] diary with cover image of pointe shoes+roses+manuscript and latch on the side that i, voracious reader and wannabe-writer, was so excited to write in. i lovingly, sometimes breathlessly, delightedly used it until learning it was read by somebody else. i ripped out and tore up every single page and never used a diary or journal again. in university when occasionally required to journal for a course i'd sit down the night before it was due and make up the whole thing based on what i learned in class. A+ every time.

my everliving distrust of diaries/journals was coupled with the knowledge that my memory was excellent and youth's failure to realise that wouldn't last as long as i expected.

i already losing hold of memories i thought impossible to fade. because my memory always been so good i acutely aware of the still-small [for now] slippage and it terrifies me, both as writer+person. i cry everytime something make me realise a little more slip/ping away. and i know is nothing in the face of how much most cyah remember but i was counting on having that memory, both as writer+person, that capability to continue to parse my amazing life and the glorious population i privileged to be connected to.

now i watch back at my unjournalled decades and vex vex with meself for letting an invasive adult rob me of a practice i needed, access to my personal library. steups.

walk good.

pree this!

in spite of depression negatively affecting my writing in these covidous times i manage to dust off+submit something i write from before, and it was accepted!

look me in the current edition of PREE.caribbean.writing. waves up to 2metres in open waters and less than 1metre in sheltered areas.

walk good.

what a dusty time

when covid19 became a thing and we went into lockdown las' march i wasn' worried. i mean, my comorbidity-having, nearly-dead-from-respiratory-complications-more-than-once-already backside was terrified (still am!) but not of lockdown; i love being home alone, had the good fortune to have recently moved and getting to lockdown living-alone-with-yard with grocery+pharmacy in walking distance, and could use the time to finish these damn plays! i felt lucky, relatively speaking.

over a year later even though i know months now, since las' year even, this is the new normal, i just not managing the way i expected. i didn' realise how much rehearsing+performing and my dance life matter to my mental health, nah; i had zero idea i couldn' substitute next-artistic-discipline and be safe. insteada happily slaving over a hot machine and churning out the rest of my collection because i love writing as much as dancing i find meself too damn depressed to write. i getting some in but nothing like i need and definitely nowhere near enough to have me in a good place to make the art i want when things shift. worse, not enough to pay bills right now when i have no shows or winery classes making money. [i learn real facking quick, online dance is not my flick.] being a freelance artist in a developing country that doh support art/ists was never a more losing proposition that right now and while i was prepared to scrunt most of my life, i wasn' prepared for this nonperforming, nondancing madness making me unable to use my talents to support meself...

i need to be writing fiction+essays to submit to make money to pay bills right now because by now emergency fund gone through, plus finishing my plays because tha's the wuk i come out to make and them scripts hadda get done. both what i need+want, perfectly aligned with all the time+space to do it. and yet i am not. i am trying but failing. stress get the better of me since las' year and i cyah find the zone. i barely reading. i just feel exhausted, all the time. i have ideas but no energy to make them actual words on a page/screen; they exist to be constantly chased through the jungle of my mind by financial stress that not-writing technically worsening by the moment. vicious-circling. i am a fucking mess, right when i literally cannot afford to be.

i just keep telling meself at least i still breathing...for now...

that is all.

walk good.