Commitments from Summer, 2016 (revisited)

I found the reminders below from summer 2016, written before the world changed and changed and changed again. Are these still my commitments as a writer? What is different, new? What can I lean into more? What can I reexamine?

(This is self-inquiry -- you can answer in the comments but the questions are really for me.)
 
What are your commitments? (This you can definitely answer.)

Photo by Corina Monoran, 2022.

In my writing,

I'm committed to aiming for big global topics and intimate, human connection.

To cultivating empathy and discovering how to open up my own vulnerable truth in order to allow that from others. My audience, my collaborators.

I'm committed to creating in a way that speaks to the silent and opens up a platform to allow the disenfranchised to speak. That offers opportunity for the empowered to listen.

I'm committed to using my points of privilege and my experience as ways to advocate for others, for the outsiders, minorities, for targeted groups.

I'm committed to listening more/deeper to the stories I intend to represent or leave space for others to represent.

I'm committed to reaching higher every time,
paying specific attention to the needs of each project.

In my process, I'm committed to write every day, whatever that means.

I'm committed to spending good time on one thing at a time, one pursuit, one project. When my focus isn't split, I feel better, the work goes better.

I'm committed to taking my time.

I'm committed to making the change I want to see in the world through what I write and how.

I'm committed to self care, to kindness.
To moving/loving my body. To taking walks and baths. And naps.
To waiting. Not-doing. Un-doing. Wandering. Meditation.

I'm committed to being a playwright first but continuing my exploration of
poetry, fiction, nonfiction, memoir, screenwriting, writing for radio, even television. 

I'm committed to free falling.
I am a person who can go deeply into a thing.
I don't scan the surface, though I have a broad range of interests and abilities.
I know where I want to focus, where I intend my attention with intention.

I'm committed to being committed to my art. To going big. Turning pro.

To learning and teaching and doing.

To speaking truth and each time trying to get truer, more specific, more scary.

I'm committed to learning how to say the hard thing well, to working with difficult material and making each story more global, more intimate.

I'm committed to getting really exact and personal in my work
so that I can speak what happened to me
and what I deal with in my brain,
so I can reckon with it by sharing,
and so that others may be more willing to open, share and be human together.

I've written and made art for survival.
And look here now I've survived I'm surviving.
How do I take that privilege and turn it into change?
What do I do in my art to respond, to quake, to bellow?
How do I stay strong, vigilant, healthy, mentally and physically--
and be a lookout, a safe keeper, be kind with big heart
and help care for the oppressed and the silenced?

Me summer 2016. Photo by Laurie Pearman, July 2016.

Me now. Photo by J.R. Rivero Kinsey, May 2022.