Looking back to look forward, 2023 edition

When I reflect on wins, losses, missed opportunities and new connections this past year, I notice that losses and missed opportunities I could name almost outnumbered the wins, which I don't remember happening before. Though surprising, this feels affirming. That word choice might sound odd, but this was something I felt in my skin, so seeing the numbers in black and white validated the low-grade hum playing between of my ears.

Though markedly less cataclysmic for a privileged person like me than 2020 and 2021, I felt creative difficulties tripping me up in 2022. This was a slower year for writing progress and projects, I got nos where I thought I had yeses in the bank, timelines pushed back, collaborations stymied, I didn't quite make my submission goals and I spent long term residency in the limbo waiting room familiar to most writers and playwrights. I seemed to have better luck getting play productions and readings during the upheaving 2020-2021 pandemic years. Yet within that, as the redwoods I communed with this summer forever experience (reading The Overstory by Richard Powers has been knocking me through the gut this winter -- anyone else?), I feel a steady growth setting the stage for something larger.

I worked a lot of this year on letting go -- both in physical ways, starting Marie Kondo's famous tidying process, in emotional and neurological ways through EMDR and in calendar ways, carving out  more space in my schedule. I said no to online summer classes and took on only two fall semester classes at Boise State University, instead of the maximum three for adjuncts I've maintained for years. I got better at stopping work after 6, checking email just once a day (at least my personal email, if not the university one), didn't work on Sundays at all besides my daily writing/movement/meditation practice (unless I had a reading or similar event) and tried to focus my Saturdays on arts work, rather than teaching and related administrative tasks. I'm getting more familiar with the sound of "no" coming out of my mouth, even if I try to retract my boundaries right afterward (or spend an afternoon breathing through anxiety attacks when I don't). Overall, I'm beginning to break lifelong habits caused by maladaptive beliefs.

This moment, I feel monumental change simmering in me, which could be years or decades in the making. Having less major news to broadcast feels right. I've made a lot of tiny steps toward big projects in multiple disciplines. Thoughtful groundwork is being laid, rather than panicky DOING and addictive FORWARD MOVING all the time. That feels meaningful, even if that makes for a humbler list of bullet-point successes.

At the same time, awesome stuff did happen last year. I'm not discounting any of those events, some of which were life-changing. I'm grateful and have no complaints -- but a "this year was better than ever" post seems untrue. Some years are great, some are the opposite and some feel suspended in alien liquid like Wolverine in the Augmentation Room's water tank after the Weapon X team drafted adamantium into his bones--.

Before I get more carried away with X-Men analagies, here are some highlights from 2022.

Highlights:

• Corina Monoran interviewed me for Her Salti Words podcast. Parts one and two of our conversation are getting released this month.
• I got a great new counselor and started EMDR.
• My Climate Change Theatre Action-commissioned short play DreamSong was shown at Treefort/Storyfort after several international showings in 2021 and is now being published with the other commissioned plays through Applause Books.
• Altogether, I participated in three different readings/events for Storyfort. Besides Dream/Song: a panel discussion with other writers/artists exploring climate studies led by Hannah Rodabaugh and a showcase reading by The Cabin's teaching writers.
• My play for young audiences Wolf/Girl got a staged reading at Boise Contemporary Theater.
• I got featured in the Artifact podcast by Mission at Tenth, which got me to finish the first draft of a book I was writing. For the podcast itself, I made a visual representation of said book as a shadow box.
• Speaking of which, I surprised myself and wrote a book! I read sections of it at MING Studios for their 7o'clock series and shared three chapters through MING'S podcast My On Mondays. Stay tuned about an upcoming publication...
• I took see in the dark and Dream/Song to Last Frontier Theatre Conference, somewhere I've wanted to go for years and years. A travel grant from the Idaho Commission on the Arts helped me get to Valdez, Alaska. Stunning environment. Inspiring conference. Theater all day long for 10 days (and in Alaska summers, the days are long).
• A monologue from my play see in the dark was published in the Smith & Kraus Best Women's Monologues collection of 2022.
• My nephew from San Francisco spent a couple weeks in Boise and attended a writing camp I taught.
• I attended a David Glass devising/creativity workshop on Vashon Island, brought to the Seattle area by my amazing sister Kate, and got to check out the astonishing UMO physical theater space.
• I scheduled a trip to London to see said amazing sister Kate Kraay perform in a devised production of The Brides by David Glass Ensemble and to experience what might be the last International Mime Festival. I leave January 20!
• I (and the two-hander play I want to write this summer) was a semi-finalist for a Hedgebrook residency.
• I designed and taught two workshops that made me feel, "OH yeah -- THIS is what I'm supposed to be doing!" If Refilling Your Creative Well and Exploding Your Creativity felt half as eye-opening and awakening for me as for participants, they were a success.
• I mentored two senior projects at BSU that felt very rewarding.
• I got my bivalent Covid booster.
• I wrote three new 10-minute plays.
• I made forward movement on a music/poetry project with my favorite musician.
• My rewrites of my feature screenplay The Hungry Ones were approved by a small production company I'm working with in the UK, so we're moving to the next stage.

I did make some progress on my 2022/2023 goals, but I noticed the objectives I wrote down for the last few years depended more on other people (and organizations) than on me. As Andrew Simonet encourages, it's important to plan goals that I have (relative) control over, more than ones that rely on outside parties. Some of those earlier intentions (related to silent meditation retreats, international travel and financial stability) may still be on the back burner, but I'm adjusting my focus as I look ahead.

3 Big Goals for the Next Two Years:

• Increase my studio time by 5-10 hours a week, moving forward on creative projects 5-6 days a week.
• Apply for/begin the Dramatists Guild Institute Certificate Program and/or a similar program intended to invest in my professional/creative growth as a playwright.
• Start a playwrights group or collective that fosters community and helps playwrights where I live support each other -- through feedback, encouragement and/or more formally showing each other's work.

This year, I want to keep letting go of what I don't need and to step into, reclaim, live inside and even enjoy my own power (read: get out of my own way). It's time to unbind my inner goddess, connect with my artist child, listen to my madwoman in the attic, learn from my witch in the woods and altogether let my wild woman run free. And if/when I scare myself in the process, breathe, ingest some compassion and cut myself some slack.

Thanks everyone for reading, inspiring me with your own year-end/beginning reflections and for doing what you can to support the artists you love (including yourselves).

Guiding words for my 2023:
Power
Care
Self
(or Self Care)
Breakthrough
Gratitude