All Eyes on Me

I'm a day behind on this, but around the turn of the new year I like to look at the resolutions I made last year and see how I did on them. New years resolutions have kind of a bad rap, as people tend to make them and forget them a week later, much less a year, but I like to think of them as plans to pursue rather than big changes to make to myself. I do well with plans, and it helps give me direction. So let's see how I did.

1. Make use of the master's degree I will be earning in May to make some significant professional improvement. I'm not sure what this is going to mean yet, but I will be graduating this year and I am determined to utilize my new credentials to make a step forward professionally.

Hmm. Hard to say. While I probably didn't make any BIG leaps by means of my degree, I did get a better job with better pay that's related to my field due to my pursuing it. I've also put it to use producing better-quality writing quite a bit, and while those things have not come into their own yet, I believe in the future they will benefit my career as writer.

2. Write at least one more full-length play. I have a couple of ideas right now, and I need to have them to submit around. By this time next year I want at least one more piece that I am proud of.

I wrote two full-length plays, Mrs. Loring and Vivat Regina! And I am proud of both of them. Plus a lot of other things.

3. Improve my sewing skills. I want to be at the point where I can capably make things I want to use by this time next year. I've made progress, but I'm not where I want to be yet.

This one fell by the wayside. While I made use of my existing skills with several costuming jobs, I didn't really have the time to focus on it for improving and gaining new skills.

4. Improve my proficiency with ballet. I love the art and it makes me feel strong and centered.

I made a lot of progress with ballet early this year, which I'm very proud of. At the moment I've hit something of a plateau, but I mean to keep at it.

5. Develop a system of stress management. The depression hasn't been as bad lately, but tension and stress has become more of a particular problem. I need to figure out how to keep feeling good about myself while maintaining my
peace and serenity.

I did this in spades. This system is called "dump my awful boyfriend and suddenly feel good about myself, my life, and even my struggles again." This also turned out to be the answer to the secret resolution I'd been making for the last several years, find a way to fix this sense of hopelessness that hovered over my life and seemed to be coming from one direction in particular.

6. Get my diet and workout plan straightened out. My eating habit are pretty messed up right now, and I know I always feel so much better when I'm in healthy habits.

I did great with this! I've been working out at least five hours a week, eating well, and I am stronger and fitter than I've ever been in my life. I feel good, I look good, and I am physically capable for just about any challenge I'm likely to meet.

7. Revise my budget. I'm pretty good about staying on top of it, but lately I've had a number of new expenses come into my life, and I need to rework things to accommodate them.

Eh, this got knocked around. I got laid off from my regular job and spent about six months doing various freelance things that did not pay as well, so my finances suffered. But I have better regular job now with the occasional freelance gig, so if I'm careful I can get things back in order. But I didn't really get that situation as stable as I wanted.

8. Be good to my parents and spend as much time with them as possible. This is more important than it's ever been.

I did a pretty decent job of this. I call home almost every day and spend as much time with them as I was free for. I can always do more, though.

9. Keep working on being a kinder person, keeping my temper, and being less judgmental.

I find this became a hell of a lot easier when I wasn't feeling so drained and miserable all the time. I could only go up from that!

10. Learn how to be hopeful. When we come down to it, it's all we really have.

See the answer to the previous.

2013 was a pretty good year for me. I finally got out of the bad relationship and related depression I was in and everything got better from there. I earned my MFA. I did a great amount of writing, not just Mrs. Loring and Vivat Regina, but also editing my Tailor screenplay so that it placed well in a contest, fixing up a new musical, and lots of shorter pieces. I started my Mrs. Hawking website to get the brand out there. I had readings and performances of many of my pieces. I was in a paid professional play and helped put together a show with a new theater group of artists I respect. I made a respectable amount of money as a model and got a better day job as well. And I got together with Bernie, who brings me so much joy. I've had struggles too, but those accomplishments mean something to me.

Here's hoping this new year will go on in the same vein. 

1. Write, produce, and direct The Tailor of Riddling Way. I am feeling quite passionate about this project, and I think it has the potential to be something really good.

Eee. This kind of fell by the wayside. I finished the script, but I got so busy with school and other outside obligations that I didn't finish recording it. Also we ran into a technical difficulty, which derailed things a bit. But I did make a decent chunk of progress, and I do think it's a really good project.

2. Get back into the habit of exercising six days a week like I used to. I really hate how squishy I've gotten and how undisciplined I've become about taking care of my physical health. I want my old body back, and I want to feel strong again.

Well, this is interesting. I'm working out on average four hours a week these days. Even when I was working out six days a week, I usually only got three. So I'm technically working out more. Still, I'm not WALKING as much as I was, which means while I'm decently fit, I still haven't lost much weight.
 
3. Do well in school, and generate respectable work. Going right along with this is keeping up with my biweekly theater writing challenge. I have done quite well with this so far, as my average is actually closer to one a week rather than two weeks, but I want to keep it up in order to keep improving my work and generating a portfolio.

I did great with this. I wrote some great stuff for school-- Mrs. Hawking, Lame Swans --and I challenged myself to a lot of outside writing that I was very happy with. Most of my performed pieces came out of doing this, so I'm really glad I held to it.

4. Become a competent seamstress. This is a skill I really want to master, and making things with my hands makes me feel good in my soul.

Well, some progress was made! I did a few small projects, such as my Link costume and my plaid preppy skirt, and I also took a class at the Boston Vintage Factory that was extremely helpful.

5. Make significant improvement with ballet. It will take practice and discipline, but the payoff would be worth it.

Again, progress! Not as much as I would like, but I am most certainly a better dancer now than I was a year ago. Ballet is something that takes years to really get good at, but every little bit is worth it.

6. Start a garden of some kind. Probably herbs, maybe vegetables or even flowers or something. Playing Minecraft of all things has made me feel like it would be good for me to have something like this to take care of and raise. See above regarding the good feeling in my soul.

Yeah, this didn't really happen. Even my little daylilies died once it started to freeze. And money and time are a real enough issue that I don't think I'll be able to really worry about this.

7. Write a complete piece that I am really proud of. Tailor of course is a priority and will hopefully qualify, but I want to do something in addition, another thing like To Think of Nothing that people like and respect that I feel truly good about.

I did finish the Tailor script! And I am very happy with it. And there's also Mrs. Hawking, Lame Swans, and my various short pieces. This was a very productive year for me writing-wise.

And then those perennial ones that should always be on my list:

8. Be good to my parents and spend as much time with them as possible. This is important forever.

I hope I did this. I will always hope I do this.

9. Keep working on being a kinder person. I especially need to work on keeping my temper and being less judgmental.

You know, if I may say so myself, I think I did make some headway here. I made special effort to be welcoming, considerate, and complimentary, and I think I was less of a seething ragemonster than previously. Can't quit now, but I'm proud of myself for making some small improvement.

10. Learn how to be hopeful. I cannot keep falling into these dark periods for months and then taking months to claw my way out of them. I need to get away from this hole that I seem to be endlessly wavering on the edge of, if not swallowed up by it entirely. There is so much good in the world, and I've been unbelievably blessed in my life, and the weakness in me must not keep me from all the joy to be had.

Hard to say. I think I spent less time this year in an emotional hole than I did the previous. This too will be something I will always have to work on.

I've taken to walking through Mt. Feake Cemetery when I want to get into town. Since moving to Illyria an extra mile was tacked onto all my normal walking routes, and while the effort isn't tough for me, it makes a walk take significantly more time out of my day. I like cemeteries. They're a tiny glimpse of history. They're great for a writer trying to gather names. (Apparently there are a lot of "Blaisdells" who died in Waltham.) It's actually a lovely place, carefully arranged and beautifully maintained, full of big expensive-looking cookie cutter headstones. It's got nice trees and healthy green grass and a great view of the river with the picturesque old watch factory on the opposite bank. I don't know how even people who don't like cemeteries could find this place unpleasant. Of course I like old weird rundown ones too. And I really like sort of run-of-the-mill working class ones that are neither too nice nor too bad. My great-grandparents on the Roberts side are buried in a place like that, where all the headstones in the Catholic section of the yard are the flat kind that are easier to mow around, and cheaper than the ones in the Protestant section. It's a piece of my family's history-- Catholic, working class, Burgettstown, the names Frank and Christina Roberts --and a small tangible piece of relatives I've never met.

Whenever I'm in a graveyard I always find myself thinking of the baby my Gigi, my paternal grandmother, lost a few years after my dad was born. In the eight years between having my dad and my uncle, my Gigi had several miscarriages and one stillborn baby girl. I'm not sure I'm remembering this correctly, but I believe Gigi fell down some stairs at some point during the pregnancy and the baby was born dead. She's buried somewhere in that same cemetery as my great-grandparents, but at the time Gigi and Granddad couldn't afford a headstone, and so without a marker in the intervening years no one remembers where she lies. 

I've never heard anybody call her by a name. This didn't seem strange to me; I don't really believe stillbirths are people, so I don't approve of giving them names. I've seen too many instances of people personifying their lost babies in unhealthy and unrealistic ways. I always assumed Gigi's lost baby never had one. But I've heard enough people have expressed shock to me upon hearing that that I wonder if maybe she did, and it's just that no one uses it. Difficult enough to lose a baby, perhaps even if worse if you turn her into a person too. I don't think it's anything superstitious or even hung-up; I think my family is just inclined to not dwell on old tragedies, nor to investing personhood in someone who never was. But if that's so, I feel a strange connection between the name never being mentioned and the lack of a headstone. No setting down of the name, no speaking of the name hereafter.

In my larp The Stand there is a headstone to a stillborn baby girl in the graveyard, the child-that-never-was of the sheriff Malcolm Royce. I was thinking of Gigi's lost baby when I included it. I decided that the stone in the game would read Baby Girl Royce. I did not want them to have named her, and what else could you put on a tombstone for a child that never lived before it died?

It was a long time ago. Gigi has since passed away. Granddad is around ninety now. My dad and his older sister and younger brother all have children of their own. My uncle's oldest daughter is about to have her own baby. And my family is full of resilient people. Sickness, loss, struggle, death, may be mourned but are eventually taken in stride with the knowledge that there is always hardship in this life. Not even Granddad and Gigi were really scarred by this. But still, somewhere there is a baby with no name buried fifty years ago who died without ever having a chance to live. We don't remember where. The people who knew have forgotten, and they are beginning to pass away themselves. I'll never know. But she existed. She had people wanted to know and love the person she would have been. People who cried that she was dead.

And she has a niece who thinks about her. Who has made art from the thought of her. Who remember that she existed.

I don't really have a point to this. I don't have anything I learned or concluded from this. I still don't think she should have had a name. And I don't think it's a big deal that she doesn't have a headstone. But I still think she mattered, if only for this.

In my desk drawer I found a note I wrote to myself a while ago. It reads thusly: 

5:17
10/04/06
This will not last.

I thank God it didn't.