The last few months have been . . . a lot. I am not the same person I was in 2016 and I am so happy about it.
Getting back into therapy is the singular best thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. In the last nine months, I was taught the terms “gaslighting” and “narcissistic abuse” and made the hardest decision of my life to GTFO of an abusive relationship I had been in since 2010, that had defined my life, my career, my choices pretty much every single day.
In doing so, I made the decision to put myself as a human before myself as an artist, something that had never, ever occurred to me before. I felt that by taking that risk, there was a good chance I would be sacrificing my career.
- Finished my first pilot, which got me a meeting at Comedy Central, and subsequently have written the next two episodes and half each of the four after that (things kept getting in the way because I also . . . )
- had a residency at the Drama League (the same one the same year as Duncan Shiek whaaaat) where I wrote a play in three days of which I am SO proud.
- Found a new writing partner, have created tons of new content with HER (female composers FTW!), including starting on a musical called “Mina and the Monster,” a 7-person actor musician project that I get to star in!
- Was hired to adapt “Princess Ten Ten and the Dark Skies” for the Guardian Princess Alliance, which I just got to Skype in for the first table-read of earlier today! It is described as the first original musical presented by University of California Riverside as well as “the first musical featuring a pan-Asian gender non-conforming superheroine princess” and yes you read all of that correctly.
- Was hired by my favorite Bway/N’tl tour AD/director who I worked with last year and liked me and my work enough to call me up and get me a job adapting the middle grade novel “Invincible” with a very talented composer from Yale who actually cast my godbrother in a play there! It is ALSO about princesses (living the DREAAAM) and also not your typical princess - this one is wheelchair-bound and learning more about herself through therapeutic horseback riding yes you read all that correctly as well.
- Danced in a short film which I had written lyrics to three songs for, making it the first film project my little sister and I were in together! It was a ton a ton of fun.
- Was made Director of New Work for The Harpers Theatre
- Finished a second pilot in time to submit it to a women NYC TV competition - jury is out but I was proud of getting it in and writing my first TV Bible and finally getting to collaborate with my BRILLIANT artist cousin who did the concept art for it!
- Finished a rewrite of my screenplay, got a great potential director 100% on board, had a budget drawn up, and got the FIRE in my soul to GET. IT. DONE.
- Got a call from a Broadway-vet actor now director who had worked with me in 2015 and I haven’t seen him since saying that he has a new manager in LA who wants him to direct another movie musical and asked me to write the screenplay
- Started working with the current music director/onstage pianist of the West End and now National Tour of Fiasco’s Into the Woods as my composer on a new musical that is just in its nascent stage so shhhhh ;)
- Got hired to restructure/write a summary of a musical I was briefly a dramaturge on this summer
- Just did some paid spec work for a project that I will either get or I will lose because I stood up for myself and my worth as a writer so honestly I am equally proud of myself either way :)
- And more that I’m sure I’m forgetting, because as you can tell, I have been a busy busy busy little bee
But MUCH more importantly, I
- Got a LOT of my confidence back as a singer/performer. It’s still a process, but boy howdy was this a huge leap forward
- Went to the National Eating Disorders Association Conference in Chicago, where I met beautiful amazing brilliant inspiring women and artists whose empathy and insight I will cherish for the rest of my life
- a side-effect of which is that I stayed with a friend in Boston whom I hadn’t seen in a good five or so years and didn’t even realize how much I had missed
- Got a MUTHA’UCKIN TATTOO that is DOPE AF and I love it and her name is Rattattooie and she helps me remember to love my body
- Went vegan and started learning to cook, which makes me feel more self-sufficient and it’s nice
- Finally confronted my body dysmorphia/confidence issues after years of anger at myself for not having enough feminist chutzpah to magically just will them away. But I couldn’t. And CBT kicked my butt into gear with enough tools to give me body peace, but even MORE astoundingly -
- CBT diminished my skin-picking enough that for the last WEEK or so the urges have been almost NON-EXISTENT. I don’t even know how it’s possible. Dermatillomania has been a huge inescapable part of my life for the past decade and I barely remember what it was like to live without it. I’m so so fortunate that my mom made me believe that I deserved to tackle this problem, which was the trigger for EVERYTHING else falling into place, and that my parents were able to afford this ridiculously expensive incredibly specialized treatment for a problem that used to take up, I kid you not, upwards of 40 minutes to an hour EVERY DAY and now takes up maybe five minutes maximum and steadily diminishes every day
*Angelica Schuyler voice* Anyway all this to say . . .
I have no regrets. Not from the last six years, and DEFINITELY not from the last ten months. Most days I feel like pinching myself because I can’t even believe how happy and healthy I feel. There are CERTAINLY bad moments and bad days, but they are so so outshone by all of the good ones :)
So that’s where things are now. We’ll see how it goes. We’ll see which projects go forward and which ones fall through, but I know now that my worth is an intrinsic thing, and not based on which jobs I land and which ones I don’t. My friends are incredible incredible people and I am now only keeping around those who make me feel better about myself and not worse, which I am pleased to say that upon close examination, is literally almost every. single. person. with whom I associate. I love them I love them I love them.
So here we go. If this is how the first quarter of the year is going, I am very very excited to see (and CREATE!) all that is to follow.
