February and March are busy in a way that feels accusatory.
"Didn’t you retire from the grind?"
Ah. Right. I didn’t retire. I lateral-moved into a grind with better aesthetics and worse boundaries.
Freelancing is just corporate without HR.
Well, the panic is technically positive. My calendar is full of chosen work. Things I care about, but still pay.
Which makes what happened this morning deeply inconvenient.
For months, I’ve wanted to see Monica Guerritore’s ANNA. Ever since it premiered in Europe in Q4 2025, it’s been sitting in my mind like unfinished business.
Last week, I made the mistake of curiosity.
“What if you explored bringing it to the Philippines?”
That’s how it always starts. With inquiry.
So I reached out to the Philippine-Italian Association.
This morning, I pitched ANNA for the this year's Italian Film Festival happening in June. I invoked Anna Magnani. I sounded informed. Respectable. Entirely sane—which I am not.
Privately, I was hoping for rejection.
Rejection is clean.
It closes loops.
It protects you from yourself.
Instead, I got logistics.
Their 2026 budget is allocated.
They typically screen films that are at least two years old.
Licensing for newer releases is expensive.
However.
If I can secure sponsorship to cover licensing, they’re open.
They’ll even connect me to cultural partners who might have capacity.
Three months until June.
It wasn’t a no.
And that is when the real problem revealed itself.
There is a version of me that hears “You need funding” and understands that as friction.
Then there is my inner child.
She heard “You need funding” and translated it into: “Prove you can.”
She is competent. She is relentless. She has built entire chapters of my life.
“It’s not impossible,” she said.
“It’s just expensive.”
Conscious Adult Me:
Excuse me?
So I tried to reason with her.
“Let’s be rational. This does not generate revenue. There is no meaningful return. We are very busy. February and March are already staging a coup. We do not need to self-assign an international film acquisition side quest.”
Inner brat, arms crossed:
“Really? No meaningful return? You’re sure about that?”
And that’s when I had to confront the truth.
This is not about cinema.
It is not about cultural contribution.
It is about proximity.
It is about the increasingly plausible possibility of a professional—and perhaps personal—connection with Monica, made more dangerous by ongoing Instagram interactions that blur the line between admiration and access.
This is what ambition looks like when it wears romantic lighting.
In The Mountains We Circle, I wrote about altitude. About oxygen. About choosing which peaks deserve your lungs.
Apparently, my criteria still includes:
International cinema
A legendary actress
Three months
Zero budget
A measurable amount of ego
The most unsettling part?
I believe I could make this happen.
That confidence is not imaginary. It has precedent. It has evidence. It has built things.
Which is why it’s dangerous.
Because self-efficacy without discernment is simply sophisticated self-sabotage.
And now my brain is drafting:
Execution timelines
Sponsorship decks
Funding pathways
Cultural partnerships
Commercial viability
Marketing and promotions
Meanwhile, February and March—the mountains that actually sustain me—are watching quietly.
Capability has never been my problem.
Discernment is harder.
I don’t need another mountain to prove I can climb.
I need to prove I can walk away.
Especially if you still have rent to pay.
God grant me:
the maturity to recognize obsession when it disguises itself as opportunity,
the discipline to redirect this terrifying drive toward work that sustains me,
and the humility to accept that not every open door is for me to enter
It wasn’t a no.
It was an invitation.
And invitations are only flattering if you’re not already committed elsewhere.
So anyway I got my grade for my term paper for Morphological Gradience and I got top marks. On the one hand I am kind of happy, but on the other hand I feel like I should be happier, more proud of myself.
When I was growing up good grades were just... expected. If I made anything less than top marks I got punished for it, and my reward for getting good grades was not getting punished. I got a passing, “Good job kid.” delivered in an uninterested tone of voice. So when I graduated second in my class in high school I didn’t feel proud, I felt angry at myself for not being first. When I worked hard and made good grades in my BA I didn’t feel proud because that’s what I was supposed to do. I graduated with a 3.85 GPA (that’s a 1,2 by German standards) and instead of feeling proud I’ve always felt angry at myself that one class kept me from having a 3.9, and if I had just worked a little harder...
So of course I’m relieved I got top marks on my term paper, but at the same time I got no feedback from the professor and I’m sitting here thinking... it was a mistake. This grade got put in and it was a mistake. But also also I’m sitting here thinking of course I wouldn’t get feedback, doing well is an expectation you don’t talk to someone to discuss things if they did well, you only contact people if they’ve done poorly.
And I also don’t feel particularly happy or proud or anything for getting the grade I did even though I know, quite logically, that I fucking earned it with as much work as I put into it. I feel like I’ve kind of written it off in my head the same way doing well was always written off, with an uninterested “So proud of you.” while seeing to something more important.
At least my GPA is comfortable. I’m just dreading getting back my term paper from Dr F (which she still hasn’t returned to me) and writing the two more term papers I owe her.
Study stress is so ridiculous. It builds up to a point where it makes it impossible to focus on study and all you can do is cry. But then because you are wasting time stressing and not studying, the stress only increases, and it continues in that stupid vicious cycle
And let’s not even get started on that whole thing where you stress over not being stressed about study
