Man…the month is over, yo. Just. Like. That.
January actually seemed to go by this time at a “normal” pace…like it felt like 31 days. Perception-wise. Unlike the last few months of 2015, which seemed to be gone after the slightest blinking of an eye.
I wonder how much of that perception has to do with how much writing I got accomplished this month…because I got a lot done. Including today. I finished this Sundance “pitch” document today. It needs major, all-encompassing rewrites…but I did finish it from top to bottom 😛 And, I’m glad I did it this way, this “write first and edit later” method. It was much more exploratory than I’d anticipated, and I think I found a voice and direction with which to attack certain sections in just allowing myself to spew anything and everything that came to my mind. At the end of the day, it’s a document that’s asking me to articulate the “why” and the “how” of this show as a whole, which is something I haven’t spent time on since the very beginning of outlining the pilot episode. Those are important questions! Questions that should have well-thought-out answers…and this document is forcing me to do that.
With that in mind…I’ve been so perfectly on-task for all of January, hitting each of the goals that I’d set out on my calendar right on time…I think that needs to be re-shuffled now for February. I need a couple more days with this pitch document before it’s ready to send out to have some other pairs of eyes take a look at for me. That sets my timeline back a bit…I’m also thinking I need three days with each of the rest of my acts instead of just two…SO, what this means is that I’ll probably be spending a full week longer on Icarus than I’d dreamed up…
But, to be honest, I’m totally fine with that. As long as I’m putting in the hours I’ve told myself I want to put in, as long as I’m sitting down each day and doing the work, it’s okay with me if things take a little longer than I’d “scheduled.” It’s when I *don’t* sit down and do the work and then have to push back my deadlines that I get frustrated. Big difference.
Yeah, so I wrote today, I did a little bit of work for the Flix, did some narrations too to finish out the month. If I did my math correctly, despite the lack of work here and there during a definite “slow” month, we’ll still be spot-on in terms of hitting our savings goal. So, man, that’s a HUGE win for the first month of the year – success on both the writing front, and the editing work/financial front. I also didn’t get sick this year, a first!
January is definitely a beast of a month for me, I’m coming to realize as I read through these last two years of journaling. I’m honestly not quite sure where that comes from…perhaps the let-down of the holidays being over? Or maybe the angst of wishing I’d done more the previous year and wanting to get more done in the year to come? It might also just be Seasonal Affected Disorder. I’m not sure that’s a REAL disorder, but it’s definitely something I have. It just gets dark so fucking early, which is a major bummer for someone who is by nature not a morning person. And I felt all those same things this month…a slight depression, more anxiety than I feel is usual…a general sense of unease and feeling discombobulated. I still feel that as I sit here and write this entry right now. I’m not in peak spirits, that’s just he truth…
…but…that didn’t stop me this month. Finally. I finished and submitted my first short story. I’m a week away and right on schedule to submit to my first screenwriting contest, and feeling like my pilot script FINALLY is becoming the draft I’ve needed it to be all this time, something good enough to send out into the world as a representative of myself. I got all my editing work done on time. The Ho booked a pilot. The dogs are healthy. *I* stayed healthy and didn’t lose ground to start the year on my heels by being sick in bed.
Objectively speaking…this has been one of the best January’s in recent memory. Well done 2016. Let’s repeat that shit in February. Listen…I know that there will be challenging months, and often times, there’s nothing I can really do to stop that from happening…which is why I say cheers to January 2016. You were a good one.
Onwards and upwards!