How Am I Doing?

It’s complicated. Isn’t everything?

April was a rough month for me, and May was a chaotic one. June was a slow burn, in a partially depressing but mostly apathetic way, because not having a structure to my day to day sucks. Here’s to July?

The recent good:

1. Ace and Anxious premiered online, and did extremely well on Tumblr. All the feedback but two YouTube comments was positive.
2. Ace and Anxious got into several film festivals, and has three awards under its belt already.
3. Brains got distribution via Brooklyn on Demand via their website and their Roku app
4. I got published by The Financial Diet, one of my favorite websites
5. I was chosen as Filmmaker of the Month for a random website
6. I moved into a new, better apartment with just Quinn
7. I met a bunch of wonderful new web series and filmmaker friends in person and online
8. A Starbucks barista slipped me his phone number on a day when I thought I looked my worst

The recent bad:

1. I had to stop going to therapy after five weeks because apparently no one in this city with my insurance has open slots
2. I haven’t produced a single project I’ve written all year
3. I lost my MTV job at the end of May and am still unemployed, despite working roughly full time hours for Stareable
4. One of the projects I was counting on for at least SOME money got pushed by several months, so who knows if it’ll ever happen, let alone if I’ll still be available by the time we’re back on track
5. Did I mention I’m unemployed and haven’t produced a single thing of my own writing all year?

It’s not that I’m saying 2017 has been a shit year, even though it has been for a lot of reasons. But it’s already July and I feel like everything I do is just barely keeping my head above water. I’m not drowning, but I’m also not making any progress, and boy howdy do I hate being unemployed.

I’m doing ok. Better than in April/May, but considerably worse than I was doing last year around this time, because I was just starting my exciting new job at MTV and was mid-production for Brains season 2 and starting to plan the shoot for Ace and Anxious. I know that’s not a fair comparison, but I’m definitely feeling stuck in a way I haven’t been for a long time. Certainly for the first time since being in New York.

I’ve been writing things unrelated to Brains, which has been a nice change, but nothing is connecting yet, so we’ll see where I end the year. It’s also really really hot and humid in New York right now and if I’m being honest that’s probably a statistically significant portion of my bad mood.

However. By and large, the thing I’ve been most proud of this year is this website. I finally fell into a good pattern for the first time in years. Two posts a month plus one video a month seems like exactly as much as I can manage while also allowing for some semblance of quality. My new pal Larry Brody of TVWriter.com (hi Larry!) certainly seems to think I’m doing something worthwhile, as he’s been republishing a lot of what I’ve been musing about this year over on his site.

Now if only I could get paid.