I’m going to attempt to deconstruct two things today: the fact that I, Bri Castellini, am engaged to be married, and recent discoveries in therapy. Because it’s not a Bri’s Own World blog if it isn’t multitasking!

Thing the first: I am engaged! To my partner of 7 1/2 years! I’m very excited, even though marriage is functionally meaningless in modern society aside from some archaic tax laws. I don’t care, though. I wanted to be married, and now I will be, to the person in the world I love and treasure the most.

Thing the second: I have discovered that I have an intensely hard time being sincere, everywhere but particularly in person, and becoming engaged has brought a lot of that to the surface because I realized I was dreading having to tell people in a way that genuinely conveyed my excitement without attempting to minimize the vulnerability through jokes and glibness. Even the title of this blog is glib!

Thing the third: the featured image on this post is a TIE fighter pancake my FIANCÉ and I made on our first date.

Thing the fourth: black lives matter, defund & demilitarize the police. This post will live on as evergreen content but it would be disingenuous of me to not acknowledge the day in which it is originally being posted. Educate yourself and donate what you can to relief efforts and bail funds to support the incredibly brave frontline revolutionaries. For education, I recommend this very thorough resource, and this one, as well as this video and this other video.

I will delete any comment about thing the fourth that is anything but 100% supportive. I am not interested in your both sides nonsense today or any day.

Continue reading “Fiancéd” →

1. Take at least 2 actual vacations, where I don’t work (except for maybe on writing projects, but you’re on thin ice, kid), outside of New York City. You might not know this about me because I keep a pretty chill exterior, but I’m extremely bad about taking breaks and setting boundaries and not overcommitting. Right now it’s 10pm on a Friday during which I’m still technically on vacation and I’m editing a podcast WHILE writing this blog and planning a DnD session for Sunday. Before this most recent Christmas break, I hadn’t had an actual, honest-to-god no-work no-stress vacation for 2 years. In another 2 years I will be 30 and maybe I’d like to live to see 31 before I have a nervous breakdown!
2. Write every week. Not even every day- don’t be crazy. Some days I’m very busy or very tired or need to rewatch Outlander again. But didn’t I say a while ago that I’m a writer? Who wants to write as a career? Maybe I should actually do that more.
3. Save $3500. Quinn and I plan to move to Los Angeles in early 2021, which is not going to be cheap. I also am apparently going on two vacations in 2020, and that ain’t cheap. Also, I’m making more money than I made last year because I have three jobs and a better paying main job, and I need to get my financial shit together because I’m 2 years away from 30 oh my god mortality/adulthood.
4. Make and stay consistent with a budget. Now that I have three jobs and eighteen streaming video subscriptions and an impending move and a laptop battery that apparently needs servicing, once again, my financial shit needs to be together.
5. Make one YouTube video a quarter. Once again I’m pretending like I’m going to step away from production a bit and that may or may not hold true but in either case it’s been like two years since I’ve made a YouTube video on my own channel, something that used to be a really big part of my life which I kind of miss.
6. Make a healthy choice twice a day. This could be two healthy meals, one healthy meal and a workout, two workouts (lol ok Rocky), or a salad and a therapy session. Resolution modifier: I can stack healthy choices, so if I have a randomly amazing day where I work out, eat three healthy meals, and go to therapy, then the day after I can be a complete garbage monster and eat cake for every meal. This makes it a fun game rather than a slog. C-C-Combo!
7. Order out fewer than three times a week. This is both a financial and a health imperative, especially my last year in New York. I know my kitchen sucks and in the summer was so infested with bugs we could not eradicate that we had to buy new shelving units that are wire and open air and we can’t use our cabinets anymore, but also airplane seatbelts have started to get dangerously tight and I travel for work a lot and that’s not gonna fly. (get it)
8. Read all the books I’ve bought but haven’t read prior to January 3rd, 2020. Kinda speaks for itself. Books I’ve bought but haven’t finished/started (it’s a lot of memoirs): Obviously by Akilah Hughes, Bad With Money by Gaby Dunn, The Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally, This Will Only Hurt A Little by Busy Phillips, Feed by Mira Grant, the rest of the Outlander books (I actually didn’t buy these, I’m sharing a Kindle account with my mom and she already bought them and I read three and a quarter over Christmas break and I MUST FINISH THEM for SCIENCE).
9. Stop over-explaining. I have this habit of feeling like people need way more information than they actually need (especially in work situations) and so in an effort to be thorough I end up rambling, which has the opposite effect that I want (that effect being ‘to be an efficient and valuable collaborator and teammate’). In 2020 I’m going to make an effort to be more concise with my language, requests, and general communication styles, especially when my impulse to over-explain comes from insecurity.
10. Don’t go to your 10 Year High School Reunion. You don’t want to go, but you do want a tenth New Year Resolution for 2020.

Happy New Year, what’re your arbitrary passing of time goals?

1. Write 5 new projects. Partial completion. I have a lot of valid excuses for not completing this resolution, but at the end of the day: I made too many non-writing commitments this year and didn’t make writing a priority like this FIRST RESOLUTION implied I wanted to. Next year, hopefully other things will get more stable. 
2. Host 3 table reads. Partial completion. If you’ll remember, this was on the list because I was allegedly “stepping back a bit from producing this year,” which absolutely did not turn out to be true. I directed Better With You, I released and promoted Sam and Pat season 2, I completed post-production on and began the festival run for Buy In (my latest award-winning project, coming soon!), and I produced and edited 2 podcasts (with 1 still ongoing, which I’m editing as I write this blog). Honestly, I’m glad I did these other things, so I’m not overly upset this one didn’t go to plan.
3. Post one blog and one YouTube video a month. Failure. Listen.
4. Cook dinner at least twice a week. Failure. I did better than could be expected, but I also didn’t live up to this. This year was… hectic.
5. Start or end my day active at least three times a week. Failure. Listen.
6. Release and submit for festivals both projects I have in post. Was done as of July!
7. Leave New York at least 4 times. Final tally:
   1. January- Los Angeles (for family)
   2. January: Washington DC (to see my mom)
   3. March- Los Angeles (for Stareable)
   4. March- Oregon (for Stareable/visiting)
   5. April- Washington DC (for Stareable)
   6. April- Northhampton, MA (for Stareable)
   7. May- Utah (to shoot Better With You)
   8. June- Denver (for LIU-Brooklyn)
   9. July- New Jersey (for the Buy In premiere)
   10. August- Los Angeles (for Stephens College)
   11. September- Los Angeles (for Seed&Spark)
   12. September- Utah (for the Better With You premiere)
   13. September-October- Colorado (to watch my mom’s house)
   14. November- San Diego (for my cousin’s wedding)
   15. December- Los Angeles (for Seed&Spark again)
   16. December- Colorado (for Christmas)
8. Save $2k. After my financial scare and my loss of income for a few months and my dipping into my savings to pay rent… I actually ended up managing to save $2760.74! Since Quinn and I are moving across the country in early 2021 and we’d also like to take at least one vacation, this is a huge success and one sorely needed. After a year of financial panic and insecurity, it feels good to have gotten back on track, prepared for whatever 2020 has to throw at me.
9. Pick my battles. Based on my wording for this resolution, I think I did this. I’m still a person with zero chill to her name, but I like to think I’ve aimed my lack of chill better than I had previously.
10. Be a better adult. Partial completion. I’m still dragging my feet on enough things that I can’t in good conscience call this a complete success, but I’m definitely better off than I was in January.

• Complete: 4
• Partial completion: 3
• Failed: 3

Not bad! Especially given the absolute insanity that was this year. I mean, just look at the travel tally! 2019 was not, by any means, a good year, but it was certainly an interesting one. Here’s to accountability.

So it’s safe to say that this year didn’t go to plan at all. In January 2019 I was fresh-faced and insistent that my motto was going to be “Boundaries and Balance.” I was going to take a step back from production and producing, I was going to take a real vacation or two, and by god, I was going to write. I had a day job at Stareable as their Community Director (starting year 3 of my employment there), a new side hustle in teaching once a week at my old grad program, and was looking forward to a less hectic year ahead.

By February, that  was completely out the window. It’s still a little too soon to talk about the rough stuff of the year, some of which you can probably guess based on context clues and my new years resolutions posts (my 2019 final tally post goes up in a few days), but I would be lying to act as though my year wasn’t creatively and personally fulfilling. So in order, as best I can, here are the cool things that happened: Continue reading “Cool 2019 Things In Chronological Order” →

Since college I’ve had a folder on my laptop called “Be Professional,” where I keep the various versions of my resume, my professional headshots (a thing I never thought I’d need), my business card InDesign file, and my cover letter templates. Since childhood, I’ve had a pretty clear understanding of what my professional path would be. It was gonna be great- I’d go to a small liberal arts college somewhere in Oregon or Washington, graduate with a creative writing degree, write novels, and work as a barista until I was published.

It’s misleading to say that was always the plan, I guess. I had a brief flirtation with law school after my first year doing speech and debate in high school, and I dabbled with graphic design because I was an early (and young) adopter of Photoshop and rudimentary web design. In both cases the plan was still to be a published novelist (and maybe YouTuber- John Green I’m comin’ for ya), but I knew I needed a survival job that paid well in the meantime.

I didn’t really have ambitions in the film realm, and I certainly never imagined myself working for a series of exciting media start ups where I’d use skills I’ve cultivated as hobbies for literally two decades, but here we are. In an attempt to explain to my family what exactly the fuck I do for work, and in an attempt to showcase how the strangest things end up being professionally important, I wanted to go through the steps that brought me to where I am now. Unpack my career path as it were.

TL;DR? I am currently employed as the Film Community Manager for Seed&Spark, a film crowdfunding platform, and as an adjunct professor for two MFA programs- one in Brooklyn where I teach a class on web series production, and one in LA that’s low residency (meaning it’s 95% remote) where I am the thesis advisor for four students writing a web series for their capstone script.

Continue reading “Be Professional” →

1. Write 5 new projects. In Progress. Hasn’t been as much time to write as expected, but I did write a mini series in the Better With You Universe, a pilot for a shelved Brains audio drama reboot, a set of rules and the first two adventures for a homebrew DnD game, and have started a number of other pilots and shorts, so I feel good about my progress here.
2. Host 3 table reads. In Progress. This was on the list because I was allegedly “stepping back a bit from producing this year,” which hasn’t been true. Technically we had a Better With You table read, and I’m sure once Kailee and Amanda move to NYC we’ll have another one or two, so progress here as well. 
3. Post one blog and one YouTube video a month. Failure. Hah hah hah hah hah
4. Cook dinner at least twice a week. Doing ok. While I’ve certainly cooked more this year than I have for a years, I probably haven’t averaged twice a week in a few months. I didn’t expect to be traveling so often so when I am home it’s usually in between trips and we haven’t been able to go to the grocery store. Now that I’m working from home full time though I expect to get better about this. I’m also traveling… less, though I will be traveling again as of August at least once a month. 
5. Start or end my day active at least three times a week. Doing ok. Another thing that’s been aided by working from home but hasn’t been 100% consistent for a while. Using the traveling excuse again even though excuses are for quitters.
6. Release and submit for festivals both projects I have in post. Boom goes the dynamite. Buy In’s IRL festival premiere is TONIGHT and Sam and Pat has been released and being submitted to fests for months.
7. Leave New York at least 4 times. Current tally with planned trips for the future included:
   1. January- Los Angeles, Washington DC
   2. March- Los Angeles again, Oregon
   3. April- Washington DC again, Northhampton, MA
   4. May- Utah
   5. June- Denver
   6. August (upcoming, probably)- Los Angeles again
   7. September & October- Colorado
   8. November- San Diego
   9. December- Colorado
8. Save $2k. In progress. Had a bit of a finance scare this year for a variety of reasons I won’t get into right now (but suffice it to say it wasn’t on me this time), so this got interrupted because I had to take $2k OUT of my savings to pay rent and whatnot for a few months. However, my auto-transfer I set up at the beginning of the year has continued to transfer from checking to savings once a month so I have technically put $1425 into savings this year (though if this resolution had meant save $2k on top of my existing savings balance, I’d be at -$575). I’m hoping once things get back to normal I can put back what I took out of my savings to survive during the weird months, but even if I don’t, the point of putting money in savings is for emergencies like paying rent during weird income months.
9. Pick my battles. In progress. The Great Financial Scare of 2019 helped a lot with this one, weirdly, because I had to learn to prioritize and set boundaries in ways I never had to before. Also with all the traveling I’ve done this year I’ve been too tired to fight as much as I used to fight, but I’m still counting this as progress rather than a reaction to exhaustion.
10. Be a better adult. In progress. On non-travel weeks I’m generally pretty good about this, and in general Quinn and I have gotten a lot more consistent about chores and cleaning and whatnot. The day I wrote this post (a week in advance, like an ADULT) Quinn and I did a deep clean of the apartment/fridge and made some plans to tackle a bug problem that’s been there since we moved into this very old building. Mom, I swear, New York City just has bugs, it’s not our fault.

Not as bad as I thought! The resolutions that require a week over week lifestyle change I’m giving myself a break on because I’m human and I’ve still got a few months of the year left to change these habits, and calling them a failure in July seems unnecessary. 

Been a while! I foresee a handful of New Years Resolutions not being fulfilled this year, because this year has been… unexpected.

Last year was insane for me, one of the busiest years I’ve ever had, one of the most creatively rewarding, and one that I felt very strongly about not repeating right away. “2019 will hopefully be defined by boundaries and balance,” I stated in a blog at the end of last year. I even made my work Slack status “Boundaries and Balance 2k19” for a while, because branding is important.

And then 2019 actually started and I remembered that I’m me and that’s not how things tend to go in my life.

Continue reading “2019, Noticed” →

1. Write 5 new projects. Be them short films, web series pilots, TV pilots, audio dramas, or a play, I want 5 brand new things written in 2019. 5 scripts doesn’t count unless they’re from 5 different projects.
2. Host 3 table reads. Since I’m stepping back a bit from producing this year, I’m going to miss my actor friends. So in order to focus on my writing but also keep my creative, talented friends involved, I want to host at least 3 table reads for 3 unique projects in 2019.
3. Post one blog and one YouTube video a month. I really did try last year, but it got away from me. This isn’t an insane ask, though, so let’s try again.
4. Cook dinner at least twice a week. Quinn has taken a lot of the burden of cooking for us- when he doesn’t, we order out, and that’s not fair or healthy. Plus, I used to love cooking! I want to recapture that this year.
5. Start or end my day active at least three times a week. No excuses 2019.
6. Release and submit for festivals both projects I have in post. I filmed two major projects in 2019, and they both deserve a shot at glory and laurels. This is my pledge to actually put them into the world.
7. Leave New York at least 4 times. Everyone knows I’m bad at boundaries and balance, so in 2019, I’m making an effort to live a less workaholic life. I have 2 guaranteed trips (DC in January and Christmas) that I’ll be out of the city for, so it’s unfair to just say “2” like the last few years. 
8. Save $2k. Last year I saved $1500, which was great, but I’m an adult who goes more into debt every time I make a student loan payment because of accrued interest, so I’m not in great financial shape. Savings will at least keep me, well, safe, in case something terrible happens.
9. Pick my battles. As I age, I get better at when my input or opinion is needed, but I’m also a naturally argumentative person. In 2019, I want to really analyse when a topic deserves a debate or when I should just let it go. 
10. Be a better adult. When I get overwhelmed or over-tired, I neglect important things like dishes and emptying the trash and cleaning my room and the bathroom. I am almost 27 years old- that’s gotta stop. Regardless of my exhaustion level, the dishes need to be done, and not just when company is coming over.

What are YOUR resolutions this year?  How did yours last year shape up? Let me know, and here’s to at least a pretty ok 2019!