Starting off the year nice and easy

For the first time in my adult life, I didn’t dive into January with the white-hot intensity of a thousand bullet-journals. 2024 well and truly shook up that part of myself, reordering my priorities and testing my resolve.

I distracted myself through my personal dramas by spending countless hours on post-production for Easy Digging, meeting tight writing deadlines, and reorganizing entire genres at We Luv Video. Not to mention my day job as a nanny. I was so emotionally and creatively exhausted when the holidays approached, I decided to forgo my usual ornament-making, cookie-baking, and tree-decorating and go to Palm Springs with some friends instead. Turns out you can just tell friends and family, “I’m not doing Christmas this year,” and you’re completely off the hook. Nobody cares.

Once my vacation was over, I simply didn’t have it in me to do my usual goal-setting for the year. I sat down, wrote a bunch of stuff like yoga every day and read 50 books, with no real intention of starting off the year with a bang. A friend of mine mentioned how it was kind of messed up that we were expected to set goals, be better, and start fresh during January, of all months. It’s cold, there is less sunshine, the federal government is plunging into darkness, you’re exhausted from the holidays, and all around you, there’s this annoying pressure to do better, be better, drink green juice, sign up for a legally-binding year-long barre membership, and OPTIMIZE!!! 

I’m not claiming that starting off the year slowly is radical. But as someone who typically interprets January 1st as a ready-set-go to draft a new book, finish a screenplay, clean every baseboard and inside every drawer of my apartment, and generally, well, OPTIMIZE (!!!), it feels radical to not do that. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I manage my time, asking what it would be like to take an approach that isn’t CLEAR THE TO DO LIST AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. I successfully spent January resting, recovering, doing the bare minimum. And this month, while I do have more projects that need tending and pending deadlines, I’m also saying f*** it, I’ll do it later, a little more often. Jury’s out if this attitude will last, so don’t judge me if I come back to this newsletter in a few months with 10 Hot New Productivity Hacks.

EASY DIGGING

We wrapped up the first round of film festival submissions last week and will start hearing back from a few fests in March. By April, we’ll have a better understanding whether or not we just wasted hundred of dollars on festival entry fees.

I have a love/hate relationship with this part of a project. I’ve gone through this with book projects and previous films. With a book, during the quiet space between sending emails to agents or editors and getting that first rejection, anything is possible. Everyone could want it, it could be the next hot thing, etc. But then, the rejections roll in, and you are humbled. You realize that this is not destined to be a bestseller, a fought-over title, a festival darling. It’s nice to fantasize in the anticipation, even if the fantasies are often off-base. 

So as of this moment, I have no idea if EASY DIGGING is a break-out-hit, or just some movie about a guy and a hole that no festival programmer will connect with. I’m happy with it, so I suppose that’s what really matters! But unfortunately, I am a flawed human who also loves industry validation at the end of the day. Whoops!

We are doing one more public screening in Austin for EASY DIGGING on March 7th! It’ll be at We Luv Video — tickets aren’t live just yet, but follow We Luv on Instagram, or just follow me, and the tickets will be up soon!

And a three-hour-long movie recommendation, sorry

I’m stealing a recommendation from Sammy, a clerk at We Luv Video. She had a recommendation shelf up in the store for being the Volunteer of the Month, which was where I found Toni Erdmann (2016). I went in without knowing much, and I recommend you do the same (if you’re into long German films, that is). And I’ll tell you what — I laughed, I cried, I marvelled at the way it was paced, and I really connected with it. Plus, it happens to be relevant to my earlier musings about being a workaholic.

Local Austin Recommendation — If like books, and you haven’t already been to First Light Books in Hyde Park, it’s worth checking out. I recently had a pretty bad day and decided to go there to get a coffee and browse some books, and it (mostly) cured me. Great selection of general fiction and very nice vibes. Also, if you like pizza, bring your recently bought book next door to Allday Pizza and get grease on the pages. They sell by the slice.

P.S. I will VERY VERY LIKELY (nothing is certain in the publishing world) have some extremely exciting book news to share in my next newsletter!!