Hello I am alive. And ok. I was very depressed. I’m still in a weird state where I’m not sure what my next moves are career wise. I am fine for money next semester because I’m teaching, so I at least have a short time where I’m ok. I am taking a break from applying for grants, or at least applying alone for them, I may have producers still applying to things for me. I really am partially retiring since I am going from a full time artist to a part time artist which was something I resisted for a long time. But teaching will be nice, I did really enjoy it when I taught at Western. I also have film projects still in progress so my work won’t be over today. But man those rejections one after the other were A LOT and taking a break from the stream of rejections will be nice.

I keep getting ideas so I am sure something will happen.

But also redirecting my creative energy into more solitary pursuits is appealing to me right now. I’m still learning guitar and singing. I think I need to put more energy into singing practice because I have a recital in January. And today when I sang the song I’m working on it just sounded terrible. I didn’t do warm ups though which probably made a difference. My singing teacher is getting me to do more complicated exercises. There’s one where you go ZiiiiiYAHHHHHH- and then do all these different notes as you go down and it’s HARD OMG. I am getting better at getting the pitch!

But I have also learned that I need to monitor my voice while I sing so I was trying to practice tonight and I lost my good headphones. And I remember picking them up and thinking “I can’t put them somewhere far from where I use them I’m going to regret this.” But then I don’t remember where I DID put them. So I decided I would use dousing rods to find where I put it. And they spun around in the living room and then in the bedroom they pointed to a corner. I reached my hand in the corner and pulled out all these headsets I used as props for my film in September. THANKS SPIRITS ha ha that’s not what I meant! I walked around singing “Where can it be now? Doo doo doo doo doo!” And no I still haven’t found my headphones.

I also did some beading at the University of Toronto Indigenous Winter Gathering for the first time in decades, at least since 2007 when I was manic and tried to bead something and messed up a bunch of beads in a dish. Anyway that was not a possible activity for me at the time because I was moving too fast all the time. My feet got sores from me constantly walking, so yeah a sitting down doing fine needle work activity is not happening for me in a manic episode. BUT I was/am not manic right now, so I did manage to bead a cute thing. I wouldn’t say it’s A+ beading but it looks cute and was mostly flat. My Mom used to tell me her beading tricks and despite what she might tell you I do listen to her. So hopefully it will help.

I’m thinking of beading images from the film I want to make, maybe a couple films I want to make. I’m not sure where this line of thought is going but maybe doing a meditative practice like that on images I want to make someday will help my brain.

I’m really frustrated I guess creatively and I’m just going to try and get stuff off my plate over the next while. I have two scripts I want to finish, and my trans climate documentary, and this short film. After those projects are done it’s up in the air. Although I do want a long term teaching job for the stability, which means I will have to keep doing my creative projects. I am also still pecking away at my Repatriate Me video game. So things are still being created I’m just trying to figure out what to do about funding and also I know I have to take a break from banging my head against a wall figuratively.

I’m not great at crowdfunding, it takes a lot of work to keep promoting crowd funding and stuff. But if you do want to support me there’s a Paypal, Ko-Fi, and Patreon link at the Support This Artist link I think. It’s tiresome constantly asking for money. I know that’s what producers are for and I guess I need a publicist to hype me up sometimes. But man that’s a lot of work mostly I am doing on my own.

Aside from that I do know I feel GOOD when I am making things. I’m just trying to concentrate on clearing my plate right now. One of the scripts I want to write is a new idea for a micro budget feature. My producer told me to write something with like, two people in one setting and I thought and thought and got an idea for something that could be interesting. It doesn’t have an ending in my head yet though but I know it will if I keep thinking.

Also over the holidays I’m trying to get some work done on my classes next semester so I have some time to get settled when the semester begins. I have a guest artist for my Video Art Production class so that will be fun, and I am thinking of someone for my Indigenous Cinema course. The library already pulled all the films and readings for my Indigenous Cinema class and the Video Art Production course has more hands on exercises people are doing. The Video Art class was already developed by previous professors, so I’m just adapting it a bit. I think I’m a bit of a keener because that class doesn’t start until a week after the Indigenous Cinema class starts.

My research assistants found some other people I might potentially interview, so I’m going to be looking into that. I also ordered a book about wild fires and I’m curious to see what I learn from it. I’m trying to get a handle on climate related disasters, I still think this project is going to take a while longer to film than the year I have with U of T. I DID apply to another funder to see if I can get money to go to some of these places to film. We’ll see if they are interested, I applied before I got super frustrated with applying to funders.

My Mom said maybe it’s because I’m a mid career artist and maybe there’s younger artists doing more interesting things, or maybe people just think I should stick to short small videos or something. It’s so frustrating to realize there might be a film glass ceiling I’m working with where people think I should just be content with making cheap videos. I have bigger dreams than I can realize at this point. I also think making work about women’s rage, climate change, transgender people, and fighting anti-Indigenous racism is threatening to some people. I guess I don’t pick easy topics. But maybe someone will see that we need that work right now.

I’m not as hopeful as I was earlier this year though. My income from the United States basically dropped as soon as Trump took power to next to nothing. My distributor in the United States, Video Data Bank, is going through some shitty times because the School of the Art Institute of Chicago fired a bunch of workers and is not accepting new work anymore. So that’s a concerning development. I know I still have Vtape and I am grateful for them. But I do worry about WHY Video Data Bank was targeted when it makes so much money for independent video artists, a lot of distinct and crucial voices for our time that are being sort of silenced by this.

I don’t know what is happening anymore. Some other people have wondered if there is a chill on trans creators and like, yeah probably. But I have anecdotally heard that other queer creators and writers in the film and tv world are not getting projects greenlighted anymore. It’s like the big bully voices said fascism is here and the funders listened, or the juries listened, or the money people listened. And they are sticking to safer stuff.

But also there’s multiple other factors at play like my posts supporting Palestinians on social media. I don’t think of myself as the loudest advocate for Palestinian people but I did repost a lot of things and I know Zionists did get a lot of people fired for their posts. And my job was such that if I lost a gig I just wouldn’t know about it because I just wouldn’t be hired. So there’s that going on too. And also being Indigenous when this has been going on is just like, a reminder of what colonization has done here and people don’t really want to be reminded of that when other people are being violently colonized and murdered in other places in the world. It’s complicated! This is why I say I could make a list of 20 reasons I’m not getting funded and I wouldn’t know which was true.

So yeah I guess partially retiring by not applying for grants right now. And also just by accepting I am going to be needing to do other work to make a living instead of my art practice which had a nice period of funding for a while.

I think we live in an unjust world. And I guess I’m disappointed that some AI is probably going to make a feature film before I do. And that corporations are pouring money into AI instead of talent. And that artists are using AI to write grants and flood the applications with slop. Ahhhh I am so frustrated and trying to keep my hopes up. But playing guitar and singing and beading are making me happy, so as long as I can do SOMETHING creative in the meantime I won’t like, die of sadness.