This is a re-post of a ranty, frustrated post I put up on my Tumblr yesterday afternoon. I feel about 15% less insane than I did yesterday, but I still need fixing. Though I initially posted on Tumblr and tweeted my frustration so this wasn’t all front and center on my “official,” “professional” website - fuck that. This is what my life has been like lately. This is the struggle I’m having, the failures I’m feeling.
Inevitably, it seems that these days someone is always annoyed with me and my inability to do things faster. And I’m annoyed with myself, but also my life at large.
I have a new short film that I want to campaign around, but I haven’t had time to seriously look at festival submissions, much less edit a trailer for it. It’s done though, all 25 minutes of hilariousness.
I have two porn films that I have the green light for, but haven’t moved forward on. I have a script to write, casting to do, locations to solidify.
I have a literary agent but haven’t written any pages of my book-to-be.
Teaching at Rutgers is taking up 20+ hours of my week, and I’m sinking under the pressure. I don’t think I’m doing it justice, I’m not sure how to fix it. I need recommendations for videos/multimedia stuff I can screen/use. I’m drawing a blank on what’s out there.
I can’t get to my email in a timely way. Some correspondence moves to the top of the pile, the rest takes a week or more to respond to. I’m sorry, but I can’t feel bad about it anymore. Sometimes email helps move my “real” work along, other times I get tangled in it and never get to my other work.
I’m making enough money to live, but not enough to feel stable. Not enough to hire people to help me, which I would love to do.
I don’t know how to fix this. I should get interns or something but my experience with that this past spring wasn’t great, and proved that I’m terrible at delegating my duties, and terrible at following up (had potential interns, couldn’t figure out job for them; had one actual intern, had trouble delegating to her). I need to stop being such a control freak because this isn’t sustainable.
I need to take up projects that will yield something more concrete (like cash) instead of prestige and good press clips. I’m a driven, obsessive loner. I don’t have a team. I need to make one. I need to learn to play with others. Otherwise, what’s crankiness about my availability is going to turn into a bad reputation for taking on too much and not getting shit accomplished. I don’t want to be that person. I am not that person yet. I don’t feel like I’m drowning (yet), but I need to fix this. I’m not sure how to do it though. Partly because everything I’m working on feels like a priority, I don’t know what I’d drop or who I’d delegate to.
I think this is a cry for help.
4:48 am
Geez,
Sounds like we’re dealing with many of the same problems.
Let’s start lobbying for that 28 hour day.
Keep your head up.
BB
11:04 am
As a veteran ‘friend-staffer’ for a new media writer, I can only offer that task-loading ‘creep’ isn’t isolated to your experience, Dacia. Nor, is it a ‘fault’ in your work style. It’s the detail intensive nature of multimedia presentations. The digital tools appear deceptively easy to access, but the consumption of time and mental energies are a hidden tax.
You’ve done the impossible. That’ll make you mighty. Hang in there.
9:25 pm
Once again, you express exactly how I feel right when I need to hear it.
I’ve got no advice (obviously). Besides that there will eventually be a point, I believe that.
Anyhow, back to doing 500 more things sort of kind of at once.
Also, I’ve been saying I’m going to write a book for about 2.5 years now, and I still haven’t done it. So y’know … you did write a book and publish it and that my friend is something.
7:05 pm
I don’t have much advice, but I wish you the best. Keeping your head above water in these situations requires constant effort.
A candle is lit on my altar for you.
5:10 pm
keep your head up!
you are fabulous.
sounds like a few good interns are in order….
love,
erin
http://www.rine.wordpress.com
12:29 am
Are you teaching Rutgers Summer Session? You need to sign a union card!!!
12:44 pm
Every time you work on one thing (or three things), it means 10 other things are falling behind, right? The trick here is to pick the thing you are MOST into. I know it feels like you’re into everything equally, but that’s not true. If you have to, flip coins for each thing and sense when you’re hoping for an outcome or disappointed in an outcome. Or ask your friends to tell you when you light up — you’ll be talking about this and that and the other thing and then wham, the lights come on in your eyes, the enthusiasm is contagious — that’s the thing you MOST want right now.
Now rank all the things you’re doing in order of how much money they are grossing for you.
Now note how much money they cost you (travel, hotel, materials, etc).
Now you’ve got a priority list. It’s not carved in stone to guide you for the next 2500 years. It’s a road map through the morass when everything is equally important and equally due (or overdue) and equally dependent on other people getting back to you.
But put your best, most rested, most attentive self on the thing you most want to do and the three things that net you the most income. Finish off the other things as best you can without going insane. Just try to realize that everything cannot be the top priority, and that sometimes means not doing things you do want to be doing but you can’t afford to do (because of time, energy, and/or money costs).
I hate that there isn’t really a short-term solution; our work is so ongoing and we get cumulatively tired even though we like what we do (we must or we wouldn’t be so crazy with it!).
I’m constantly off balance between my billable day job and my sex-tech media work and I’m not doing 80% of the things I said I was going to do this year in the articles/book selling/workshop world… because I can’t. It’s all too much and I’ve felt like I wasn’t doing my best for a long time. The financial side is very important (and motivating) for me and I decided to scale back my column to biweekly so I could have a bit more time to bill on day job stuff so I wasn’t constantly in financial fear and could focus on writing better columns rather than more frequent columns. I still don’t like that, as weekly is a good rhythm and biweekly is bumpy, but it was a compromise I had to make. And I’m almost adjusted to it , after 7 months. LOL!