There’s a medical emergency going on with someone I am close to, but he’s a very private guy and I already mentioned it elsewhere and I don’t think I’m going to write about it here cause he would probably hate it. But it has added some stress. Luckily he’s improving and I’m sure he’s going to pull through, although it will be a while. It’s just a lot to be dealing with right now on top of everything. And I got misgendered and deadnamed when someone put me down as his relative, so THAT’s been a whole thing to deal with too. My old name isn’t even legally my name anymore, and legally I am male and not female. And I have a dude voice. So it’s kind of frustrating. The old me does not exist on paper anymore, all my ID has Theo on it and M.

ANYWAY that’s all I will say about it here.

I’m still getting ready for class on Monday, which I am excited about. It’s the first class so I am trying to keep it a bit lighter. But we’ll see. I don’t want to talk about that very much here either because social media + teaching can go awry so easily. So I’m just keeping that private too mostly. I don’t know anything I would mention anyway, besides maybe being excited about the content I’m covering. I don’t know that a blog is social media, no one is interacting with me here except for a couple friends who sometimes leave comments. But I guess it does have a bigger audience.

So the things going on in my life otherwise are pretty okay. I’m still practicing guitar every day. I was falling behind in this youtube 10 day guitar lesson thing I was doing, so I switched it up and started learning about super basic exercises to practice instead. Things that teach me how to do fingering and strumming and picking and scales etc. Not so much focused on learning songs right now, but I’m hoping getting these steps down will give me a better place to move back into learning songs. I still know that one melody for Born in the USA which is hilarious, I should learn at least one other melody before my neighbours think I’m a big Bruce Springsteen fan. I played today until my arm muscles got fatigued. It was nice, I should probably try to get into my gym habit again too, especially since my YMCA membership is still active and I need to work off some stress energy.

I was making a weekly schedule I’m going to try and follow and it goes like this:

Sunday – Go to London
Monday – Teach, go to Toronto
Tuesday – Work, Gym, Guitar
Wednesday – Work, Guitar
Thursday – Therapy, Work, Gym, Guitar lesson
Friday – Work, Guitar
Saturday – Gym, Guitar

I think this schedule is sustainable. That work day I did this week where I went at 6am and came back at 9pm was NOT very successful. I even ate throughout the day, and still the sleep deprivation kicked my ass. I have Cyndi Lauper tickets on a Sunday night in Oct and was going to try and do the 6am-9pm commute the next day, but now I’m not sure.

BUT it’s Cyndi Lauper’s Farewell Tour and I would PROBABLY regret not going. Why does she have to perform on a Sunday? Curses!

Aww ha ha after all that shit went down in March I was like “I should just never say anything about any nice thing I do again!” Like in case it got evil eyed I guess even though that’s not really an Indigenous concept. I don’t know, I guess there’s people who do bad medicine. And I did have a dream recently someone tried to stab me with a fork but I fought them off anyway. I don’t want to get cocky and be like “no one can ruin my life with evil magic” but I mean fuck I don’t know. I think I’m protected spiritually though. And I mean it was mostly to get buff, but I did do all those boxing classes for years so physically I’m not completely helpless. BUT ANYWAY the point is I still get excited about life and no sour apples are going to make me stop being excited about the things I do in my life. Even if they get ruined I suppose, because at least I got to enjoy it for a while.

Big picture career wise my feature is going back into development and some stuff is getting moved around to see if we can get money in a different way. And people keep complaining about the violence but it is a film about violence against Indigenous women. So I am trying to figure out a way to convey the same stuff but not in such a graphic way. There was a horrific case in Winnipeg about a serial killer necrophiliac and that is so fucking evil and nothing like that is in my film. But it’s just like, I think I AM holding back on the violence already, but I am supposed to make it even less graphic. So it’s something I am considering, how to sensitively talk about violence against Indigenous women. It’s been hard writing a film about trauma to begin with. And it’s kind of odd because I also want to make a sitcom someday about nothing to do with violence, just some light fluffy fun series. So I guess I just don’t want to get pigeonholed because I make one type of genre film. BUT ALSO like yeah awful things happen. And it’s not like I’m making SAW but with Indigenous women, the lead character does have super powers and even her partner has agency and is well rounded.

So yeah. SIGH ha ha omg. Making a film is hard, especially in budgets over 2 million, and I had a brief moment where I was like “I’m giving up!” But people keep telling me not to give up so I guess I have to keep going. And we do have a distributor so it’s like, there’s some stuff in place that will help it get made.

And then I make experimental films which are usually not so horribly expensive, but also not the right form of film according to Telefilm. Although I did direct some dramatic shorts. But not ENOUGH. And I’ve made like, 37 shorts altogether. But mostly experimental docs which don’t count I guess. It’s frustrating. So I’m going to try and make another dramatic short, possibly about the horror of poverty because it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I like comedies though but my feature is not a comedy, so I guess it’s better to prove I can direct drama still.

So many things are going on!

I should go and call the hospital to check on my relative again. And then go to the gym finally. There’s some kind of street fair going on so I have to find out how to get my streetcar because it definitely has to go off route. I hate when there’s this many people in the neighbourhood, so crowded! I had to go get dog food and it was a lot.