on dirty little secrets

i have a couple of dirty little secrets. they traverse my brain and call out to me and giggle when i try to talk with them. but here, i can share a couple. and then they will no longer be dirty little secrets.

dirty little secret #1: (i must whisper this) i no longer care whether or not i win the lotto. in fact, if you were to give me a choice between hitting the lotto and getting this MAP grant, i'm pretty certain i would choose the grant. crazy? maybe. but i've learned through this piece that the more involved i am in my creative process, the less i think about abstract windfalls. i actually begin PLANNING. planning for how i will complete a project, and thusly, i plan a little for the funds. yes, i'm still strapped for cash. and my worldly things are slowly deteriorating into tattered and beat up artifacts of a once respectable wage. that said, i'm still purchasing tickets. it's a commitment i made and it IS an art piece, even if it is hardly noticed and rarely spoken about.

dirty little secret #2: i am suffering from hypergraphia. if you haven't noticed the sudden spike in my posts, well, now you know. in fact, i have to stop myself from blogging just so that i can let my computer and my mind rest. it sounds like a good thing, this hypergraphia. but in actuality, it is really me bordering on the edge of mania. and everyone knows that mania is usually balanced out with depression. thus, last week's sleep-all-day. when i'm not writing, i'm thinking about writing, or having conversations in my head with myself, with characters, with people i know but might not tell certain things to.

dirty little secret #3: to combat my hypergraphia, i have been reading. (combat writing by reading) i have been reading very specific blogs over and over again. to a stalker-like degree. i won't say which blogs those are, except that i actually find myself reading my own blog posts--over and over again. this seems very odd and egotistical to me, but i have trouble stopping. if i'm a stalker, i'm a multi-stalker, a self-stalker.

dirty little secret $4: (this one, not so secret) i want this fucking grant. i want it so very bad. i am trying not to put too much stock in it, because it is statistically highly unlikely i will get it. i'm not sure whether it's the idea of creative approval, or some other type of outside gratification. i know that my project is good, and i'm very certain i will still do it with no outside funding, even if it means racking up several tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt. that said, i would give up many things to get this grant. i would stop eating meat, i would stop drinking, i would shave every hair on my body, i would live in a tent, i would eat gruel three meals a day for a year...

dirty little secret #5: on wednesday, i listened to tchaikovsky's 5th and broke a sweat conducting to it. this is probably the most embarrassing thing. firstly, because tchai 5 is one of the most saccharine pieces of orchestral music ever (marin alsop diplomatically said that tchaikovsky suffered from the "need to edit"). secondly, i was conducting, with a baton, by myself. yes, i suppose it's a type of dancing, but really. and thirdly, broke a sweat!? i'm so out of shape, i can't even flail my arms to a trumpet march without panting. aging sucks.

okay, enough secrets. sigh. back to grant writing.