Trenta Giorno

To say that I’ve been in a rut, deep depression, or spiral is a complete understatement.

Like many Americans, this past year has been a painful period of growth and self-reflection.

I lost my jobs, my “person” dumped me, I hit a scary rock bottom, and the moment I thought everything was getting better… my cat died. Not to mention the pounds of rejection and toxic monsters that I met during the past few months alone. Now, sprinkle that with the high stakes of the election, the ongoing protests, the looming threat of climate change, and your normal everyday existential dread, it’s safe to say I could use a break from life right now.

When I told one of my friends that I was depressed, he responded with,

“Everyone is depressed, deal with it.”

My friends are really amazing at the tough love thing, I must say.

He was right everyone is depressed but, right now I can’t fix the entire world because I some days I have been too depressed to leave my bed. If I want to change the world, I have to make a lot of changes with myself.

That being said, there are many things that I am immensely thankful for:

My friends who call me on a daily basis because they want to keep our bond strong and remind me that I’m not alone. My brother Steven just bought his first house! My brother Michael just got promoted at his job! My nephew Benjamin can run around the house. My parents started a weekly wine session with me where we watch Chris Cuomo and drink wine. Plus, my personal trainer, Blue Eyes, is so tough on me that I have grown more consistent with my workouts. When life grows a little extra hard, I make sure to meditate on all these wonderful things.

Now that I’ve caught you up with what’s been doing on with my life, let’s get to the point of today’s blog post.

For the next few months, I will be building habits that will increase my productivity, happiness, and overall well-being. This months project is to share my writing for 30 days straight. If you didn’t know, I write every single day. Whether it has been a script, a journal entry, or a monologue, I write every day.

So, why am I only sharing it now?

A few weeks ago I told Blue Eyes that he was a good writing muse because he was such a versatile and interesting person: aloof, mysterious, quiet, talented, I could really go on. Anyways, I said that I would share my writing with him but I normally would delete it, erase it, or toss it out because I worried that it wasn’t “that good”. I went on to say that I didn’t share most of my projects because I couldn’t even finish it. He simply shrugged and stated, “Maybe you shouldn’t do that.” Just like that, Blue Eyes* had once again made me overanalyze a simple sentence.

I realized I was tired of not following through with my projects. I was tired of starting something and not finishing it. I was tired about not feeling good enough when the reality was that I was stunting my growth before I could even get started.

When we’re children, we draw outside the lines, we run around freely in our diapers, we tell stories with stars in our eyes without this fear or judgement. As we get older, we have this air of judgment surrounding us to the point where we’re afraid to speak up for ourselves. In 2019, I was able to explore my life in a collaborative project called, “According To This…” where I helped write a play about growing up. It included the story of my embarrassing first kiss. I shared a diary entry from when I was about to leave for college. I even went as far as writing about being made fun of when my period stained my pants in middle school. It was a space for me to create without fear of being judged. During that time, whatever I wrote, I shared with my partners. It culminated in a full length play that I performed for people in a basement theater in Brooklyn. It was such an amazing experience. I caught myself crying during every show because I felt a huge release come from my body. The result of finishing this project was a realization how much I changed about myself in order to please other people or how much I shrunk myself in order to hide the creative person that I truly am. I lost my confidence for so long that it is only now, that I am learning to recover it. It is only now that I am finding a sense of self.

I don’t want to stay miserable or depressed. I want to do something about it. Therefore, for the next 30 days, I am sharing all my writing: the good, the bad, the 3am thoughts, the journal entries, the self-reflections because I refuse to stay in my comfort zone any longer.

So, let’s go on this journey together

*Side Note: I feel like I have built up this Blue Eyes character to be this all knowing Yoda kind of coach. While he does have his moments of Enlightenment, he is more of something that Hollywood created to play a male romantic lead in a teen romantic comedy like "To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” or “The Kissing Booth.” Actually, he would be perfect for "Riverdale”. In fact, he looks like he would play Daniel Cleaver but has more of a Mark Darcy type of vibe. (Bridget Jones reference for those of you who have bad taste in cinema.) Hopefully this gives you a better picture of the type of person I’m talking about since he is a reoccurring character in my life. Now that you have a better picture of him, we can move on to the other characters in my life.

(that’s what we call foreshadowing)