Happy New Year!
I had been planning to start this year off with thoughts on my goals and expectations for the new year. Then, this morning I woke up to an email telling me that a 1-minute play I had submitted to a literary journal will be published in their next issue later this month. So today I do want to share my thoughts on the new year, but the thoughts I have to share are perhaps somewhat different in light of the email this morning.
I am literally starting off the year with a success! It was the very first thing to greet me this morning. Before morning vitamins, before breakfast. But by the same token, this is a 1-minute play, and I am not getting paid for this publication. In the grand scheme of things, this is a relatively small win. But this year, I am going to take it! My new year’s resolution is to revel in every success no matter how big or how small.
I would love to set concrete goals (make over x number of submission, earn over x amount in licensing fees, write x number of new plays), but that’s just not where I am this year, and honestly, I feel like that’s not where theatre is right now. That isn’t to say that there aren’t opportunities. There most certainly are! But the opportunities are changing, and the landscape of new play development is in a state of flux. So, putting hard numbers to that feels counterproductive.
Celebrating each success no matter how big or how small is part of my reminder to myself that we are each on our own journey, and success comes in all shapes and sizes. Comparing my accomplishments with others is impossible, we are all at different places, doing different things, with different abilities. Comparing my accomplishments to what I think my accomplishments should be is also a recipe for disaster, because even when I try to take into consideration what the conditions are going to be, that is a prediction, and right now, it would be an even more uncertain prediction than most years.
So this year, I am going celebrate the small as well as the big, and I invite anyone who is reading this to do the same. Because every success is a step forward, it is only the size of the stride that differs.