Since 2016, I have selected a “theme,” an intentional declaration of what I’d like to cultivate more of in my state of being. In the past, I have chosen Ritual, Consistent, Grace, Authenticity, and Patience.

My 2021 theme is Faith —

Growing up in the Catholic Church (unwillingly), this word took on a disagreeable context early in my life. I am non-religious and at the time, was very angsty in my non-interest in my parent’s religious culture. Though that has softened as I’ve aged, the word still conjured images of bibles religious imagery and an entire culture that I did not — and still do not — want to be a part of.

If you consider yourself religious, please don’t hear me as an antagonist, and if this is triggering for you, I implore you not to stay. But, for me, faith was a word I had not reclaimed for myself and my own beliefs until now.

In November of 2020, I became increasingly sicker. Those close to me know I was diagnosed with Lyme disease last summer, while also experiencing some complicating co-infections and autoimmune issues. I found myself very fatigued, very depressed, and feeling very hopeless about my future.

I spent most of my teen years burning at 1000 degrees, convinced I would follow my dreams down the straight and narrow path to “success” before I was thirty.

I knew what I wanted to do: I wanted to make movies.

And for a while, I didn’t care what anyone thought of that. I didn’t care that many thought that dream was not only lofty and out of reach, but also highly narcissistic and self-important. I let it roll of my back that very few people believed I could do it and I looked beyond my lack of resources and support, sure as hell I’d make it.

But, I didn’t.

I suffered a terrible assault just before leaving high school and in the wake of my undoing, stopped going to school almost entirely and let go of my full-ride offer to the New York Academy for Dramatic Arts. I listened to the voices telling me to go to community college first, get a reasonable degree first, get a job first, save up some money first… It all sounded (and still sounds) so logical.

Ten years later, I sit staring at a half-written script wondering: Who am I to think I can do this?

Who am I to think I can make movies from Knoxville, Tennessee. Who am I to think that anyone would care about my ideas — aren’t ideas a dime a dozen? Who am I to think that anyone would take me seriously without a fat portfolio, 100,000 followers on Instagram, thousands of YouTube subscribers, and a handful of self-made masterpieces?

Up until February of 2021, I have been making decisions from a place of believing that I was not enough, that I just needed a little bit more and then maybe I could take some time to try again.

I can’t wait any longer.

I can’t wait until my debt is paid off. I can’t wait until I have a fat portfolio and a killer resume and a binder full of film treatments and an earth-shattering community on social media.

I have to start believing that I am enough without all of that — and someday, when I look up from all my blindly optimistic efforts in pursuit of my spark, my soul calling, I know that I will find all of those things and more happen naturally on the way. All while I was working on what really mattered.

To me, this is faith. To know beyond the shadow of a doubt, beyond reason or proof, that I can follow my dream into worlds unknown.

It has been 10 years since I lost my way, since I stopped listening to the drumbeat in my heart and started listening to the pulsing cadence of fear, of self-preservation, of insecurity. Those ten years have given me wisdom and experience and growth beyond anything that I can imagine and they’ll be instrumental in the changes that lie ahead this year.

Though the road ahead is thick with fog and teeming with dangers unknown, I have faith that I am headed in the right direction.

Only time will tell what’s waiting for me on the other side.

Dear reader —

I don’t know you, or maybe I do, but I never really know until I run into you at the bank or at a cafe and you pull me aside to tell me you stopped by, that you read this blog. Whoever and wherever you are, thank you. For being here with me and for occasionally stopping me to remind me that you’re there.

I don’t know if it feels this way, but I hope to be there for you too someday, even if today is not it.

If it is, I’d love to hear from you in the comments or in an email. Your thoughts and experiences help shape my own.

See you again soon —

A