Best Laid Plans, mumble mumble... (Patreon)

Welp. I hate writing updates like this one, but it's gotta be done:
Let's start with the positive.

• I successfully completed a 15-page writing sample for the Cirque de Demain story and submitted for a Toronto Arts Council writing grant.
  
  Do I stand a strong chance of receiving TAC support for this project? Definitely not. Did I finish what I set out to do and submit a grant regardless? Heck yeah, buddy!
  
• On an unrelated but conversationally-adjacent point, I've spent the last couple weeks burying my eyeballs in a dense field of applications for the circus-related grants submitted to the Canada Council for the Arts – I was selected as a peer adjudicator again! Huzzah!  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't having some creation-FOMO every time I open the Canada Council portal to read another batch of grant submissions, but it is nonetheless exciting and mentally stimulating work.
  
• This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Mongolian State Circus (wowza!). I received a WhatsApp call at 10pm from the studio manager for my coach in Ulaanbaatar, Mr. Usukhuu asking if I'd be interested in flying to Ulaanbaatar to be an international guest for the shows and competitions they're hosting in celebration of the anniversary. How many different ways are there to say yes?! (Or, in Mongolian, тийм! ['teem!'].  
  
  Giddy excitement aside at the thought of being able to conduct interviews with some of the oldest remaining contortionists of the Mongolian State Circus for a longstanding non-fiction project/ambition of mine, this is a big ol' "???" currently, on the scheduling front.
  
  They're hoping to hold the festivities at the end of August/start of September, but Mongolia – a country of only 3,000,000 people – is currently back to a rate of 2000 new COVID cases daily and moving back into a 'red' lockdown from 'orange'.  It seems unlikely to me that things will clear up soon enough to have international tourism in place for early fall, but late December was mentioned as a backup.
  
  I'll keep my fingers and toes crossed!
  
  Now for the not-great news.
  A month ago I was excitedly writing you about a Super Cool Collaboration Contract I was offered – one where I was going to soldier-up and Make An Aerial Thing! – but the universe was listening a little too closely (or something) and decided to throw an Indian-Jones-sized-rolling-boulder-of-doom my way in the "physical health" department. I'm currently sitting out that amazing contract in favour of healing
  
  (1) a nasty nerve traction injury that temporarily re-defined my understanding of my personal pain thresholds earlier in June, and
  
  (2) a mild concussion from what likely needs to be my last stunt contract [as in: yes, I was doing Dumb Sh*t™ {getting spear-tackled into the ground 9 or 10 times}, but the action I successfully completed shouldn't have resulted in concussion symptoms afterwards – at least, for someone who doesn't have my head injury history].
  
  I'm no stranger to nerve pain. My suboccipital nerve is regularly irritated from my stupid floppy neck (in less childish terms, from my cervical spine's tendency to go into extreme extension too easily); I do neck physio most days to keep things feeling relatively normal and functioning. I've had nerve injuries before (notably, in Mongolia, when I started learning how to train zubnik / mouthpiece). This nerve injury was different.
  
  I'm still figuring out how the hell I did it, but the bottom line is that it heralded in a few level of impairment for me in the Circus Injuries department: I was stuck lying on my back for 3 days in bed, on my heating pad, unable to move, popping anti-inflammatories like PEZ candies and hoping the  stabbing pains that zapped through my torso and down my arm would just QUIT IT. Thrown into the mix was the stunt day on Star Trek that rattled my brains up real good, and a 3-day stunt contract on The Boys (no, not as 'Cindy', just as a random person in the background doing weird sh*t) where I needed to do the 'exorcist walk' down the stairs (upside down in bridge) in a full-enclosure latex catsuit.
  
  Nerves are slow to heal.
  I'm not stuck in bed or glued to my heating pad at this point, and I'm 4 weeks into healing. I made it through my film contortion obligations without seriously re-aggravating things, but it wasn't an ideal healing situation (is it ever?).  
  
  Brains are slow to heal.
  Especially after you've already rattled them up too many times doing other Dumb Things™. I'm not searching for words or trailing off mid-sentence anymore, but I've been down this road before and there's a ways to go still.
  
  I had to withdraw from the aerial collaboration contract, but I'm still in Montréal for the time being, slowly rehabbing on aerial straps and contortion, working with the Canada Council for the Arts (remotely) on the circus grants for this round of applications, and –yes– tippy-tapping away on my keyboard to draw out more threads of the Cirque de Demain story.
  
  Until next time, stay strange & wonderful – 
  
  XO
  
  Ess