Taxes are Hard (Patreon)

Most of my week was taken up by doing my 2013 taxes. Yikes. 2013 was a year in which my life began a pretty terrifying downward trajectory, hitting bottom somewhere in staten island in 2014. I've been climbing back out of that hole for a while now. The good news is that I'm in a place where I can actually deal with this, but the bad news is I have to actually deal with it. The fight is ongoing.

Taxes aside, it was a pretty good week. I started eating paté for breakfast and suddenly had a near normal amount of energy so the odds of my health problem being a combination of bad allergies and low iron are good! I still got some tests done and will be hopefully getting results back soon.

I also spent some time with one of my burlesque idols, we had a really good time and she confessed that she is also super broke. While I'm not happy that she is broke, it made me realize that making a living from burlesque is not just elusive, it is literally impossible. This isn't the first time I've heard or thought this, but usually when I did my reaction was to think that I wasn't trying hard enough or I wasn't good enough and if I worked *just a little harder* it would suddenly be possible.

That's not true.

We're all brainwashed to think that if we just work harder we'll get what we want, but it's not true. It's a lie that makes us blame ourselves for not being successful. Hard work is just that and it's not the only factor that goes into making money. It's nowhere near as big a contributing factor as already having money, or selling something mundane that people need and use every day.

So I've been mad at myself for failing to do something that is literally impossible. And that's a really silly reason to be mean to yourself. I may as well blame myself for not being able to fly.

So what does that mean for me? A day job? Maybe. I still don't trust my abilities to work in an office and pose as a normal human being but I will be focusing more effort on freelance graphic design, writing, and event work. I'll still be doing burlesque but I'm going to be a lot more choosy about what gigs I take, what acts I create, and how I use my resources.