In 2025, I challenged myself to keep track of the various things I was doing in pursuit of my artistic endeavors, from the amount of money I spent on classes (answer: probably too much) to the amount of auditions I went on (answer: 0) to the amount of writing rejections I received (answer: 6–out of 8 submissions, only 1 of which is still pending. So.). Here’s some of the stats I racked up this year:
Writing
- Spent 99 hours and 15 minutes in writing groups, classes, and workshops. Only 3 of those hours were teaching creative writing (and that’s not counting creative writing assignments/units I taught at my day job!).
- Showed Hurt‘s season three premiere in the Lighthouse Writers Mini Film Festival this past May, which was the first time I got to attend a festival for the show!
- Published “Taking Flight” in the Persimmon Review in July.
- Read 12 books for fun, which I think is the most I’ve hit in a while. Trying to convince 7th graders to beat you, but make them work for it, is a good motivator! (So is a concussion.) Favorites were Hamnet, Beach Read, and Belle Époque.
- Watched a lot of TV and movies both for fun and for educational purposes. New-to-me favorites were The Clone Wars, Wicked: For Good, Fellow Travelers, Les Boules de Noël, and season two of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. (Rick Riordan and Jonathan Steinberg, please call me for Season 5.)
Performance
- Worked on five different projects this year: assistant directed two musicals (one of which will continue into 2026), sang in two choir concerts, and danced in one dance showcase.
- Spent the summer teaching 160 hours of theatre camp at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, which was an absolute blast.
- Dance classes (almost exclusively ballet, with one one-off musical theatre dance class snuck in there) took up 58 hours and 30 minutes of my year.
- Saw seven ballets (including my first-ever trip to The Nutcracker), 4 musicals (three academic, one national tour), and 2 plays (one academic, one Broadway). Highlights were: Colorado Ballet’s Casanova and Dracula, national tour of Shucked, and Broadway’s Stranger Things: The First Shadow.
- Pushed myself out of my comfort zone with my first ballet performance since, like, first grade, and teaching elementary schoolers theatre. And guess what? Both went really well!
We won’t get into all money spent on artistry this year (but oh my God, was it a lot!). I’ve already started my stats for 2026, and I’m excited to start tracking trends year to year.
Other 2025 Highlights and Milestones:
- Got a concussion (boo!)
- Finally feel settled in Denver with a great group of friends
- Attended my first NBA game and saw two of the opening March Madness games, while continuing my allegiance to the Avalanche. The number of conversations I had about sports this year was crazy, and so many of my friends and family commented on the fact that they never thought they’d hear me say some of those words
- Visited New York City and Boston
- Started Year 2 at my new school and love it
Bring it on, 2026!