2023 Q4 - Strength in Community
3-5 min. read / 4:38 min. listen
Happy New Year!
Around this time a year ago, I was writing about how grateful and full I felt after an incredibly busy and rewarding year. It was my first year as a full-time artist, I started my company, FrivolouSacred Creative, Inc., I’d booked several TV guest stars, my first VO animation job as well as my first VO video game job, I’d booked my first national commercial, I was doing dubbing, and narrating fantastic audiobooks that were great fits. I really felt like a boss. I was literally a CEO, President, and Star of my own business.
And then 2023 was a year of striking and inflation (not to mention US politics and larger horrors internationally) and it felt like being a helpless 20-something starving artist all over again.
But I found strength, inspiration, and perseverance in community. Whether it be on the picket lines with writers, actors, and others employed by the entertainment industry or on social media with fellow narrators and audiobook professionals, by leaning into my networks and collectively striving for the recognition of our value and excellence — at least for my part, I found my work improving. Even while I wasn’t as busy practicing it in most of the typical ways.
I once had a martial arts teacher who insisted that we get better not with a mindset of “practice makes perfect” but instead, to focus on “practicing perfectly.” He never went into his sayings; that was for each student to interpret. I’ve carried this notion with me for decades now, and it’s meaning grows and changes along with me. Perhaps that is why wisdom is so often poetically pointed, but never prosaically explained. Anyhow, for me, it means that the practice itself, and the discipline involved, is always the best it gets. Improvement is iterative and cumulative, and we learn how to get more out of our practice and be more articulate about the nuance in practice the more we do it. There is no end “result” because our “best” is always now. “Perfection” is a direction, not a destination.
Moving into 2024, I’m grateful for the artistic and social communities I’ve invested in and who have embraced me. Between vulnerability and connection, boundaries and consent, and holding space for and taking space to nurture our nervous systems in an ever-challenging world, I’ve come to treasure the strength we build together, and the fortification we give each other so we can continue to tell stories.
Happy New Year, my friends, and thank you for celebrating with me.
And now it’s time for the breakdown. Q4 in review:
🎧 Audiobooks 🎧
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Awards:
AudioFile’s “Best of 2023” - THE GRIMOIRE OF GRAVE FATES
Releases:
Recorded/Recording:
Translated Upmarket Fiction
Cultivation Fantasy
Queer Nonfic
Queer roman á clef
Middle Grade Fantasy
🎬 Film & TV 🎬
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SAG-AFTRA makes a deal w AMPTP; new contract ratified!
🎙 Voiceover 🎙
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Dubbing!
Thanks for spending time with me and sharing my celebrations again this quarter! Much love!
🖤🤎❤🧡💛💚💙💜 { progress rainbow heart emojis }
Cheers!
Nicky
