conundrum, or dilemma, or crisis?

I find myself now in a bit of a (large) crisis. At present time, I have sketches for about a dozen pieces. Only two have any sort of firm deadline - two that have guaranteed performances - and neither has received much attention from me lately, owing to the fact that their deadlines aren't until the early spring.

I've halted reworking gravity express (despite my claim that it's basically finished, I'm not satisfied with the form and pacing), and I'm staring down:
- violin, clarinet, piano work sketches;
- bassoon quartet sketches;
- string quartet sketches;
- two orchestral works in various states of completion (or, sketches);
- a Pierrot ensemble sketch;
- a piano/string quintet sketch;
- various wind ensemble sketches.

That's not all of them, obviously. It feels as though all this music wants to escape at once and it's all getting caught in the threshold. I'll fizzle out working on one thing and try to flit over to another; I'll lose patience on that and focus on yet something else. The cycle perpetuates. Of all the sketches, the work for which I have the clearest vision is an orchestra piece, but I can't logically justify letting that take precedence over many of the chamber works. Each of the chamber works I can easily see being an entry into some prize or contest - if I could finish them. They would also, theoretically, be easier to get performed - if I can find performers for them.

This has been a perennial problem for me. I have no problem working with multiple canvases, but when I have more than two or three set up, my world becomes disarrayed and harried pretty quickly. I'm not finding outside encouragement to write a lot of these pieces (read: been getting more rejections than usual, not having performers lined up for the pieces, etc), so that erodes my due care and focus pretty sharply and quickly. In the back of my mind, there's a "don't bother" attitude promulgated by the very same long string of prize/commission/contest rejections of late, but I know this isn't a healthy sentiment to have. I've been disappointed with my slow progress on all of my projects of late, and my dolefully tendentious brain is always caught between simply writing and stepping back and asking whether what I'm writing is imaginative enough, or challenging enough, or too banal, or too tonal, or too uninteresting.

This all leads to a bit of a devastating thought. I know I have the talent to be a composer, and perhaps a good one, but where is the focus, the determination? Where are my connections? Why is it that I know so many people - software engineers, law professors, teachers, academics - but so few performers? I feel as though I've largely exhausted my list, and I am loathe to keep pestering the same dozen people for performances of existing pieces or about asking them to perform newer or not-yet-composed works. I seem to have the mind for it, most of the time, but little else. And with my bizarre desire to get so much written - seemingly at once - the situation is just compounded...