377 days - Blog #157 getting back on track or January in a nutshell

So I pretty much failed at this blog for the month of January.  Life got away from me.  Time got away from me.  I’m not sure how or to what entirely.  Some of it is theater.  A lot of it is theater.  But I still manage to waste quite a bit of it on Facebook.  That isn’t particularly good.  Or for that matter something I really want to do.  Just a terribly bad habit.

Anyway, here I am at the tail end of a snow day.  This is the second in a week.  We got almost entirely through January without winter making her presence known… but hey, we still have six more weeks of it.  I guess the groundhog made it official today.  Except that really is dumb.  Because, you know… the spring equinox is going to happen six weeks from now, groundhog or not.

I’m not going to complain about winter though.  Even with some of the rougher patches, there have been some pretty good moments in the life.  I had an old friend stay with me through the holidays and the first part of January.  It made me remember what I like about sharing my living space.  And while certainly I am satisfied with my solitude for the most part, I confess it helped me to see the value in another way of life.

Indeed, that shift of perception almost prompted me to get a cat.  No, let me rephrase that.  It stopped me from refusing when my neighbor came asking if I would give one a home.  I was reluctant, but started to wrap my mind around it and where I would put a litter box or how I would keep the bugger off my counters and my grandmother’s dining room table only to find out the home desired was one where the cat could stay with its two other siblings.  I am not interested in three cats, so that twist of fate fizzled almost as soon as it came into view.  But it does all go to show that life is always throwing a curve ball that will prove I am not really as set in my ways as I tell myself I am.

I started rehearsals for Almost, Maine in mid-January.  Jumping into the director’s chair two days before rehearsal was another one of those curve balls.  It’s an interesting challenge to put together another person’s vision with their cast and some notes.   It takes up a lot of time that I wasn’t expecting to surrender.  But it feels good to be back in that theater steering the ship – even if I feel a little clumsy as I gain my footing with such a sudden change of direction.

Of course that time thing at the theater was multiplied by another project.  I helped a friend produce a workshop of his latest farce.  I feel that whole experience deserves its own blog.  So hopefully I will get to it before the week ends.  But it made me happy to see the support on a snowy night.  To see something different happen.  To see art happen.  To know I had a lot to do with making it happen.  It enforced something I think I’ve known for a few months now.  I like to help artists find their audience.  I like to encourage artists to push themselves beyond fear to try.  I don’t know if that makes me a producer or a coach or just an enthusiastic member of the audience… but I want to continue to figure out ways to do that.

So this blog is very haphazard.  It’s mostly an exercise of effort to get back on track.  But I’m not interested in spending much more time on the computer when I get to go back to work and do it all day tomorrow.  But for now, that is January in a nutshell.