A Period of Transition

I imagine that there are very few people out there that read this thing anymore, and while I don't post on it much, I still want to hang on to it.

My life has seen some pretty big changes recently, and you would think that I'd be writing about them on here. After all, this whole thing has probably been one long story leading up to an inevitable conclusion.

So here it is: I'm living in Dublin now. For a year, then back home. Maybe.

Took a leave of absence from work, and I'm going to be getting an MA in Directing Theatre at University College Dublin. Pretty exciting stuff.

It's been a pretty emotional journey, one that started over a year and a half ago. But there's no need to get into all that now. I don't feel much like opening all of that up again. Trying to keep it positive.

Anyway, if you're hoping to hear tales of life in Dublin on this blog, I hate to say, you won't be getting much. I'm actually writing about it on a different site. My students wanted me to keep in touch, and send them stories of what life is like over here, and so I created 4T Tales. You can check it out here.

It's a "professional" blog, in a sense. I'm writing it as my teacher/director persona, whatever that is. So no angst, no cursing, no politics. Just some stories about theatre, travel, teaching, and tech. Get it? Four "T"s. And I'm 40 this year! And you could even say it's a half-reference to this as well. Har har har, I know. Let's just say my teacher persona loves cornball humor and bad wordplay.

So head on over there and check it out, and feel free to say hello. And you may want to check back in here every now and then. You never know when I need to complain about Mitt Romney or moan about how unfair my life is. That shit never gets old!

The Life Theatric, Revisited

If I've decided anything recently, it's that I'm really fucking good at teaching drama.

This past summer I stepped down from the ole Limelight gig.  But at the same time I agreed to take on a new position directing shows for a junior high. Part of me did it to secure space for Limelight; with me managing the space, it should be easier for the LTC gang to have a home.

And part of me did it because I liked the guys who asked, and well, they asked.  And the kids over there deserve to have a proper drama program.

Scheduling it and planning it has been a real clusterfuck, but it seems to be all sorted out. And I'm lucky enough to have one of the finer persons I know serve as my A.D.  I could write a whole post on him, but perhaps another day.

What I'm not good at, any more at least, is working two jobs. Maybe I'm too old?  Maybe. Actually, I prefer to think that it's because I'm at the point where I put so much into both jobs that I don't have the time to just do one.  I teach, I direct, I make websites.

These past two weeks have just crushed me, and I'm almost at the breaking point. Too stressed and too exhausted. Wake up every night after my body has exactly four hours of sleep.  Then I stare off into space, my mind racing.  I'll read a bit, then eventually fall back asleep around 5 AM before getting up an hour later.  Yeah, it sucks.  I should be in bed now, but why bother?  I'll just wake up in a few hours. Better that I use my time for better purposes and have another glass of red wine.

While the show has been a bitch to plan, I am indescribably happy while working with the kids on stage. I'm at the point where it just comes naturally, and I'm in the moment, walking them through the story, moving them here and there, showing them how we tell tales with our voices and bodies and how we make the ink and paper become a real live thing in front of gathered persons.

The classroom can be like that at times, that living-in-the-moment thing, but it's too bad that it's saddled with so much bullshit.  In both places, it's the kids that count, and everything else can fuck off.

So...in these times of financial collapse and budget cuts and familiar despair, I've been trying to figure out how I can take these talents of mine and focus them on one job instead of two.  And that's not easy.

I was accepted at a drama school in Dublin. If all had gone as planned, I'd be there now, studying theory and walking the rainy streets and spending the occasional weekend with friends or wandering the countryside.  But the practical side of me said, "Too Expensive.  Be practical.  Look at how things are right now."

And I was right.  I'm glad I made the decision I did, but there isn't a day that doesn't go by that I don't think about being Over There.

The only time I ever get on this thing is to talk about two things:  Where I'm Traveling, and Where My Head Is.  Haven't done any traveling in a while, and the other topic is the same damn song that I sing over and over again.  "I need to do something different, blah blah blah, tra la tra la tra la...."

I'm heading to Seattle next month to visit some friends of mine who used to live around here until they realized that they were going to rot and/or explode.  The change of scenery has apparently done them good, and they warn me that I'll like the place so much that I'll never want to leave.  Maybe.

A change of scenery does many people good, and man oh man do I need one, but I just can't seem to find the right avenue to get to it.  I'm locked into the loop of teach-direct-teach-direct and there's never the free time to make the Big Plans. I want to pack the bags and just go far, far away and see new things and meet new people and learn new ways of teaching and directing and doing techy things that kick ass.

My sister and her family are headed for fucking Phoenix, Arizona, because that's what they do.  But I stay.  I always stay.  How many times have I sat at that stoplight, driven by that gas station, shopped at that mall?  How many times have I sat in that meeting? How many times have I listened to the same tired arguments about nothing?  One day leads into the sleepless next, and I'm getting old, so old, and I never was much of a dancer, tra la, tra la...

Summer 2011, In Three Photos

Just playing with Blogger's new interface....

So what did I see this summer?

I saw many elephants...

I saw a Dalek...

and I found Elvis hiding inside an exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History.  

I did a lot more, but they get labeled as "Stories That I Want To Tell But Are Too Angst-Ridden."  

So here's a quick bit on some of the fun things I did in the humid months.

I tried making a game out of spotting as many elephants as I could this summer, since "To The Elephant!" became our rallying cry on Twelfth Night.  It was the most random, ridiculous line from the play, and so of course it became my favorite.  

The Dalek is from WizardCon 2011, in Chicago.  First time I had attended something like that in twenty years.  It was a lot of fun, and I was able to indulge my recent obsession with Doctor Who a bit but I've realized that as nerdy as I think I am, I am only a nerd with a small 'n."  

Elvis lives amongst elephants, man-eating tigers, and a T-Rex named Sue.  I found him during a trip up to the Field with my buddy Drew and his two sons.  The beginning of my slow crawl out of the cave.  

The Pause, and Thoughts of Joss Whedon

So.

There's the story of how I quit my job and moved to Ireland for a year.  Or how I came close to doing that.

I'll get around to telling that story, and the other one about how I walked away from the most important thing in the world to me.  But not today.

Right now I'm thinking about The Pause.

All of the above-mentioned stories relate to The Pause, and how I have found it increasingly necessary in my future.  Somehow, if I'm going to do anything different with my life, I need to take a pause on everything else in my life.

School started a couple of weeks ago, and so I'm back to thinking about my students' needs, and I'm grading papers and I'm working with new teachers and I'm doing all that education stuff that I do.

I'm also getting up early and going to the gym and I'm trying to eat and drink better.  I have time to do this because I only have one job to concentrate on, at least for now.  But even now, most of my life is filled with being focused on Work, although I'm allowing myself the occasional night out with friends.

Every now and then, though, something creeps into the back of my mind. Some strange glimpse of where I could take my life.  At the beginning of the new year, just after I turned 39, I told myself I didn't want to be doing the same exact thing at 40 that I was doing at 30.  It was important that I make some forward progress with my life.

I have no idea where I was supposed to be headed, but I carved out a path involving being a student for a year.  That didn't quite pan out, and as I said, I'll get to that story.

But when I catch myself having that vision of a possible future, it often comes as a result of watching the below video of Joss Whedon performing on This American Life.  It's a song from the musical commentary for Dr. Horrible.  Watch, and then keep reading.

Okay, still with me?  Great.  Nice little song, isn't it?  Joss is great, and one of my favorite storytellers.

But what the hell is tugging at me when I watch this?  This has been a great mystery to me ever since I first saw this.  Maybe it has something to do about being creative, and doing something different than everyone else.  I always wanted to be that guy, but was never really able to pull it off properly.  Anytime I tried to be creative, it was always done in the corners of my life, in the late nights and weekends and breaks from teaching.

If I was really creative, I probably would have pulled it off by now. People like that always find a way, don't they?  They work the day job, and at night they do that amazing thing that makes them stand out and the people all point and say, "Damn, that was incredible."  Maybe I'm just good at putting out mediocre creativity.

Or maybe that's not quite true.  Those people usually toil as waiters and retail workers and other jobs where they can turn their brains off and save the free time for "the good stuff."  For myself, a lot of my creativity and energy goes into teaching, which on its own might be considered a fine way to make one stand out.  And it has been, in large part, for me.

But damn, something's been nagging at me for a long time.  Something that tells me that I need to go try something else.  Maybe it's an evolution from the teaching job, something more specific, but not, like, a principal or anything.  Ugh.

I did the theatre thing for a while, and still do, but never felt like a Professional doing that gig.  Maybe that's why I was going to go to school. To legitimize myself.  The Professionals never like it when a nonprofessional stumbles into their sandbox.

The only thing I really DO know is that I'm not going to figure this out unless I take a proper Pause in my life.  It's less than four months until I turn 40, and I know that time is going to be spent almost exclusively on teaching and directing and doing laundry and watching old episodes of Firefly.

Malcolm Reynolds was the captain of Serenity, and Joss Whedon is captain of his Whedonverse.  I was captain of my own ship for a while, and I had a great crew, and we did incredible things.  And to be honest, I've been captain of at least a dozen or so great crews, and indeed we did do incredible things.  But I can't keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.

There's something there, something just out of reach, something in the corner of my eye. Something in that moment when I wake up, when the night's dreams slip away from your memory.  Something that reveals itself when I'm driving to work, sitting at a stoplight, thinking about nothing.

And then it's gone. "One thing drives out another."

I feel like, if I'm ever going to figure out what that is, then I'm going to have to find a way to take a major pause in my life.  And that is not an easy task to accomplish.

Time! Time!

For me, giving up blogging wasn't necessarily about everyone else moving on to Facebook or Twitter. Although the loss of a community certainly played a part.

For me, it was about time.  I love to write, and I loved blogging, even when it got a bit whiny on my part.  Right now, even though I really need to go to bed, I love the sensation of my fingers flicking across the keyboard in an uninterrupted stretch, determined to tell a story longer than 140 characters.  Sometimes, more is better.

But the last few years time just seemed to get eaten up by The Work and The Job.  I've written about that previously, and you can flip through the archives to see what I'm talking about.  Other things took precedence. 

And, I have to be honest, there wasn't much to report.  I felt I had exhausted my original cache of tales to tell, and my last couple of blog posts were really sad repeats of things I had written before.

But for the schoolteacher in me, this time of year is the New Year, and that means new resolutions, and a new outlook on things. 

Things have changed, and I hope they change more for me in the next several months. 

It is my hope that I take some time to jot those changes down.  A wise girl said to me recently:  "Use your blog to work through some of this stuff that's been happening lately."  Or something like that.

Blogging is indeed a kind of therapy to me, and as I break out of a recent bout of writer's block, and as I look at where my life is currently, I think writing might be a good thing to spend some time doing. 

One hundred and forty characters is not enough.  Sometimes, more is better.

This Blog Is Like A Dusty Corner Of My House

Hi there blog. And blog readers who still might glance at this thing. (Or have a working RSS feed.)

It's been a while. Might start tinkering with this thing again, or morph it into something else. Yes, I know, all recovering bloggers say that. But I'd like to at least make the attempt. Lots of things happening lately, and sometimes crafting stories about them helps put it all in perspective.

So we'll see. I miss playing with words, and this is a lot better than playing Words with Friends. Or whatever it's called. I have no time for such frippery.

The Joy Is Not The Same Without The Pain

Thinking about a time back in Dallas...what was it, six, seven years ago? Hard to recall now...it seems more and more that events get mashed together, something that happened in the past ten years is more nebulous, harder to pinpoint, than something that happened in the ancient past, when the brain is sharper and more absorbent. I can remember the year every film that was ever produced arrived in cinemas, but ask me to remember someone's birthday, someone that I met in the past ten years? Impossible. At least I have Facebook to help.

I was visiting my sister and her family, which was a lot smaller back then. Just two kids, I think? Anyway, my mom and a flew down for a long weekend, or something like that. I don't think it was Christmas. No, I'm almost certain it wasn't. It was just the two of us, and we were still getting used to Janie and them being far away.

I was situated up in the play room, on a couch or a fold-out bed, like I usually am today. My niece, Cameron, was upstairs, watching me root through my belongings. She was young, only three or four, and was fascinated by my mp3 player. (And I have to call it that, because it was this heavy, bulky thing, bought before Apple allowed iPods to be made for anything but a Mac. )

Maybe I was sitting there, alone, listening to music, or maybe she just picked it up and wanted to know what it was. I turned it on, and hit play. It was on shuffle, and the first track that came up was Badly Drawn Boy's "A Minor Incident." I put the headphones around her head, and settled them onto her small ears.

I don't know, at that age, if she understood how music could come out of a small metal square, but the music started to play, and she stood there and listened to it, and she started to smile.


She's about to turn eleven in a few months. That's always been my favorite age.

It was when I was eleven that I met two of my best friends, and had my first crush. The four of us used to spend most of our recesses at the swings at the northeast end of the playground of our elementary school. I couldn't tell you now a single thing we talked about back then, but we must have had countless conversations about Very Important Things.

It's been over twenty-five years later since those days on the swings, but it's amazing to me to think about the fact that I've talked to all of them in the past week. Email, Facebook, a meal of fried bacon and good beer.

My twentieth high school reunion was last weekend, but only one of us, of the four that used to dream on the swings, decided to go. The rest of us? We all said no. No thanks. For our own reasons, we declined the opportunity to meet up. Maybe next time.

Someone recently said Facebook has killed class reunions. Why gather together, why travel the miles, when you already know what everyone looks like, what everyone's up to? I have my own reasons for not attending the reunion, but they're too complicated to mention here. In short: high school was fine, and I enjoy meeting up with old friends, but it just wasn't something I was up for.


Maybe the Twentieth Reunion marks a certain kind of transition, an acknowledgment that everyone has grown older, has entered into a very different phase of life. It's a lot different than the ten year, when we're all still young and the memories of our days in the halls of the schools are a lot closer.

After you're eleven, you go through another transition. You start to leave behind the days when you Play, when you keep little toys in your desk, when you like to draw for hours and hours, when boys are just boys, and girls aren't so mysterious and complicated.

For a long time now, I've spent my career teaching kids who turn eleven. They start the year as one type of kid, and when they leave me at the end, they're starting to become something else. It is as it should be, and it's a good thing. We can't stay eleven forever, we can't stay eighteen forever, and we can't stay 25 forever.

I'm getting close to turning 40, and that brings with it all sorts of different feelings. The beginning of a sense of a kind of wisdom, along with the pain that comes from craning your neck as you catch yourself looking back a bit too much. No good can come from that, a character I wrote once said.

There is only forward, there is only what comes next. And suddenly I am reminded of those wise words from Ole Golly:

"I guard my memories and love them, but I don't get in them and lie down. You can even make stories from yours, but remember, they don't come back. Just think how awful it would be if they did. You don't need me now. You're eleven years old which is old enough to get busy at growing up to be the person you want to be."

Those words mattered to Harriet M. Welsch, and they matter to me. You could substitute eleven for thirty-eight and the same point would still be made. I'm still growing up, and I'm still trying to figure out the person I want to be. There's such a lot of world to see, so many things to do, so many smiles to slowly spread across your face as you experience something brand new.

The North Country

I was sitting in my chair, just now, reading a book, and I suddenly started remembering a trip I took with some friends four years ago.

We had all taught together for a while, but by this point we had all moved on to other schools, although we still remained close friends.

We took Friday afternoon off and piled into the minivan and drove the long, long ride up to northern Wisconsin, into Door County.

I had always figured Door County was some obnoxious, tourist-infested place surrounded by water parks and craft shops, but it's really quite a lovely place. Wooded, on the water, and quiet. No fast food restaurants, no cell phone service.

We spent most of the weekend lounging around the cabin, drinking and eating plenty, and spotting the occasional apostrophe catastrophe, but it's that first night up there that I remember best.

We arrived late into the evening, an arrival postponed even later due to the fact that we forgot the keys to the cabin. Thankfully, Erica's relatives lived just up the road and our problems were solved.

We all unpacked the van and staggered into the cabin, turned on the lights, and settled in. Eric and Tara immediately started grading papers, a duty I was spared due to the current teaching position I held (lots of prep time in that old job.) I sat in a chair by the fireplace and had a drink. To this day, every time I go up to that cabin, I always take that same seat.

I can still remember that feeling of a journey's end, of arriving somewhere safe and warm and comforting. A new place, with good friends, with only what we carried with us, a dog at your feet and a drink in your hand.

We stayed up late into the night, listening to music, talking, drinking, happy to be away for a few days. It seems like such a basic thing, a few friends staying in a cabin for a weekend, but I look back now and see how it was an important moment for me. It had been a rough year or so for me, I had been unhappy in my job and with myself, and that weekend forced me to take charge of events in a lot of different ways.

(Remember how hungry we were? I believe I made Spaghettios for everyone that night.)

It's Columbus Day weekend soon, and the weather is getting cool, and the leaves are turning, and so at this time of year, I always think of that first night up in the cabin. I think of the Great Lakes, and of Oktoberfests and bar food, and long walks in the woods. I think of friends, and I think of journeys. I think of one of the happiest moments of my life.




(Here's the original post from four years ago, which I almost forgot I wrote. Interesting to see how similar in tone they are.)

Paradise

Last month I was in Dublin for the wedding of two of my very good friends, Donal and Issy.

They've been mentioned many times on this blog, as my travels overseas seem to be the only thing I write about these days. They're the best stories to write about anyway, the ones about faraway places and friends found over there.

The night before the wedding I met up with Elisa and a fellow by the name of Chris Cope, a fellow American that has a shared friendship with my Dublin gang. We drank beer and made MST3K jokes and had a fine time.

Earlier, Elisa and I grabbed some tea and cake for lunch and I got talking about family. I told her a bit about our past, about the farming days long gone, and I lamented the fact that my family never seemed to get over the fact that the old family farm was long gone, that that way of life was gone, and wasn't going to come back. I didn't grow up on the farm, and while I worked on my cousin's farm for a few years as a hired hand, it's something that is still somewhat alien to me, a life I never lived.

Now, I told you that story so I could tell you this one. (Chris will enjoy that bit of Cosby-reference.)

The wedding was held at a hotel about thirty minutes outside Dublin, on a rainy Friday in late July. We all checked in, milled about, shook hands and had a drink with some of the others that I knew. Linus was the best man and Elisa the maid of honor, so they had duties to attend to. I grabbed a seat with Ken and the service started.

It was a Humanist service, and it was about the people in the room, about the deep bonds of family and friendship and the joining together of two people. There was no need for God in that room.

Speeches were given, a song was played, and Donal and Issy became husband and wife.

I sat at a table with an American living in Wales, a Scotsman, an Italian, an English girl and her Irish boyfriend, and others.

More speeches were given, all lovely and heartfelt and true. Donal mentioned something I once wrote about Issy, and gave me a quick look, and I felt so, so lucky to be there, amongst friends and strangers alike.

The celebration went deep into the night, and at some point Linus and I started drinking whiskey. Issy's brother tried on Elisa's shoes. I sent email updates to a couple of young actors who were fascinated by my journey.

The next day was a rough breakfast, a long trip back to Dublin, and a short nap before we headed to Donal's parents' house for a cookout. I nibbled a bit, had some tea, chatted with the gang, but I was hung over and jet-lagged, and I kept thinking about the big bed back in my hotel room.

The sun started going down, those with young children (or those about to have young children) left, and it seemed as if the night was drawing to a close.

That's about when I heard "Wild Mountain Tyme" coming from the kitchen.

A few of Donal's older relatives were sitting around singing, and after the third song Donal started gathering us up from the garden. "Come on, we'll go inside and get warm." (Even though it was the end of July, it was still Ireland.)

We wandered into the front room, where chairs were brought in for about twenty of us, all sitting in a circle. Uncles and Aunts, cousins and friends, Donal's bearded father grandly arranging everyone, filling up drinks, bringing me red wine.

While I have spent years trying to shove off any preconceived notions I had about the more cliche and mythological parts of Ireland, one thing is true: they do like to gather together and sing.

Everyone took turns, the older pros and the scared-shitless newbies. They sang songs I knew, the old ones like "Raglan Road" and "Country Roads" (they love John Denver over there), and a lot of Dylan, and some I didn't know. A guitar was brought out to accompany the singers here and there, but most were sung a cappella, and had that sad-wistful and very-Irish quality of lamenting about times come and gone.

Once I realized that I would be expected to sing, I started to quietly panic. I couldn't remember the lyrics to anything decent, and thought it would be too cliche to bust out something by The Pogues. Elisa and I both hunched on the couch and searched lyrics on our phones. I am sure this was considered very bad form by the older pros in the room, but singing together in a room is not something most Midwesterners do. After we've had a few, my family and I will warble a Beatles song or two, but it never goes farther than that. We're too German and Scottish for such things.

As my turn came closer and closer, though, I knew there was only one song I could sing. And, in fact, it was the only song I sang that night, even though my turn came 'round at least two more times.

"This is a song written by a guy from the western suburbs of Chicago, so it seems appropriate."

Terrified, I launched into "Paradise" by John Prine.

When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn.

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

The only time we really tried to do something like this was about twenty years ago, at a big family Christmas. Everyone had to bring a poem or a song or something interesting and take turns reading it around the table. I picked something naive and cliche, but my grandpa changed the lyrics to "Paradise" and sang, without accompaniment, about the loss of the old farming community that he had known as a child and a man. It was devastating.

After that, we never tried something like that again.

(A bit of an aside here, but after Grandpa died Grandma asked if I wanted any of his old records, since she knew I liked folk music like he did. I took his copy of John Prine's first album.)

Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

Two years ago I wrote a play called Heroes and Villains. It was the final installment of a trilogy I did about growing up, performed with my steady company of actors I had worked with for a long time. It was our farewell play, as I knew after that many of them would be leaving for school and other things. It was supposed to be about college, but it was really about family. At the end of the play, the main character, Ben, reads the final verse of "Paradise" at his grandfather's funeral.

When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam
I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin'
Just five miles away from wherever I am.

By the third verse the rest of the room was trying to sing along with the chorus, and Donal's father Jack started following me on guitar. We sang the final words, and the song ended, and I realized that I was shaking. There was a lot going on in that moment, too much to even fully explain here, but I think you know enough.

* * *

My trip was supposed to be for three weeks. After the wedding festivities, I headed to Scotland, and planned to wander south through England, and perhaps jump over to the continent, see Germany, ride the Glacier Express, and enjoy being alone for a while. Donal and Issy had even offered up their place to me while they honeymooned in Italy. That was the plan.

Sitting in my hotel room in the lower highlands, the lands of my ancestors, no less, I realized that I wasn't really interested in being alone. I have been alone way too much this past year. I worked myself to the point of exhaustion, and didn't take near enough time to see my own family and friends.

In a very real sense, Dublin has become home to me, and Isobel and Donal, Elisa and Linus have become some of my dearest friends. I felt a part of that celebration, all that love amongst family and close friends. But once it was finished, I realized that I needed to be home, to reconnect with my own family and friends too long-neglected.

I made it home in time for my step-dad's birthday. A year or so ago I took him and Mom to see John Prine live at the Chicago Theatre, since Dave was also a fan.

He sang along to every word he knew.

Once More Unto the Breach

So... where was I?

Dublin, right. Finishing up the second week of my sabbatical, to sort things out. I've been back home now...what? Three weeks? Something like that?

It has been good to be back in my classroom. That was the hardest thing, being away from my guys. I know I could eventually leave teaching, but leaving a class in the midst of things...well, that's just not right. They survived without me for a couple of weeks, but in the end, they are my class, and I am their teacher.

So the question is begged: did I accomplish anything? Well, yes, some stuff. I got a lot of the Limelight business done. Schedules and summer planning and such. And I wrote a lot. But not nearly enough. I could have used another couple of weeks, but that would have been indulgent, and there was work to be done here. But yes, I got a lot done.

There is the other business as well. The Life Business. Did I straighten that out? Were there any grand revelations while I lived another life for a couple of weeks?

Probably not. If I realized anything, it's that I need to get more sleep and not eat crappy food. If anything else was discovered, it'll come in time, just like all great revelations do that spring from some grand wandering.

My spring break is next week, and of course I think about where I could go, but I'll spend the week at home, sleeping late and writing even later, and between all that I'll hopefully eat good food and take walks and spend a little time with some quality people.

There's been a whole lot of turmoil going on in my profession, in my state that I'm in, these past several weeks. Budgets are being slashed, people I know are being laid off, and hard decisions are being made all over. It's a longer story for another time, but it's one of those extreme situations that makes you want to either pull the ripcord or hunker down in the bunker.

I haven't decided which one is best. I'll either leap into the fray or take cover as the bombs sail by. And, of course, I'll let you know.