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.

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.)

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.

Just Like Merrion Square Blues

There's been an arc of feeling throughout this trip. The first one, as my plane landed and I boarded my train to the west of Ireland, was one of relief. The two weeks off stretched before me, and over and over again I sighed deeply, feeling the tension and worry start to drop away, stubbed out like a finished cigarette.

Midway through week one I started getting that anxious feeling, wanted to get home and get back to work. Missed my kids, missed the Midwest. Knew this would pass, and worked through it. I knew I came this far away for a reason, so that I wouldn't drop the tools and leave the job and just head back home. I came this far so that I could look back on everything from a proper distance, to better judge it all.

The week in Dingle ended and I packed it all up and got on the train again. A week was enough, but it's a lovely town, and there's a strong reason why I've gone there three times in the past year. "Time doesn't seem to pass here: it just is. A remarkable place altogether," said Bilbo once.

Spent an interlude with some friends just outside of Dublin, but still I thought of home. For a while I had thought about coming home early, and columned the costs of either staying, or changing the flight booking. Economy won out, but also the knowledge that it must be fight, not flight, when faced with these thoughts.

The last day or so has been in the city centre, Dublin city. No more sea air, no more apartment life, no more home-cooked meals by myself or my hosts. The hotel and the streets are my home. And now a new feeling: familiarity and comfort.

The city can be a bit oppressive, with the crowds and the beggars and the tourists and buses, but strangely I seem to be finding myself happiest and most content here. Maybe it's the time away that's finally sinking in, but I think I'm getting used to Life over here.

On my list of Ten Things To Do, #10 was, "look into maybe finding meaningful work over here." And I even found this, thanks to Issy. The interviews aren't until early March, and they said they weren't able to meet with me earlier, even for a friendly chat, so, well, there it is. Best that the job goes to someone around here anyways, considering the state of affairs here.

I've got a couple of days left here, and I'm still very ready to head home, but there was a moment tonight, sitting in a pub, sharing a drink with Elisa, when Issy arrived, telling tales of an old double-decker bus, that I felt very much at home. Donal arrived shortly after, tired after a long day, and we went to a show, and chewed and debated it afterwards in an old Dublin hotel bar, cracking jokes and enjoying the time together.

It was a lovely night.

How to Disappear Completely

Week One: The Freedom of the City

Monday

Wake at 4 AM (local time), read for a bit, then fall back asleep until mid-morning. Buy groceries and work on summer schedules, catalog copy, and staff possibilities.

Around 10 PM I head down to An Droichead Beag (The Small Bridge), a large pub down the hill that features live music every night of the year. A couple of girls play some quiet trad and I take a seat at the end of the bar. This will become my standard seat every night I'm down there.

I start outlining the play I'm working on until an American girl asks me about what I'm writing. We chat for a while. She's touring around the country for a month, going here and there. Then I get talking to a group of Kilkenny girls who are also here on holiday. We stay up until 4 AM and I even get to play host for a bit in my rented apartment. One of them eats toast.



Tuesday

More sleep. Instead of adjusting to GMT, I pretty much stay on US Central Time, waking at noon and staying up until 3 or 4 AM all week. I continue to work on Limelight business, and get to a point where the administrative stuff is "caught up," for at least a while. I wander back down to the pub and listen to more music and jot down more ideas for the play. Could have joined the Kilkenny girls for some stir-fry, but I politely decline. Need to stay focused on the tasks at hand.

Wednesday

Today is the day where I let myself do Nothing. I sleep until 2 in the afternoon, take a long walk around the town, and watch a lot of Sky TV. I may have written a bit, but the day is mostly spent on standby mode.

Thursday

While sleep has been easy to come by here, it is often interrupted by a group of barking dogs which seem to be penned in directly under my window. They are awful.

I spend a lot of time writing, and a fair amount of time doing more of Nothing. Whenever I want a break there are always several channels of overplayed American sitcoms to watch. I am also limited in doing Nothing because for some reason all the ATMs, Internet connections, and most mobile phones are out of service all along west Kerry. They finally come back online around 9:30 at night.

With money now in my pocket, I wander back down the hill to the same pub and take my same seat. The landlord of the place I'm renting is playing with the trad band tonight. After he's finished for the night we chat over a pint, mostly about the state of the Irish economy. Lots of empty, newly-built homes around here.

I return "home" and watch the newest episode of Lost, recorded on the DVR of my Sky box. A wee country cottage this is not. I also read a remarkable play by Brian Friel called Translations.

Friday

I step outside to get some lunch at The Goat Street Cafe and the sky is filled with smoke. Farmers are burning the gorse up on the hillside and it's created quite the atmospheric conditions. I eat seafood chowder, write some silly lyrics for another silly song, and take a walk along the bay. I read a second Friel play: The Freedom of the City, and finally fall asleep around 4:30 in the morning.

The dogs only wake me up once.



Saturday

Some laundry, some last-minute food purchases. I've made practically every meal I've eaten at "home." Pasta one night, a steak another night. I drink a lot of tea, and learned how to make coffee using a French press.

Maybe I'll wander into a pub or two tonight, or maybe I'll just stay in and write some more.

I am perfectly okay with the idea that I can do whatever I want, whenever I feel like it.

Tomorrow I leave for Dublin, for friends, further thought, a bit of theatre, and more work to be done.

The Off Season

Or: The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Myself

I am taking a bit of a break from myself and my current life for the next two weeks. There has been far too much work in my life, and not enough peace, and so I have had to put the job on hold for a bit, to relax and get caught up on the work.

A note on terminology: The Work is different from The Job. The Job, which I do happily (most) every day of the week for nine months out of the year, involves teaching an elementary school classroom of kids. I've been doing this for about a dozen years.

The Work refers to the other job, the theatre company I founded and have run for about ten years now. It involves directing several productions a year, but also includes supervising a staff of (roughly) a dozen directors, graphic artists, photographers, etc; planning seasons, picking shows, calculating budgets, answering email queries, organizing and attending planning and production meetings, running workshops, supervising other shows, maintaining a website, and occasionally writing new works.

Here are the facts:

1. I am currently out of the country. I should be teaching, but I have taken a two-week leave, which The Job was incredibly supportive of me taking.

2. There is this post from a few months ago. It is required reading in order to better understand the trajectory from Point A to Point B.

3. Doing the Job and the Work simultaneously has becoming increasingly difficult over the past two years. The Job continues to need an incredible amount of attention, and The Work has become more complex and more demanding as the company matures into a proper organization.

4. The amount of time involved, and the stress that comes about as a result of doing the Job and the Work means that my Free Time becomes something that I guard and hoard like a dragon crouched on a mass of plundered gold.

I'm a pretty independent person, and I like my time to myself, especially when the Job and the Work involves working with large groups of kids day and night. I still like getting together with family and friends, though, but any time a gathering or a getting-together is offered, it goes through some perverse cost-benefit analysis in my head.

Will it take away from The Work that has to get done? Sometimes, yes, but I have to enjoy myself every now and then, and so The Work is set aside for a time, but it is always in the back of my mind.

5. Sleep is something else that I get into a real panic about, because it's so damn difficult for me to get any. For the past few weeks I've been waking up at 4 AM, no matter how tired I was or what time I went to bed. I wake up, toss and turn, fret and stew, do some of The Work in my head, and finally resign myself to getting up and starting the day, knowing that it'll be one that I will walk through in a strange, listless, easily-irritated trance.

(Despite the fact that I had been up for over thirty hours, and am six time zones removed from my usual sleep patterns, I woke up precisely at 4 AM, local time in Ireland. What. The Fuck.)

6. Please take note of this: I am not depressed or despairing. I enjoy my life, and the Job and the Work, but there is way too much of it right now. I am obviously not in a happy place at the moment, but it is the amount of work, not the work itself, that is causing this. This is an important point to make.

7. A simple one, but perhaps the most important: if I keep going the way I'm going, I am going to grow old and die alone. (And maybe not even grow old; the last thing I want to do is drop dead of a heart attack during tech week on some show I'm working on.)

Whenever I start dating a girl, I immediately put the potential relationship into that cost-benefit analysis thing I do, and realize that I won't be able to commit myself to a proper, healthy relationship without letting either The Job or The Work suffer. And so I extricate myself from the situation and continue devoting all my spare time to The Work.

This pattern has been going on for about seven years now, and I have effectively given away the romantic-social life of my thirties to The Work. This is also probably why my vacations (and this brief sabbatical) take place across the Atlantic Ocean. When you want to travel fast and light, The Work is too heavy to fit into my luggage.

(Ironically, I have brought along quite a long list of items to be accomplished for The Work, but Ireland in the wintry off-season is a better place for it than puttering around at home for two weeks. Besides, if I stayed home, I would be back at The Job by Wednesday, because I would miss my class too much.)


So, after considering all these facts, I am forced to make a choice:

Change, or face the consequences of another ten years of stress-filled work and a fire-bombed social life.

I would like to stay on this earth for a number of decades to come, to explore much more it, to have a healthy, normal relationship with friends, family, and future partner(s), and to be hale and whole, not this stretched-out, worn-out thing of a life I've been living for the past few years.

My mission, in the next two weeks, is to figure out how to Change.

Sis and the Worst Time to Have a Birthday

Today it's my sister's birthday. She has the Second Worst Birthday in the World, next to mine, which is on the 30th of this month. She has to deal with all the people who can't get together right before Christmas, and I have to deal with everyone who wants to save their strength for New Year's. Hers is slightly less worse than mine, because at least on the 23rd, people aren't sick of parties and get-togethers. By the time mine rolls around, they only have the time and patience to deal with one more, and as they get older, they can't even make it to New Years.

I won't reveal her age, since that's not polite, but she is three years younger than me, and I'm pretty much in my late 30s now, so yeah, neither of us are anywhere near the age we were in that picture.

Janie doesn't really get called Janie anymore, but of course I will call her that until we part from these places. It's what big brothers do.

What the Sister does is host the holidays, and I'm headed there tomorrow. Seriously, eternal thanks to Janie for being the Married One with the Kids, because I certainly haven't done so well in that department. She gets to be the stable one, the Host, the person with the lovely kids and the lovely home, and I get to be the cranky eccentric who either livens up the party or comes close to ruining it.

And the fact that she still invites me into her home, well, that's a kind of Christmas Miracle itself.

Even though I almost set it on fire during our last Christmas spent there...

(I find this picture strange. It's like the photographer was so mesmerized by my shirt that they (almost) forgot to include my sister in the frame.)

Happy Birthday, Janie. Love you lots, and I'll try my best not to be a grumpy idiot this year.

The State I'm In

Last month I found the time to read a book by Frank McCourt about teaching. If there's anything I can't stand it's some poorly-written sentimental volume about how teachers inspire, teachers matter, blah blah, and I was worried that Teacher Man was one of those types of books. It sat unread on the shelf for a few years until one night I pulled it down and started reading.

With utmost respect for Mr. McCourt, I was definitely wrong. The guy can write, and what he writes is true and straight-up. Here's something from the Prologue:

In America, doctors, lawyers, generals, actors, television people and politicians are admired and rewarded. Not teachers. Teaching is the downstairs maid of professions. Teachers are told to use the service door or go around the back. They are congratulated on having ATTO (All That Time Off). They are spoken of patronizingly and patted, retroactively, on their silvery locks. Oh, yes, I had an English teacher, Miss Smith, who really inspired me. I'll never forget dear old Miss Smith. She used to say that if she reached one child in her forty years of teaching it would make it all worthwhile. She'd die happy. The inspiring English teacher then fades into gray shadows to eke out her days on a penny-pinching pension, dreaming of the one child she might have reached. Dream on, teacher. You will not be celebrated.

This has been rattling around in my head for the past month or so, as the school year drags on and I find myself continually swamped with more and more stuff to do which bears little resemblance to teaching. I do like this job, even love it at times, but man, it seems like it's the last thing I get to do anymore. I spent an hour planning for Math today, because I Have To Be On-Model, which means, "Teach it exactly like we tell you to and don't you dare deviate from the book one bit."

I'm a goddamn robot in there anymore, with everything programmed for me in advance, all my words carefully chosen so as not to offend, all my decisions made for me ahead of time. My creativity was shoved into a black van and dumped in the river, and any original thought I get in my head is immediately pushed aside in favor of some pointless task I've been told is Best Practice.

Thankfully there's Limelight, but even that is suffering due to the weight and the crush of this job. There is so much that I want to do with this organization, so many wonderful ideas and plans that jump into my head first thing in the morning and have long disappeared by the time lunch rolls around.

I can't even find the time to finish a simple story about taking a boat ride.

There is just too much going on, and something has to change. I want to just throw out all the bullshit that has piled up and get working on what's good, what matters. McCourt talks about how it took him his whole life to get a book written: "When you teach five high school classes a day, five days a week, you're not inclined to go home to clear your head and fashion deathless prose."

I took a weekend to go out of town to get something done, but spent most of the time driving around listening to music or drinking at my old college bar. Came home on Sunday refreshed and ready to go, that is until Monday rolled around and a new week's worth of headaches arrived.

I can't accept the fact that this is how the rest of my life is gonna go, hunching over my desk grading papers and working on School Improvement Plans and Mission Statements calming parents downs and whatthehelldoIhaveplannedformyteacherassistanttoday christfortyfiveminutesmakesomecopies pickfivekidsgetsomethingdone and oh if I have time maybe write something new and get a group of actors together and get it up on stage, half-baked as it always is. Hire this person, fire this one, arrange schedules, craft the season, update the website. Didn't I have friends, girlfriends even, at one point? Now I'm lucky to see anyone more than once every two months. I think I see the Dubliners more than I do my own sister these days.

Time's up. Back to work. Answers come another day.

June 29th Revisited

Have you ever thought about goodbyes? Ever been disappointed by how one went? Ever wished you could do one over, make it really special, really one for the books?

This is a story of a goodbye.

I went back to teaching fifth grade a couple of years ago, and the class was filled with strong personalities, as we say in the profession. The less polite way is to say that it was filled with a few jerky kids.

Not that I wouldn't be the first one to stand up for each and every one of them, when it counted. But they were a rough group at times.

There was a student that was a bit different. She was quiet and funny and nervous and had a hard time getting her homework done. But she was Austin, and she had Maddie by her side (thanks to my artful seating arrangements), and she got through the year.

She was scheduled to move to Texas at the end of the summer. At the last minute, at my prodding, she showed up at summer auditions and wound up with the lead in Harriet the Spy. (Just so you know, I didn't cast it, but was overjoyed when Mal made her decision.)

Austin was a great Harriet, and perfectly captured that fragile thing that you need in a good Harriet M. Welsch. I was exceptionally proud of her.

Last day came, and she was leaving for Texas the next day. The kids had a pizza party while we tore down sets. Everyone left, and Austin and I said a brief goodbye over the sound of the drills and hammers.

Got busy taking apart something, a bit sad that we weren't able to have that proper farewell that should come with someone that you're close to. I know some people aren't good at goodbyes, and maybe she was one of them. I probably try and make them too monumental, too orchestrated.

Mal suddenly says, "Hey Austin!" and I turn and she's coming back in, with this awkward shuffling walk, arms out, tears streaming down her face.

This is the hard part to write about. It was very emotional, but it played out in front of everyone, like it was a story that needed to be told. A big hug, declarations like "you were the best teacher I ever had," "I don't want to go, " stuff like that. Like I said, it's hard to write about, and it's taken me over a year to put it in words. The last thing I want to do is make myself out to be this awesome teacher dude who inspires the masses, blah blah blah. That's not why I'm writing this.

If you know me fairly well, or if you read this thing a while back, then you're familiar with my father-abandonment-anger issues, etc. etc. etc. No need to dredge that business up, but needless to say, it left me with an unwillingless to get married and start a family.

That moment with Austin changed me, a lot. She was one of the first students I had where the parents were around my age. A strange enough thing to realize for a guy who still feels like he's in his early 20s. Holy shit, I could have a kid around this age!

Anyway, I guess I came to some sort of conclusion that I didn't need to be afraid of that whole being-a-father business anymore. I guess I realized that it might be something I might be okay at. Later that fall, I talked about this with my sister one night at a bar in Indianapolis, but I think this is the first time I've written about it.

I think about Austin a lot, and I miss her a ton, and one day maybe I'll track her down and thank her for deciding to come back into the stage that day, to say a proper goodbye. It wrecked me, but it was one of the most important days of my life.

Two More Weeks

If you've been checking this thing, waiting for new posts to appear, then I'm guessing you've been quite disappointed in the past few weeks.

It's that time of year where everything piles up, and I've been busy finishing up one job and starting up another one. All my web time has been going here lately, so much that I've developed a strange pain in my right uppper arm. It hurts to type this, so I'll be brief.

School is gone in two weeks, and then my life eases up a bit, and perhaps I'll have time for writing again. If the arm holds up. I hope so, because I have lots of stories piled up, waiting to be told. I keep thinking about how I left my final adventure in Ireland in limbo, wandering the Wicklow Mountains in perpetuity.

I kind of like it like that, considering what happened next. I think I'll keep us there a bit longer, at the top of Ballinastoe, victorious, before it all went pear-shaped.

One of these days I'll finish that story, and tell you others, including Tales of Two Houses. Until then, I'm still updating in 140 characters or less on Twitter, which is thankfully less hard on the arm and shoulder.

A True-Blue Mom

My mom loves to travel, loves folk music and The Beatles, and can knock a few drinks back like a pro. She was a theatre major in college and to this day wishes she had been able to do more with that.

She worships The Chicago Cubs and hopes Ronnie makes it into the Hall of Fame someday.

She reads the Tribune every day and saves me articles on travel and theatre reviews I might have missed (I am sadly phasing out my paper subscription to the Trib.)

She was never overprotective or overbearing, never judgmental or harsh, and she let me make and live with my own decisions in my life, for better or for worse.

Everything that she is, I am as well. And I love her dearly for it.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

The Lamp of Knowledge

I'll explain this one another day. For now, you just need to know that the Lamp of Knowledge is an Awesome Thing, indeed.

Best Supporting Lover

Slept in today, slept late, for the first time in a while. We moved the clocks back one hour, and all week my system has been cycling round and round, trying to reboot itself, trying to align with the new system, and it's been a wreck of a thing.

Traveled out to the hometown last night to have dinner with the clan. Did some tech support for me mam's computer, fixed a tricky stitch with a new netbook I bought the other day, and watched Dave and Uncle Hamish solve a wiring problem in the basement project.

Ate steak tacos, laughed and joked with the relatives, and tried unsuccessfully to pay for my own dinner.

And for the third time in the past two months, people attempted to fix me up with someone they know. This person sounds interesting, for the most part, but I tried, repeatedly, to explain how my strange brain works, to no avail.

I generally don't like being "fixed up" with someone, or moved around like a chess piece. For some reason my head/heart just shuts down in situations like that. It's like I automatically want to rebel against the entire process, set fire to the thing and laugh and watch it burn.

I remember this part in Backbeat, that old 90s movie about the Hamburg days of The Beatles. They're sitting in some club, something pisses off Lennon, and he starts shouting "It's all dick! It's all DICK!" and turns over tables, spills drinks, generally makes an angry ass of himself.

That's what I feel like when people try to fix me up. It feels like I'm at an intervention.

Best to put me in a situation where I'm not the focus, where I don't have to play the part of Potential Suitor. I'm not a leading man kind of a guy. I'm a support role. Put me in a crowd, stick me in the corner, let me tell a few jokes, let me try and get her attention from across the room.

Then I'll completely screw it up, but it'll be on my terms.

Still Here...

Not to fear, I am still among the living, although the current virus that is doing battle with my immune system is trying to convince me otherwise.

I've been spending the past few weeks busy with work, mostly getting summer theatre plans finalized. Shows, catalog copy, budgets, etc. Plus there's a show currently in the works, but thankfully I am not directing that one, so I get to take a back seat.

All I want to do is call in sick tomorrow, but we have the big state testing sessions going on all this week, so that might not be an option for me. So instead I may have to drag myself in, pass out packets of standardized tests, and then collapse in my chair while they do the hard part.

Thankfully I have Simpsons DVDs to keep me somewhat sane while I sit around my house, generating massive amounts of phlegm, and searching for the last kleenex box I own.

It's better that I get sick now, instead of three weeks from now when I'm on vacation. My last vacation was marred by a lingering chest infection, and I don't want to repeat the experience.

I have plenty of things I was planning on writing about, and hopefully those will start appearing in the next few days. We'll see how much better I feel in the next day or so.

Thanks for being patient; more to come soon, I promise.

Signs That I've Lived By Myself Too Long #54

I just said this half-sentence to myself:

"I mean, produced by Ben Folds. That's kind of a big deal."

The Holidays and Nights

It's been a strange holiday season, this one. I started off excited about the annual potential of What They Might Be, but quickly realized that this would be one where I was on the outside, looking in. Always one step behind the events and the feelings.

Plans to get a tree fell through more than once, and so my house had no decorations, for the first time...ever, I think. Mom had two trees, though, and I had a small one up in my classroom that the kids decorated, so there was that. And now I don't have to bother taking down the damn thing, or cleaning up needles, or forgetting to put it out on the curb in time.

We had a snow day on the last day before break, so there was no classroom party, no proper farewell to the students. Some loved the early start to the break, but for me it kind of summed up the strange, out-of-sync mood of the season.

We celebrated Christmas early, with my family, and so the 25th was spent mostly at home, sleeping in and reading until the late afternoon. Not a bad gift to myself, I suppose.

My birthday loomed large in my head, and I dreaded notching one more year off of my thirties. We had a nice time of it, though, with Greek food and a small gathering of people who ate and conversed and listened to me explain the history behind a possibly-rare Vee-Jay Beatles album I received from my folks.


New Years Eve was spent wandering between a couple of friends' homes, eating more food and drinking their beer, until my friend Eric and I wound up back at my place shortly before midnight, watching Robby Knievel attempt the lamest jump over a volcano I think I've ever seen.

Grew a beard, shaved the beard. Worked on a Limelight show with Mal and the kids in a freezing cafetorium. Received a gorgeous engraved journal from my sister, and I've already written a story or two in it.

Keep trying to find time to go see The Seafarer at Steppenwolf. Read this article about it in the Tribune and have been haunted by Conor McPherson's description of Hell ever since:

“You see all the people who seem to live in another world all snuggled up together in the warmth of a tavern or a cozy little house, and you just walk and walk and walk and you’re on your own and nobody knows who you are.”

Not exactly the warm and cozy feeling you get during the Christmas season, but that's what it's felt like, so I'm ready to have it done. 2008 was a great year, don't get me wrong. I have friends and family whom I love dearly, and I am continually proud and energized by the work I do in education and theatre.

But this past month or so has driven home the fact that there is a significant part of life that I am missing out on. But how I can overcome my own quirks and weaknesses, to finally achieve that last remaining bit, is still a mystery to me.

Santa's Labyrinth

For my sister, on her birthday. She's been pestering me to finish this for weeks, and since I'm more or less trapped inside all day due to the snow falling outside my window, I decided to finally write this. Apologies to David Sedaris--there are several echoes of "The Santaland Diaries" in this piece. Consider this the version from the visitor's point of view.


A complete set of pictures from this day can be found here. I highly recommend watching the Slide Show of the pictures--it tells just as good of a story.


Every year my sister brings her family up for Thanksgiving, and every year we make the trek into Chicago to have lunch and to see the window displays at Macy’s Department Store.

And, of course, to see Santa.

This is the part that I am usually excused from attending. While they wait in the hour-plus line to visit Santa, I walk east to Millennium Park to take pictures and get a little air.

This year, however, I stayed with them, mostly because I couldn’t leave my sister with three young children in that place on her own. And the line seemed short, so I figured this wouldn’t be as bad as I remembered.

When the woman came rushing out of the entrance to Santa’s Cottage asking for a doctor is when I knew I had made a mistake.

It all looks simple enough, from the outside. The line snaking through the toy section, kids excited and patient. But then you cross through the gateway, and you leave behind the comfort of high ceilings and bright lights, and you enter something dark and dangerous.

Synthesized carols compete with a constant beeping and clonking as the sounds ricochet through the narrow Tudor-like hallways. Someone bangs on a xylophone off in the distance. Flashing lights illuminate strange images of warped pine trees and bicycles suspended from the ceiling. At one point a stuffed cat with a look of pure terror appears in a small window, pleading to be released from its eternal prison.

The line moves slower than usual. The failing economy has probably forced Macy’s to cut back on the number of Santas they keep tucked away inside the labyrinth. My nephew repeatedly brushes his hand against a woman’s ass, but when she turns around, she sees only me standing behind her.

Pinwheels and plastic gears spin as the children reach their breaking point, and the tenuous social order in our line starts to break down.





It all seems created by people who don’t really understand Christmas, and the high decorated walls disguise the fact that we are moving in a nightmare, creeping forward to the next turn, only to discover yet another passageway of blinking lights and guitar-playing teddy bears.

At one point the paramedics wheel out an elderly man wrapped in a blanket, undoubtedly faking a stroke in order to escape the task of shepherding his grandchildren through this never-ending maze of mental torture.

Santa’s visage peers from the face of a clock, the long hand spinning madly, reminding all of us that time has no meaning here, that we are completely in his power.

Then, we finally reach the end, the place where the line stops and you are escorted to a small waiting room while a polite woman asks for your picture order. Everyone breathes easily again. The kids nervously peer around the corner, realizing that He’s in the next room.

And you turn that corner, and there he is. Sitting in a high-backed chair, next to a fireplace and a Christmas tree. Gentle, soft-spoken, welcoming. And even though I know otherwise, and I know there are a few other rooms just like this around the corner, I also know that He Is Santa, and I understand why we wander through the labyrinth every year.


The kids take their turns telling Santa what they want this year. I stand off to the side, as my cynicism falls away, and silently tell Santa what I want that year for Christmas. That most precious thing that I keep deep in my heart, that I long for so badly, that I want for him to be able to give it to me.

We spend some time looking at the windows outside the old Marshall Field and Company, disappointed in them once again. They haven’t been as good since Macy’s took over.

We walk to the park and eat lunch, and the girls stare longingly at the ice skaters, circling around and around, as the sun disappears behind the tall buildings. I imagine them pondering their brief moment before Santa, wondering what will be awaiting them on Christmas morning, wondering if he will be able to make their dreams come true.