Buzzing About Tuesday

So many surprises Tuesday. Rushed out to Starbucks in the morning, for example, and ran into this girl M______. We did an improv show together almost exactly a year ago and followed each other on Instagram. She's always doing such artsy things, like indie shoots in Panama. We congratulated each other on our years and then she whispered low, "I am so sick of my survival job though." She still has to nanny. Despite being an esteemed writer. I recently found out Alexander Payne sold a script after grad school (unproduced, I think) for 60K and lived on that for four years. No disrespect to Alexander. I do enjoy his work.

I had a Zoom with Toy Conglomerate to kick of my 17th series. My survival job--but I do enjoy the work.

This musician I collaborate with texted me. The video we wrote for A___ M____ needs some exterior shots--am I available? We live in the same neighborhood, so I threw on jean shorts, braided my hair, and dashed out. I zipped by a Chicago improviser at a cafe on the way. "What's up!" I shouted before filming this guy scream emo lyrics on a residential street as I walked backwards--a very poor man's tracking shot. A professional, as soon as we got five takes, he was gone. Delivered the finals by 4 PM.

C____ came over to pick up our vacuum--Puhg doesn't need it anymore. I emerged from my work cave to gossip, then back in, then back out to meet a stranger buying our lamp outside. She handed me a ten and mumbled something about her roommate liking black and white, left in a flurry.

I was fully prepared to record with AP and MR the next day, so I made a pan of toffee. Taylor Swift's movie dropped. I downloaded it at 11, watched THE extended song. The moment she pointed at me in the crowd was in the cut! Forever immortalized!

AWRGFTGAR -- Nov 2, 2023

7:30 balcony journaling

8:00 Taylor Swift dance workout

8:30 getting ready and bothering the ham and chattering around the house

9:30 out the dang door to the swanky coffee shop

10:00 revising my play over a hot cinnamon roll, sending emails of interest

11:00 M____'s office for a meeting with the exec for my new show and a potential showrunner, she is excellent, we ask her to come onboard

12:30 call with Cowsk about the podcast

1:00 home for a broccoli bowl with Puhg on the patio

2:00 rehearsal for B___'s solo show, I sit in the dark corner and take dramaturg notes

4:30 rush home to review notes from the day, shove in a couple emails

5:00 zoom with the EP of our musical comedy movie and discuss who to approach as the lead, laugh at how cruel Hollywood is ("well she has an Oscar, but would she get us buzz?")

6:00 cram crackers and cheese in my mouth

6:20 walk around the neighborhood on the phone with my sister

7:00 rush around closing up and getting dressed

7:30 arrive at the clown theatre to see a puppet musical by a young writer I know--it's so great, I am so happy for her

10:00 Marco Polo Lavender in the car, then scream 1989 all the way home

10:30 greet Puhg and the ham, make vegan buffalo wings with ranch and eat them in bed talking about everything and nothing until I fall asleep just before midnight

Trying to Be Positive about Chucking my Time and Energy into What May as well Be a Black Hole

Applying for things sucks. I have somehow chosen a life full of rejection not on one-side, folks, but somewhere around 3-4 sides.

I apply for jobs all the time, and you so infrequently even hear back, it's hard not to get discouraged. Will someone even see this? This cover letter I just spent two hours writing? Plus I write, like, outside of cover letters, which is like, synonymous with rejection. It's hard to spend all that energy revising a play when you know you're going to have to send it to like ninety festivals to get one little reading...and even then, that's not guaranteed. I am reentering a life with auditions, and just when you find the perfect apartment, someone snatches is up from under your nose.

I already feel my skin thickening from this new year in this new city.

Yet, there is a different perspective. One that could be a lie, but one that is necessary if I want to survive. That perspective is It Adds Up. Maybe this cover letter no one even opened, but I still wrote it. I still got better at writing it. There will be plays that never see the light of day, but they were exercises. Exercises I didn't know were exercises. But you just have to accept that.

Shell and I love our move in the making. Our goal date is June 1st, 2015. Even if we make it, then we have to make it, and those odds are just ridiculous. Yet, we will write anyway. Because it's part of the whole (again, at least I say to myself). For some reason this is harder for artists to accept than most humans? A mathematician doesn't think her entire education to become what she is was useless because it didn't get published. But for us goobers at the laptops it's like, "Yeah I wrote that poem. It was bad. Nothing ever came of it." No, you dingo, the thing you're doing now came of it.