Back from my break; back on my bullshit
Sorry for the three week hiatus. Getting (some of) my shit together took longer than I planned.
I was not planning on such a long break, but between two holidays (Easter and Orthodox Easter) a major intrahouse move/reorganization, a major cleaning project and a general need to rest turned one week into three.
There was also an unexpected visit from good friends that live in the Detroit area and a long-awaited in-person hang with friend of the blog Tiffany.
No regrets. Except for maybe our outing to the shop Woolly Mammoth.
The major move and reorganization was a great success. Jennifer’s new office area is very functional now. It should surprise no one that I still need to get my office in order. We also have a giant pile of crates, boxes, tubs, and other containers now sitting behind our couch that need to go to our storage unit in the building’s basement. But that will have to wait for a dry day and also for one last closet overhaul. This weekend I will get my office in order and at least begin the hall closet overhaul. Next weekend I will finish the closet and take the container pile to storage. Then I’m sorting out the “pantry” and the kitchen. Then we’re done. For a while. Apparently keeping a tidy, organized house is a fulltime fucking job. People with clean houses, how do y’all do it? It’s wizardry as far as I’m concerned.
I did some creative work while on break. I photoshopped a three-headed owl bear that would not look out of place at Woolly Mammoth for Jennifer’s Monday night D&D game.
A real designer would weep to be stuck with my basic Photoshop skills, but I don’t care. I enjoy doing image manipulation for fun. I have few things that I can do that are “creative” that don’t immediately trigger my inner critic. Photoshopping is one of those things. In addition to the fun, I feel like I learn something new every time I use my Adobe Creative Suite. This is not a commercial for Adobe. I promise.
I also did some writing while on break. Jennifer asked me to do a guest post helping a letter writer with stage fright and terminal awkwardness on captainawkward.com. I will link it here for those that have not read it yet.
#1373: “Help me with this awkward stage fright.”
I honestly hope that the show went well for the letter writer. I am also glad that a Captain Awkward reader came into clear up a gap in my theatre knowledge. I was familiar with intimacy coordinators for film, but not for stage. This is a massive bit of ignorance on my part. All I can say in my defense is that I have not been on stage for almost five years, and thankfully, much has changed since. Abuse has been rife in the theatre world, but actors—especially women and LGBTQ+ people have been fighting hard to make it a safer place for everyone.
This is very good news.
You can read about a former theatre company in Chicago to see how bad things are when there are no intimacy coordinators, independent fight coordinators, or any real checks and balances for the leaders of a company. It took an excellent piece in the local free paper by Aimee Levitt and my friend Christopher Piatt and a revolt by the Profiles Theatre rank and file to stop the horrible abuse at this theatre. This is very fine investigative journalism.
At Profiles Theatre the drama—and abuse—is real
My time away from the blog has given me some time for reflection, and I want to make a big change on my birthday. Sorry to be rather cagey, but I am not ready to tell y’all more than that. We’ll just have to wait until July 11, I suppose.
More likely, as soon as I have a definite plan, I will make an announcement. The only thing I can say right now is that the blog will have a larger purpose than it currently does. I don’t foresee a huge change in tone—this blog is all over the place with its tone, and that is how it will likely remain. One more tidbit: I will be doing more video and audio. I have all of this wonderful equipment and I would really like to put it to use. The audiovisual elements will not replace writing this newsletter. They will be supplemental in the way that my daily TikToks are and the podcast episodes will be once I start recording them.
Another reason that I have not written in the last weeks is because the Substack editor went from ridiculously underpowered to ridiculously unstable. I cannot access saved drafts. Nor can I reliably insert images. Nor embed YouTube clips. It’s almost unusable. As much as I hated the old editor, at least Substack was a stable platform. I will have ironed out a plan to either exit Substack, or I will have pestered them sufficiently to fix this horrible mess. I’ve already lost two drafts of this post and I am now composing it in my word processor, so as to not start over thrice. If anyone of y’all currently writes on Substack, please email me if you have any wisdom on how to get mine working again. Also, if there are any former Substack writers amongst my readers, especially those that had paid subscribers, please tell me how you left smoothly.
On another front, I have joined a gym. I’m not trying to lose weight, but exercise is supposed to help lower blood sugar, which is something I desperately need lowered. I also want to build strength and range of motion to regain some mobility. My hips are in constant pain, but just one day of stretching them out and doing strength training has made them feel so much better. Next week I am going to try to go as many days as I can. Who knows, maybe I’ll become a gym rat. Stranger things have happened.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
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