Blog

  • Parenting Challenges

    Today, with the observance of Veteran’s Day, the kid’s school is closed. The wife, on the other hand, had to go to work. That leaves me with the kid.

    Back in New York, those were good days to spend together. Since it would be a “treat” that Dad would be home during the week, we’d watch a little extra TV, but then get ready and walk three blocks over to the park. We’d be there for an hour or more, and then head back for lunch. After eating, it would be nap time, and sometimes I would also take a nap on the couch watching Sports Center. When we got up, story and drawing time. Maybe one more TV show, and then news and getting ready for Mom to come home and dinner.

    Ah… but we are in California now. We need a car to go to the nearest park, but the wife has it today to go to work. There are wild fires that are blowing smoke in our direction, and the air quality is so bad that we can’t go outside to play. This past weekend, the last of our things arrived, so there are boxes all over the apartment. We will be making a game of putting things away and arranging the furniture. I set the kid’s easel up in the living room so we can all draw together.

    We are in transition, and this is a big change for all of us, sometimes to does feel overwhelming.  I had a colleague at the last job I had who shared an article with me when we were in the processes of moving offices. The article was about how people hate change/transition and will react negatively to things they normally would agree with. I lost the article, but I have thought about it often over this past month with everything that has happened to us. It might be awhile before we begin to feel normal again.

  • Where Did the Day Go

    I do get distracted a little too easily. I have been working on writing today, I think out of six hours, I have only written for about one of those.

    One hour was for lunch.

    I did read a review on a book of Sylvia Plath’s letters, that took an hour.

    So… I can account for three hours.

    That would mean I have procrastinated for three hours.

    I can admit that I got sucked down a rabbit hole of looking up stuff on the Dragonlance and D&D stuff earlier. But in my defense, I hadn’t thought about all of that for a very longtime. In junior high and early high school, I read all of those novels and was really into all of it.

    I have been reading the news all day about awful stuff that I know everyone is aware of.

    Since moving to California, I have been looking for a job, and it hasn’t gone the way I thought it would, as I still don’t have one. My thought was that I would be splitting my days job hunting and writing. The writing past hasn’t taken off as fast as I thought it would.

    What I want to believe is that I need time to relax after the month I have had, but that makes me feel guilty. Two people are depending on me to find a job, and that is what has taken over my thinking. “MUST FIND A JOB!”

  • Morning in America

    Woke up this morning to the news that there was another mass shooting.

    Remember when the big news was the firing of Jeff Sessions?

    And remember when the big news before that was Trump’s weird confrontational press conference?

    And Remember when before that the big news was the mid-term elections?

    I find living in this country now is like having the attention span of a dog looking for a squirrel while being bi polar at the same time.

    I am starting to give up on the idea that we can return to a time when things were “normal.” I think it is past and this is the new normal that we live in.

    I always wanted to be the person that looked to the future, as that will be the better place to work for. Now, I am very nervous about what the future will hold. I keep thinking that we will reach a breaking point, when people will have enough of mass shootings, and a president who flouts the rule of law, or a political party that is becoming openly racist.

    But… no…

    I still can’t get over people who would vote for Ted Cruz. I mean, no one likes Ted Cruz, but he got re-elected… And no one likes him.

    I keep reading and watching the news, reading up on my history and political philosophy, thinking that there will be some new insight that will come to me, but I keep feeling despair. And the House flipped, bringing at least some over sight, but that hasn’t made me feel any better.

    It’s the gun violence. It’s like it just will not subside in this country, and after each shooting, the feeling grows that it is a ticking time bomb that will one day explode on each of us. And we will wonder how it got this bad, and didn’t we do anything before.

  • A Lot Has Happened

    So… I have been away for a month, and that wasn’t my intention. I have had several life changing events happen to me and my family, and it has taken a bit of time for me to get adjusted to my new reality.

    Not that I am trying to be mysterious, but one of the bigger things that has happened is that a decision was made, and the wife, I and the kid have moved to the west coast, and we are Californians.

    Goodbye, New York City.

    Hello, Golden State.

    My wife got a really badass job, and it was just too big of an opportunity for her to pass up. It took a lot of work, but we were able to get all of us out, and now I am learning how to deal with people who are not perpetually angry all the time.

    I’m also learning that I was perpetually angry all the time. And that I have to start learning how to let go of so many things that I thought were important, but really weren’t. I see now that I was stopping myself from enjoying life, and the people I chose to share it with. I can’t fully blame New York for that, I made the decision to be that person. Now I have the opportunity to reinvent myself. In a place where it is sunny, often.

    There are so many things that I need to write about, and now I will add changing locations to the mix.

    Let’s see what happens.

  • I Just Got Paid

    Today, I got paid for writing. It was only five dollars, but this is the first time that I received any money for something I wrote. I have no idea if the piece will ever see the light of day. Maybe, maybe not. This also was the first time that someone was like, “I will pay you at least something for your writing,” and not “the exposure will help your career.”

    Living and working in the arts is awful, but I can’t leave it, and I really don’t want to do anything else. So… I’m stuck.

    So much of my career in the arts, and I will group all of it together; theatre, writing, painting, arts management even, has been predicated by someone asking me to work for free. Until I moved to New York, most of the payment I received had come in the form of beer. It took me about two years in New York before I earned my first check from performing.

    I know that I am not the first person to write about this, but the arts and capitalism really don’t mix. Payment is slanted to the very few that are on the top, while the majority fight for… well… five dollars. I am also not going to claim that I know a solution to this problem, other than capitalism doesn’t solve all problems. People will continue to ask others to work for free in exchange for hope.

    The truly tragic thing about earning five dollars today is that I can’t find a beer in Manhattan for that price.