Go Big or Go Bust: Day 224 (the compulsion to clean and a postcard from the set of 2010)

There's so much to do to re-establish life after the summer, buying food and cleaning supplies and scrubbing out the refrigerator (in that order).  And cleaning everything else!  The grime of New York City is everywhere and I especially love to clean when the challenge is great - I was inside, I was outside.  It occurred to me to ask a passerby to snap a shot of me with my broom and the leaves (leaves in August?) but I couldn't break stride for even that. 

So though this blog was supposed to get written hours ago, here it is after 11 PM and I'm wishing I were one of those people who has a supply of posts waiting in the wings.  Alas I am not so tonight I hope you'll be happy with a photograph from the shoot of Season 2. 

Chris Leone (Sound Mixer), Deb Micallef (Associate Producer) and I get ready to shoot while actors walk through a shot.        Photo by Sean Fox

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 210 (When the multiple adrenaline surges finally wear off...)

I don't know what happened.  It finally hit me this morning.  Here I was all glowy, all OVER not making the final cut.

Maybe the multiple adrenaline surges finally wore off?  First there was seeing:  Episodic Lab!!  blazing in my inbox a full week early.  (without the italics and exclamation points...)  Then, the nicest-ever rejection letter.  And then the tidal wave of love from you.

I'm not generally depressive but woke up this morning in a black mood.  Very Soprano theme song.  Everything was gone.  Fortunately, you sent me links to watch and read, links about how to cope with rejection, about how to deal with an 'upper limit problem' and an Oprah video on surrrender (suggested by Louise Edington) which made me burst into tears and gave me the answer.  I have to let go AGAIN.  (Looking at You, Suzy Soro)  I have to surrender. 

So I hauled out the vacuum cleaner and threw myself into cleaning the house.  At first I was all (mournful) Skeeter Davis: "Don't theyyy know, it's the END of the world..."

This eventually shifted to chanting to a God I don't always believe exists:  "Please show me the way to use my talents."  which changed to:  "Could you just show me how to be happy!"  I felt willing.  I felt truly and totally surrendered.  What am I supposed to do?

Of course nothing happened.  And I didn't even take pleasure in doing a bang-up job of cleaning.  (Not to compare, but Oprah got a call from Spielberg offering her the part in The Color Purple the instant she surrendered.)   

Glum, with heavy feet, I pretended that I wasn't occasionally refreshing the mail on my phone and finished the job (except the bathrooms).  I decided that today is the day: it was almost 90º and I was going swimming.  I NEVER go swimming even though I love to swim.  Last summer I never even went ONCE.

So I put on a bathing suit and my cut-offs, got in the old Volvo and drove to the swimming hole.  I had a delicious swim against the current in a fast-moving river which did exactly NOTHING to change my mood.  I drove home, made a lettuce and tomato sandwich with a ton of Hellman's mayonnaise (protein) and trudged to my studio to write the blog of death. 

Almost immediately, on starting to write, the black mood lifted.  Oh and by the way, look what I found on the way to the studio. 

And look what I found on the way back to the house for a cup of tea.

You may not know that most of my childhood was spent on all-fours, eyes trained on the lawn, looking for 4-leaf clovers.  In decades of looking, I never found two in a day and never even imagined a 5-leaf clover.  Maybe things are looking up. 

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 182 (listening to Alabama 3's Sopranos Theme Song and Cleaning)

Big news.  I think we have a highlights reel!  (Must sleep on it.) 

That incredibly good news released my linear mind to the next burning job - to get this studio clean and organized.  And so today was Cleaning Day.  In this case it means getting at the walls and ceiling too cause there was a lot of dust in here with pick-axing the floor.  For the person with OCD 'tendencies', weeding and cleaning have their charms.  But where weeding is contemplative, cleaning is WAR.   I'm chomping at the bit to get everything out of boxes.  CHOMPING AT THE BIT.  (Hey it is a barn.)

Here's my favorite version of Alabama 3's song.