Go Big or Go Bust: Day 192 (on not getting enough attention as a child, power outages and a very noisy generator)

Once upon a time, my total m.o. was in trying to get an 'A' for effort.  I hated actually *working* but became somewhat of a specialist in making it look like I was trying really hard.  Not that I ever did much besides pretend.  Hey, we were a lot of kids very close in age growing up.  Maybe I needed the attention. 

Our first trip to Europe: Rome.  Note I'm the one out in front, looking like the tour guide. 

Or maybe, as one of my own children (at the age of five) accused me, I'm "just mean.  And LAY - ZEEE."  

On the other hand, nobody wants to be normal and that word 'dissociated' sounds so post-modern and existential.  Maybe that's what I was. 

Whoops.  Just looked up 'dissociated personality' in the Oxford Dictionaries which says it's another term for *multiple personalities*.  Let's drop this. 

What I was trying to get at is that it feels like I'm suffering from a hangover of that childhood behavior today: I like everybody to know how hard I work.  It's embarrassing to admit.  Some people like to pretend that everything just happens with a wave of the hand.  I'm way over on the other end of the scale wanting everybody to ... what?  Feel sorry for me?  Be in awe of my stamina?  Give me a break on any success cause, heck, she's killing herself! 

So here I am scrambling to finish this darn HIGHLIGHTS REEL. 

I fear you're sick to death of all my yammering on about it but anyway, last night we had the second power failure in three days.  The first one was at midday, last night's ended at midnight.  Your guess is as good as mine as to the cause because you can do all the twitter searches you want about "power outage upstate NY"  to no avail.  As Mr. Green shouted to me in the dark (over the generator of the people across the road)  I'm probably the only person in a ten mile radius on twitter.  If that. 

And so today, rather than wringing my hands in bed when I woke at four in a panic, I got up and went over to my studio.  (Did you catch that?  I got up at four.)  It wasn't long before Mother Nature proceeded to unleash the loudest crash BAMM thunder and lightning storm (with torrential downpours) for hours.  We didn't lose power but, hello, guess who's still not finished with her bloody highlights reel.  My tech support friend called tonight from the plane, on his way to go camping in Yosemite. Our sound editor is leaving Sunday but (I think) holding Saturday open to do the job if I can get done in time.  

How are you supposed to record Louise's inner voice over a chorus of crickets that would drown out Times Square?  I'm going to bed.  Tomorrow is another day. 

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 140 (on the rest of life and BALANCE)

Three hours ago, we touched down at Newark Airport and I'm back at home in a modified state of shock.  For a person who hadn't really left her desk in almost eight years (unless it was for something Louise Log-related) these nineteen days of travel have been a very big deal. 

I'd forgotten that along with the exhilaration and excitement of travel come inconvenience and all sorts of challenges, especially for people with control issues.  And much as I've longed to get back home to my routine and to my uninterrupted access to cellular data and wifi, not having that forced me into a very different way of spending the days - mostly walking, hiking and driving in spectacularly beautiful country and having every meal with people I adore.

The silence and the beauty of British Columbia and New Zealand and almost uninterrupted time with one and then another of our grown children was ... I'm searching for the words and none of them are coming close.   Heartbreaking?  But in a good way. 

All of this is still very much in my head and body and making me think I want to make some changes.  I don't want to plunge back into workaholism.  I do want to figure out how to work in a sane way that leaves time for the rest of life. 

HOW DO YOU DO IT? 

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 88 (on our win/win situation with the pilot script)

If you've been following me for any time at all, you're probably aware that I've got a little issue with an addiction to work.  But hey, if you have to go crazy with a compulsion, let's agree that 'work' might just be one of the better choices.  At least for me.  (Looking at you, 70% dark chocolate.) 

But today, feeling successful, feeling acknowledged and absolutely buoyed by the loving reaction over on facebook, I'm a changed person.  I'm relaxed.  I love the pilot script Mark and Bill and I pulled together in the past two weeks.  And even those two hard-boiled characters seem to feel really good about it. 

And most exciting of all is that even if we aren't picked to be finalists for Sundance's Episodic Story Lab, we've already grabbed the brass ring.  If things go as planned, by early Fall, whether we're invited to the Lab or not, we'll have a half-hour comedy series to pitch to television or to shoot as six seasons of a comedy web series. 

So today I celebrated. I threw caution to the wind and took the whole day off.