It’s been two months since I last posted on this blog.

Two Months.

I launched this blog in 2006, and never before have gone two months without posting. A few days, or a couple weeks, once in a great while a month, but two months? Never before.

So now I’m here reexamining where that time went. Was the time spent not writing here well-spent elsewise?

The end of September, I was in a play. That was quite an undertaking. What had started as a lark a full year before (“Hey, we’re workshopping this play, just doing a scene once a month in a kind of salon thing, would you like to be involved?”) turned into an actual full-blown production that I thought long and hard before committing to, first of all because, and I had thought this might be a crucial factor:  I’m not an actor.

Oh, I performed in plays in high school and in college, and I’ve done readings since then, script in hand, and I read roles some weeks in my weekly playwriting workshop. But being in the production of a play? I hadn’t been in one of those in… I counted the years… I think 42 years.

Anyway, I committed to doing the play because 1) I thought it’d be fun (turned out it wasn’t) and 2) because as a practicing Stoic (emphasis on practicing, because I’ll never get there) I know I’ll die some day relatively soon and I want to do new things and make the most of every dollop of time I have while I’m here. Now, a month later, I can say I did that. And now I know that I don’t want to do it again. Kind of like the marathon I ran about 15 years ago:  I can say I did it, and now I don’t want to do it again. But there’s one difference:  With the marathon, I knew I wasn’t a professional runner — those were those people who’d be many miles and hours ahead of me in the race, and whom I had absolutely no hope of catching, let alone competing against. But, see, with the play production I was confronted with amateurs, and I was the professional. I’ve written, directed, and/or produced literally hundreds of plays, events, readings, happenings, whatever, and I’ve learned all sorts of things the hard way — including how to avoid trouble, how to help make it a pleasant experience for the audience and the actors and the production people, how to be courteous and supportive and uplifting when needed and how to be the sadly necessary unpleasant producer person when needed. In this particular production, the actors were treated like packing peanuts, just something poured into the box as needed. In the course of a rehearsal process that started, in a way, a full year beforehand, how many times before opening did I get to rehearse my major scene with the other cast members? The answer is: Never. Not once. On opening night, just before the audience was let in, we were asked to run it quickly in the space of about 20 minutes. Beautiful. 

But I don’t want to complain about this more (I could go on), because I did get to work with a bunch of good actors and make some new friends, and a group of us enjoyed bitching about it one night at the local bar, so I feel I’ve already closed the book on it.

When I wasn’t rehearsing the play (with some of the cast scheduled and available), I was also wrapping up the fourth, or was it fifth, draft of my own new play. I spent a good amount of time in October on that. I wanted to hit some submission deadlines with it, and could have, but I had an aching feeling it was missing something, so I sent my previous play, which had a run in the Hollywood Fringe a few years back but hasn’t had a full production. And then, recently, while driving around and not-thinking about my play, it hit me what it’s missing, so that’s going to be part of my focus in November-December:  supplying the missing part, aka draft five or six.

And I spent a lot of time with my beautiful fiancée. This was time well-spent indeed. She is a joy in my life — sometimes the joy — and is part of the reason I wake up every morning with gratitude. Seriously.

And of course I spent a lot lot lot of my time working on my business, Counterintuity. Clients count on us, and therefore on me, and most organizations of all sorts are under duress right now unless they’re headed by one of those 12 lucky rapacious sorts who own mega-yachts and do “business” with a certain tumescent boil in human form.

And I’ve spent about 30 minutes every day (for a year and a half now) learning French on DuoLingo. In the Dungeons & Dragons nomenclature, I’d say I’m a Level 62 French Dilletante.

And I’ve mourned more friends who have died.

What didn’t I spend any time doing in the past two months, let alone the past four months? Playing Skyrim, a game on the PS4 that I enjoy. I know I didn’t because when I logged in yesterday to play for just a bit I discovered that my last saved position was from August, with no memory of how to get out of this particular maze.

So:  I’ve been doing some rehearsing and some acting, some restaurant-going and card-playing and hanging out with my adored woman, and the quotidian chores of living:  doing laundry, washing dishes, walking dogs, buying groceries.

And right now I’m having a little bourbon and a wonderful Zino Platinum Grand Master cigar and writing this and enjoying all of it.

I’ll see you here again soon.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 9th, 2025 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Playwriting, Theatre, Thoughts, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.