Sanity Checks & Balances

It has now been just over a year since I heard "Have a good quarantine!" echoing towards me in the parking lot at work, and I assumed - as I always do - that things would work out somehow. I kept things positive and optimistic for the sake of the team, and even when I got the end of employment news on my birthday, no panic set in. I had been through layoffs, but somehow this one felt like a pause. My boss at the time talked about the potential for a return, something he'd repeat a few times in 2020, but never even insinuated in 2021, as he quietly replaced me while Spring started to stretch and wake up, wondering what the hell happened to the world. 

It's not lost on me that I've had attachments to places before, that I have seen endings put memories in storage to make room for new fantastic things. I think about my ex-girlfriend of 1992, whose arrival brought about a needed end to my college theater days. I hear music from my Playhouse years, and instantly I go back to the dusty, broken theaters that we packed despite janky lighting systems (in one theater we had dimmer switches and painted coffee cans with light bulbs in them). It's fitting that the last song ever played in one of my productions was "It's All In Your Mind" by Beck, but even though I left behind what I think is a legacy - a theater company and a website where there was none before - my time spent there was erased so I could evolve and grow at Universal. Now that's gone, too. 

People ask me how I am, how I'm getting along during the pandemic, and usually I just say that I'm managing my time well with a daily routine and trying to keep myself busy and engaged. That's the logical answer, you know, the one they want to hear. I mean, the truth is that I'm mostly doing fine. I have lots more good days than I have bad days. When I have a bad day - really a bad moment here and there - there is no escape from some harsh realities, and they seem to be waiting on my pillow at night, which is why I'm writing this at 3am. No, I'm not having a moment right now. I'm just looking at the thoughts in the shadows and calling them out, kind of like talking out loud to ghosts I'm convinced are there. 

The umbrella emotional state is that I constantly miss my parents. A few times a week, I'll light candles in what would amount to be a shrine, and before I go to bed, I talk to them just like the days when I'd go to their bedroom and talk to both of them in the relative darkness, the room only lit by the light in the hallway. I'd split my broken spanish with some english so both of them felt included, and then I would say good night to both of them. Hasta mañana si dios quiere. Good night old buddy. It became the ritual of me tucking them in the way they used to do with me. So I talk to them now, and I get misty eyed every time, and then I hear my mom say "don't be sad - we're fine. Be happy."

I also sometimes wrestle with the thought that the world - even the bubbles I used to be part of - continues moving, erasing history and constantly improving what's to come. That's a poetic way of saying that I assume that people forget about me when I'm gone, that my importance was only defined by the stages I represented, be it theater or music. While it wasn't true about my theater days, I think that looking at the Universal glory days as a forgotten history will help me move on, and will help the team work the problems ahead of them. I don't know what to say about the artists, but they have been resourceful and some have reinvented themselves. 

In response to some of these thoughts, I have stayed off social media, at least browsing or looking at messages. I want people to thrive during this pandemic, but some just seem obsessed with being extra at a time when I'm even less impressed or inspired by faux glamour in posts. Some of them don't even realize that while they preach messages of simplicity and humility, the posts they make are exactly the opposite. I don't make any proclamations and do what I've always done; I just let my actions tell the story, or let others speak on my behalf. It's too much right now. I have spent a year in mourning over various aspects of my life. I don't need to see extra right now. I never did, actually, and those who bragged about all of the things they got and the attention they were basking in were actually hurt in the booking process. I always leaned towards the more hungry and humble artists, because I wasn't feeding their ego. 

I talk to my sister multiple times a week for at least an hour each time. I have a friend who checks in almost daily despite her unfathomable burden with her health issues. My gaming friends have dropped down to one that I'll play a game with once or twice a week. I think that my old team has also noticed I've stopped responding to group messages, because they need to focus on new relationships and let go of hope that I'll return. This isolation has deafened me a bit to other conversations, and I know that some people are waiting for me to emerge somewhere fresh and evolve again, but I feel like I've run out of inspiration. The industry is still waiting for opportunity. I have friends who have applied to everything for the past five months and haven't gotten anywhere. 

So how am I doing? Good question. I don't know the answer. It might be too early in the morning, or late at night, to know 100% how I'm doing, or even come up with an answer other than a list of what I'm doing day-to-day. Other than a general sense of mourning, I think I'm missing purpose, and I know I'm missing exposure to inspiration. Thank God I went to New York a few times in 2019. I'm dying to go to a museum. I miss my 10,000 steps a day when I could walk and talk to different people. I really miss my 17,000 steps a day when I had entertainment to watch over. 

What in the world is ahead of me? If the pattern holds - college theater, then Playhouse West, then Universal Studios - I'm going towards something bigger. I mean, I don't want to sound greedy. So many people have that one time in their life that they did big things, and then they settle down. But I never settled down, even when I wanted to. For one reason or another, I felt the greater pull to purpose and contribution. I felt like career was meant for me to light fireworks over. I'm still in the best times of my life, though it's in a bit of a blind spot right now. 

I am going to allow myself to mourn the losses, to feel the sadness and loneliness that have become roommates, but pay no rent. Will it matter in the end if I'm gone? Probably not, because people have their own lives to maintain. Will the days I have until then matter? Judging by how much I'm aching to get my hands dirty again and obsess about this next chapter, it'll make a difference. The days, the new memories, the work will matter, and then someday I'll be an afterthought, a story about someone who cared when nobody had to. Did I ever become famous? No. But did I create things that affected people, did I help creative people do things they never thought they could do? That will be my lasting contribution. 

Age has crept up on me during this pandemic, grey hairs mingling and muscles straining as I work harder on my health. Yes, part of me has thought about the what ifs. What if this is it? Did I live a good life? I've lived a few good lives. Did I make my parents proud? Did I fulfill their American dream? I think so. I'm not completely sure. 

But I'm here, now, sitting on my bed emptying my brain so I can get a good night's rest. A year from now I'll look back on this and will wonder why I was so worried about the future with nothing on my plate. The bridge from here to there should begin with gratitude and perseverance. I once wrote while having an epiphany, that "gone are the days when I was neither here nor there, nor anywhere between the two."

I look forward to figuring it all out. 

2021 - Dawn of a new day

I love the ironic optimism at the beginning of last year, where I acknowledged a difficult road ahead but still believed I could survive and thrive through whatever was thrown my way. I really did begin the year with some momentum and promise; Cut to me walking off property in mid-March with my team at the end of the day, and hearing one of them yell to me "Happy quarantine!" The place was already deserted by the time we left, and even more so when we returned in mid-June. By the middle of summer, weekends felt busy again. 

Multiple waves of layoffs later (5 or 6? - the latest just happened this month!) we have no idea what to expect and the job market is still pretty barren. Rumor has it that some theme parks are opening in March. Reality has me looking at the stuff I can control. 

Let's look at this year's goals, following the same format as previous years. I know it's March, but in reality the first two months haven't contributed much, at least locally. 

Things to do

• Work out 6 days a week, minimum - Gyms closed last year, so I had to figure out how to stay in shape at home. Yes, I went through multiple types of workouts at different times of day, essentially planning my day like an astronaut on a long journey to another planet, but eventually the conundrum was a matter of finding a day to take a break. In hindsight, I should have been more specific as far as what kind of shape I wanted to be in because I'm heavy right now, but this is something I want to keep figuring out. 
• Sleep at least 7 hours a night - With little more on my agenda in 2020 than surviving 2020, I was able to catch up on years of sleep. Now the trick is to stay consistent and stay committed to banking those hours each night, and to prep for sleep to make sure that I'm setting myself up the best way. I know this is another recurring goal, but it's still something I need to focus on. 
• Cross that career/job finish line intelligently - The biggest riddle of 2021 is whether to return to Universal once things open up again or find a new job. Part of me doesn't want to lose all of the progress and things I've built at Universal, and I want to help all of the artists who were paused last year. Another part of me sees the value in going somewhere else and becoming more, the way I have before. True to my Libra symbol, I have to balance the best of both and make educated moves. 
• Do not let a day go undervalued - I have three affirmations that pop up as reminders on my phone every day, and I do my best to say them out loud, but I have to go one step further. I need to create a habit either every night or every following morning of calling out specific things from the day before that I'm grateful for. It could be just things that I was able to accomplish, or things I learned, but more than ever I need to understand that each day counts. 
• Study music theory - I started the study but ran into obstacles and distractions, even talked myself out of it considering I didn't know what my future would hold. After a few conversations with artists, I realize that this creative world is always going to be with me, so I need to pick up that study again. I loved what I learned so far, even if it just refreshed what I studied in college. It's time to pick it up again. 

Things to have 

• A passport - This is a running joke, year to year, but honestly I'm running out of things that I actually want/need to have. I got a lot of key stuff in the past year and still managed to pay bills. But the passport...I do feel like it's going to have a butterfly effect once we're able to travel. It really has become the holy grail of possessions, and I haven't needed it since our trips to Europe and Argentina. Where would I go first, if money wasn't an issue, and the virus was completely gone? $175 is apparently the gateway price.
• The new smart car stereo - Now that River is completely paid off, there are only a couple of issues to deal with, and this one cosmetic/functional change. I don't know how long my work commute is going to be for the second half of the year, but I may make this my welcome back to work present. $500 or so.

Things to be

• Extra vigilant with my health - I began the pandemic with the concept that, for the long run, I'd have to approach this like a lone traveller on a long trip, like a sailor or astronaut. Astronauts even have to deal with no discernible difference between day and night, and over the past 12 months, I've noticed that there's not a lot of difference between weekends and weekdays, except for the fact that trash pickup is on Thursdays and there's no mail on Sundays. What I started then and have experimented with is something I still have to work on: the daily health routine. Every day I have boxes to check off boxes for tracking food, water intake, exercise minutes, etc. There's nothing better than seeing everything checked off for the day, and I have to stay committed to it.
• Open to change - As married as I am to the romantic concept of returning to my old job and trailblazing a new dawn for everything up there, I have to be open to being reborn and redefined in a new job, even if it feels small at first. I've done it before. I can do it again. I also have to remember that the job I ended up with was not the job I was given, so anything is possible, even in a new city.
• Available to others - I have understandably been somewhat isolated, hiding in this cocoon where evolution is super slow and self-survival has slowed down to preserve energy. Other people are stuck in the same place, though, and we all still see each other as we were last defined, and that means that this optimistic, productive, positive spin I'm trying to work on may still be useful to the people I've worked with in the past. I can't hide from them. I also may not have any answers for them, but maybe together we can figure some things out.

My sincere hope is that this year, just like last year, changes the game, challenges my creativity, and begins to build a new future, one we couldn't see before. Obviously, there's nothing but unknown ahead of us and everyone's been scattered to survive in their own spaces. There's no more knowledge of us as we used to be; While some people are thriving right now and others are struggling, we can only work on the future. There's no going back.

And here's something I need to remember. When I started at Universal, nobody cared. I was the unknown, older, new guy who found enemies before I made friends. I persevered, hustled, built, and then it was all gone. Everyone was gone, and a second chance was not offered. Same story as before, in past jobs, my past in theater, my past in college. Accomplishments, intimate connections and support, all wiped away to clean the slate for something new. Some people have already forgotten, I'm sure, and some long lost sources of light have returned. As always, I may not have everything I want, but I'm pretty sure I have what I need.

2020 shut down the world. Let's make sure 2021 gives us something in exchange for that. We may not be entitled to anything more than the chance to make it right.