So here’s what I was thinking at 4:30am, about the time I stopped fighting it and accepted that the night (and likely most of tomorrow) was lost to insomnia…
Lately I’ve had a great deal of difficulty with motivation.. with drive. I have loads of projects – production projects and art projects, around the house projects and holiday projects and I like the idea of every single one of them. When I can’t work on them because I’m not in the apartment or because I have to do the day job, I’m anxious to roll up my sleeves and dive in but then, when I do have the time, and I’m looking at a day free of responsibilities except those where I answer to myself alone, a strange thing happens – I just can’t motivate myself to pick up a paintbrush and paint or load up the editing project and just work on it…even reading a new book (as opposed to the comfort books that I’ve read a gazillion times) is something I have to consciously force myself – truly drive myself to do…
I don’t feel depressed, or even particularly sad (though I am willing to admit that maybe I am depressed and this is how depression manifests itself in me – kind of the way I don’t feel “stress” I just get a headache or my stomach goes wonky. It’s visceral – literally in my viscera – not emotional so maybe my depression (if depression it be) manifests itself as physical inaction… I don’t know.) What I do know is that it’s been a problem for awhile. Since before I left New York in fact, (though it was, of course, exacerbated by dad’s illness and then his death. That definitely broke a part of me that I have come to understand will just always be broken – scabbed over and not as tender as it was at first, but honestly? Never healed…) But that’s actually not what this is about. This is about something else. This is about a realization I had lying here at 4:38 am after not being able to sleep and embracing my old friend insomnia…
Here it is (and it’s ironic (or perhaps just obvious) coming in the midst of my insomnia) but I realized that: I’m. So. Tired. I spent twenty years in the grind of New York City and for pretty much all of those years I pushed and drove myself towards the career I’ve always wanted – directing. Every job I had, every choice I made was about trying to build that career. Trying to get to the place where I would be paid to do what I love and what I’m good at.
First I just hustled and tried to find gigs as a director. Unpaid? No problem! You’re going to let me direct? I’m in. And after all of that work, I didn’t level up in my career and I still wasn’t getting paid. So, after many long years of production work and unpaid directing gigs (and the ever present day jobs, don’t forget the day jobs), I started a production company. I found scripts and I found money and I made show after show after show. No script? No problem – here’s a book I like, I’ll somehow get the rights. I’ll adapt it for the stage. I remember having a conversation with a new friend (well new at the time) and we were sitting in Republic Noodles in Union Square and I’ll never forget it – we were talking about my choice to make Dreamers of the Day, about the fact that I had the rights and was starting the stage adaptation and my friend said to me,
- Wait, you’re going to adapt the book?
- Yes
- Have you ever done that before?
- No
- I mean do you even know how?
-No
- Cause that seems really hard. I don’t know if you can just decide to do that.
But, you know what? I totally did it. I just waded in and created a really beautiful show. I had tons of help, and a super talented cast and crew that made that show happen but I was the driving force. That show happened because of me. Its existence on stage happened because I pushed and I drove myself through version after version.
When the asshats broke into our apartment in Brooklyn and took my computer with the most up-to-date version of the script on it (side note: always back up your work in three different places, my lovelies) I spent my sacred vacation week on the Cape – not kayaking, or hanging with the family, or eating fried seafood, but hunkered down recreating the lost pages and improving the script and bringing that project to life. And it really was a wonderful show. A show that I truly believe, had the “right people” seen it, could have launched my career. It didn’t. I guess the “right people” (the career launching ones) didn’t see it.
It was ephemeral and lasted for too short a time and I moved on. To show after show after show. Pushing and driving and though I was doing it for the love of the work, and though the work itself was exhausting but truly rewarding, there was always a part of me that hoped, “this time will be different. Even if I don’t suddenly find myself making a full-time living at this directing thing, with each show, I’ll hone my craft and my work will get a bit more recognized with each project. Even if the shows don’t sell out, I’ll start getting some reviews, I’ll start getting some traction and I’ll build my career. Slowly and steadily, brick by ridiculously heavy brick, I will build.”
And so I pushed. I drove. I forced myself to believe and hope each time that I’d get better and stronger and my career would start to be a career. Through Full Disclosure and Skin Flesh Bone and Persuasion and In the Ebb at an amazing venue at Fringe – surely Fringe will make a difference! The work is good. The work is solid. The work can’t help but be noticed. People will see it. My career will grow. Through Bella’s Dream and Within Arm’s Reach – through all of these great shows full of creative original work from a collection of super-talented people. “Something’s gotta break my way,” I told myself again and again and again and again.
And then Farm Story – a TV show – an independent television show with a ridiculously talented group of people. It felt like everything just came together on that project. I drove and I pushed and I forced and it happened. And I thought surely, this is it. Everything else has been building to this. Everything has brought me to here. This can’t help but be a success. Even if it doesn’t go as a show, clearly this is a calling card that will get all of these people work that will launch us all – it’s too good. How could it not? HOW COULD IT NOT?
Spoiler alert. It didn’t. And I think that’s when it started to happen. This inaction started to settle in. In fits and starts, just a little bit at first, but it just started to pull me down. I’m just so damn tired. It’s really hard to push and drive and force and believe. It’s really hard to know you have something to say and a creative voice to say it with and to struggle to find money, to make it happen again and again and again and to still not get anywhere. To be almost 50 with this thing, this not-really-a-career-BUT-surely-more-than-a-hobby-please-god-tell-me-it’s-more-than-a-hobby thing. To have spent 20 years – more really since you’ve been driving towards it since college, since high school, since 6th grade. More than half your life pushing towards this thing and time and time and time and again…you look up, you emerge from a fog of work and ambition and drive and self-whip-cracking, you pull your head out from under the most recent project and look up to see…
…that nothing’s changed. No that’s not right, lots of thing have changed – you’ve changed. You’ve got more experience and you’ve learned new things – techniques and insights and new things to say. You’ve made new friends – created these little pockets of new family. You’ve gained people and you’ve lost some. Oh, and you’ve aged. Of course, you’ve aged. The inexorable march of time, well that hasn’t stopped. So yeah, you’ve changed but your career? Your trajectory? That’s just been on the same plateau for years. Forever.
“You’re fooling yourself,” you think, but no, you just have to keep going. You start a podcast “this will be the thing or if not the thing at least a thing that will help. That will get those creative juices flowing and who knows maybe this will be the thing.” And then a film. You’ll make a short film because who knows, maybe this will be the thing. Because, that’s the trick, you see – you always think, you must always think “but this time will be different. Maybe THIS. WILL. BE. THE. THING.”
But already the inaction is settling in. And the tired is settling in. You’ve been driving and pushing for 20 years…of course you’re tired. “I know,” you think, a move, a new place, with new projects. This will be the thing” but that inertia has you. It might be too late. And you watch your friends moving up, moving on – so excited for them, so proud of them, but also sad for yourself, because know you’ve been left behind but “that’s ok because you’re not left behind, you’re just on a different track and your track will lead to a station – a good station – you just have to keep going”…except you’re just so tired. 20 years – more – of self-making is tiring. And when it gets you nowhere even more so. You can’t give up because who would you be if not this but how? How how how do you keep driving? No, seriously, I’m asking… How? Because holy good lord, I sure don’t know…
…and then you think, “I don’tknow,” but maybe…maybe, maybe, maybe it starts with saying it all. With writing it out and putting it out into the world. Maybe it starts with using a sleepless night and a semi-coherent 4am scribble as a pause, a refreshing I-don’t-know-what-but-maybe-something and you get up from your sleepless-rest and feel, “Is it? Could it be? Maybe, hopefully, a little bit of drive?”
So, you cross your fingers and you do what you’ve done forever…
You pick yourself up.
You splash some water on your face.
You sit down at your computer and open your project and you push yourself…
You push yourself hopefully to greatness but at least…
at the very least…
to action…
