This time last year I had just done a workshop in a vast 3000 seat auditorium at The Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. We had been looking at their text of Christmas Carol – helping the flyboys with their Christmassy show. It was a lovely end to an incredible job and I was looking towards doing Scrooge myself in London.
On that snowy morning at high altitude I drove my Jeep triumphantly back into the world and our little company of five hit the town and eventually went for a burger. Then I booked an Airbnb for one night in San Fran and started to plan my little excursion. The world was a simpler place. I booked my stay the night before I drove to it every day for a week. I stayed mostly in huts in people’s gardens. I met a bear, felt an earthquake, drove through a tree. The world was somehow smaller than it is today. So many things could be done without thought.
Whatever this lockdown is, it’s nothing like the one we did in March. In March I could’ve had a ten minute nap in the middle of the road outside my window and affected nobody. Now I’d be pancake in thirty seconds. The cars are whipping by. I’ve been at home. In fact I have barely left the house for days. Just me and the snake and the memories. Motivation has been elusive. I think I need other people sometimes to charge up my *doing things* battery. I keep on not knowing where to start with the huge queue of home and life jobs that surrounds me, so I disconsolately start somewhere random just because.
Having said that, I’ve made some progress today. It hasn’t all been eating crumpets and moping. A few crucial things have been shifted forwards in the right direction. I’ve opened a few more cans in the process. More emotional stuff to try and deal with now after all the years of avoidance. More potential long journeys inside and out that will likely result in good things for me if I can see them through. I’ve seen some things through already too. I’m much better at seeing things through than I was.
I still suspect this lockdown will help me in the long run, just to properly examine the unexamined things, and to question the part of me that thinks that just because I’ve never been able to sort it out before doesn’t mean I can’t ever sort it out. I’m sober and I’ve finally got the time without the constant knocking of the need to turn over.
I miss jobs like the American job, and like Scrooge. But I also love to think about what’s possible through the small homescreen and with my greenscreen and mic and all the sexy things that have come into my life as a result of this pandemic. There’s a shot at some interesting play online. Plus my agent rang today, but to ask how my French is. It’s adequate, I told her. Better when I’ve been in France for a week. God knows what that’ll bring. But maybe something.
AlBarclay 