How long before I stick my finger in another pie?

Summertime is usually so outrageously busy that I hardly have time to write, just here and there on stolen time — during downtime at work or while eating. I’ve spent many years now nannying for school-aged children, which means my time for creative work ticks along to the school year calendar and the travel schedules of the families I’ve worked for. And by a mix of coincidence and self-imposed torture, I’ve also either moved apartments or filmed a movie or edited one or upended my personal life every single summer for as long as I can remember.

After enough years of this, it’s understandable that right around May, I start to get kinda antsy, bracing myself for three months of a wild rollercoaster ride, complete with full-time (and sometimes, overtime) weeks with my nanny kid, petsitting, work travel, and without fail, doing some kind of manual labor in three-digit heat. I assume I won’t get anything done, and if I do, it will be under duress.

So imagine my surprise when this summer turned out really nice. Blame some combo of my nanny kid being almost eight and doing lots of day camps, but also just finally having a reasonable workload creatively. I was no longer either filming or editing a movie or drowning in emotional soup, and actually had a perfectly reasonable work schedule.

As a result, I’ve sunk right into the first week of September having finished the first draft of my adult novel, another project out on submission with editors, my final draft of my Scholastic book turned in (hoping for a release date soon), and some… time on my hands? And feeling really excited and good about everything creatively?

The school year is back in full swing, and much like a stay-at-home-parent would rejoice in getting their weekday mornings back, I’ve similarly just been luxuriating in all the time I have before some of my other fall obligations ramp back up. I finally have a little time to settle into the new normal of my life, to give some attention to a stage show I’ve been writing with a friend (oops that might be another finger in another pie), and to do some more reading.

The Hideout Theatre’s New Home

If you aren’t already aware, The Hideout Theatre in Austin is losing their space on Congress Avenue, which has been the theatre’s home for 25 years. The landlord would rather put another bar there!!! Luckily, The Hideout has a new space that they will be moving into — at Art Hub ATX — and they need help building it into a home for the community.

The Hideout is where I started improv back in 2016, and where I’ve found community. I credit The Hideout with a lot of my development as a writer and a filmmaker; improv opened me up to a new kind of creative release — in contrast to film and book projects, which take years, improv is written, performed, edited, and consumed all in the same moment. The Hideout’s specific brand of narrative improv honed my sense of storytelling and timing. Plus, I’ve met countless people in the community that I’ve gone on to collaborate with.

DONATE HERE, every bit helps!

What I’ve been reading

I’ve been on a streak of page-turners lately! Most recently, I finished the book Normal People by Sally Rooney. Which was a bestseller and became a Hulu show, and I somehow missed the boat completely until I went on a book-buying rampage recently and snagged it because I’ve been really into books with these smaller, careful scopes that make you cry and ache and all the things.

Other recent reads include — The Pepsi-Cola Addict by June-Alison Gibbons (a wonderfully strange book that lived in literary obscurity for decades, written by a 16-year-old), Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (Lived up to all its hype!), and Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman (So interesting, hopeful, and viewpoint-changing. One of the best non-fiction books I’ve read in years).

Until next time, y’all!