Money and time

At this point in my life, I find I'm contemplating what I should do with my money.  (It almost feel weird to use that word 'money'; it sounds a little blunt and coarse, like asking someone how much they weigh, or saying 'died' instead of 'passed away'.  It feels like a taboo word, even though it's the word which drives so much human activity and desire.  Hm.)  After a lifetime of living on the edge, I actually have money to think about now, thanks solely to the hard work and wise choices of my ancestors and parents, not because of any accomplishment or virtue of mine.

Because my good fortune is a gift unearned, I feel I ought to be conscious and conscientious about what I do with it.  Should I better myself by traveling the world?  Support worthy causes (of which there are so many, I hardly know how to choose)?  Be generous to the people in my world?  Save it for the next generation?  I don't have children, but I do have nieces and nephews, and even though they are already guaranteed by a trust to share a good-sized portion of my estate, I still have to decide what to do with the portion that is free from restraints.

As I think about, I'm wondering if a better question is to ask what to do with my time.  Rather than subscribing to the old saying that "Time is money", I have always believed that "Money is time".  Having money means that, instead of spending my life at a job I may or may not enjoy, I am able to write, read, be with friends, travel, play, learn, expand, explore, give, receive, sit still.  So I guess that's what is most significant to decide: What do I want to do with my time?  I want to do, and do do, all the aforementioned.  But am I frittering?  At the end of my life, what am I going to regret not doing?  I have heard and believe that deathbed regrets are almost never about what one has done, but about what one neglected to do.  (Like the woman in the Lichtenstein painting: "I can't believe it.  I forgot to have children.")

I'm not writing this because I've come to an answer, but mostly because I am so aware that it's time to take these questions seriously.  In one's 20's, 30's, 40's, even 50's and 60's this isn't a particularly urgent matter, but I'm 70 now, and although I expect to live long and healthy life, I know I have more past than future.  I don't feel panicked or anxious, but really, I want to wake up as fully as I can to how I spend that future.  I don't want to be driven by habit, inertia, or carelessness. 

Partly to address this subject - I've started another blog!! I'm really excited about it.  It's called "I do something new every day".  And I mean it too.  For however long I can keep it up, I'm challenging myself to do something new every single day.   I'll continue to muse and opine on this blog, but I find I'm very much looking forward to seeing how true I can stay to the idea of doing something new every day.  It's going to be a hoot!  This doesn't completely answer the question of "Is this how I want to spend my time?" but it should, at the very least, be stimulating and keep me alert and conscious.

Check it out at idosomethingneweveryday.blogspot.com. 

Superstitions

Being a wordsmith as I am, there are few things I enjoy as much as understanding a word or figure of speech in a new way.  I had such a moment of understanding recently when I looked afresh at the word 'coincidence'.  I realized it means co-incidence, things happening at the same time.  There's nothing mystical or magical about it.  And yet so many of us think that a coincidence has some kind of meaning or import.  "I was thinking about you and you called me!  Coincidence?  I don't think so."

I see that way of reacting to a co-incidence as a kind of superstition.  A similar superstition is thinking that if someone says "Things are going really well", that person is automatically doomed to failure, as though there is some impish god or natural force whose job it is to make sure none of us acknowledges our good fortune without being punished for it.  I simply can't take that seriously.

I'm the sort of person who, the moment I step into a theater, wants to say "Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth", the saying aloud of that name being considered an evocation of the worst possible luck to a theater or production.  It knocks me out to learn how many people hold that superstition as sacred and true and very, very real.  And they're not kidding.  I guess you'd call me an iconoclast, or just a troublemaker.  Other people's superstitions just seem so very silly.

My own, of course, are sacred and true and real, so much so that I don't even know if I have any because, of course, to me, my beliefs don't seem like superstitions.  I'm trying to think of one.  I'm sure I must have at least one.

I have sat here quite literally for fifteen minutes and can't call to mind any belief or behavior of mine that is based on a superstition.  I guess I'm just too smart for such primitive thinking.

Well, it's after 2am, so I'm going to say "purple turkey pie" three times, bow to the north, and go to bed.  Works every time.

A mixed experience

Yesterday was the final performance of the world premiere performance of my latest full length play Want.  I'm really proud of this play.  I've worked on it steadily for a few years, until I feel it is finally the play I wanted to write.  It's my grittiest, most provocative play, definitely for mature audiences.  There were several Zoom performances of earlier drafts of this ply during 2020-21, but this is its first live performance, and here in Seattle, my home city.  It has been a very mixed experience.

What was good:

I could attend rehearsals, talk directly to the director (a writer doesn't talk to the actors as that confuses who is in charge), see the play myself, and invite my local friends to see it.  It's a rare occasion when a play of mine is done this close to home, and a lot of my friends here don't really know me as a playwright.

During rehearsals and performances, I was able to hear the play newly and have been able to edit, refine, and polish the script, so it is now even stronger than it was at the beginning of rehearsals.

I appreciate the producer, who put together an excellent technical crew, comprised of talented young women who created a poster, a set, lighting, props, and costumes which beautifully supported the play.  And I appreciate the director, who was very open to my comments during rehearsals.

24 of my friends attended performances, one even coming from as far as Portland.  (I invited 140.  I'm not shy about promoting my work when I am confident about it.)  It was generous of each of them to give time out of their summer days to come see live theater.

What was not so good:

Very sadly, the audiences were small, and they seemed even smaller because the production was in a mid-sized theater (130 seats)  That's at least partly on me.  The producer was looking at smaller theaters, but I wanted this play to have a noteworthy first production, so I asked that we go to a larger theater.  Hubris on my part.  I didn't take into account that 1) it's an unknown play 2) by an  unknown playwright 3) during summer, when theater attendance is always down, and 4) that COVID is still making some people leery of indoor public events.  Why it's sad is that the producer may have lost money, and that the actors didn't get the important symbiotic energy exchange with the audience.

The two lead actors were miscast.  They are talented performers, but just didn't have the right whatever - personalities, style, rhythm, insight - for these characters.  They worked waaaaay too hard, as though they didn't trust the script but felt they needed to make a big moment out of every line.  So disappointing.  I don't really feel I've seen the play, at least not the play as I imagine it.  It was actually painful to watch sometimes.  I had to remind myself that the audience didn't have preconceived ideas about how the play should go and probably just accepted it as it was performed, but I know how much nuance was missed, how many moments were misplayed or overplayed.  I know what it could be.  I almost lost confidence in that, but really, I know what is there, I know how good it is.

It was also very hard that I knew the director wanted me to be happy with the production.  I really like her and hated to keep discouraging her by giving her my frustrated notes after rehearsals.  I finally had to accept that the actors were going to do what they knew to do and that there was no point in wanting to get them into different shapes.

So now I have a better play, and the experience of seeing it performed live, and a lot of my local friends now see me as a writer.  It has helped all along to remember that this production is not the end of this play's life, and not the end of my writing life.  It is notoriously difficult to get a second production for a play; if a theater is putting on an unknown play by an unknown playwright, they want at least to be able to say that it's a world premiere, and that ship has now sailed for Want.  But I'll keep sending it out and sending it out, and meanwhile, I'm at work on my next play.  Oh lord above, will it ever end?

Fear the mundane

Years ago, reports started circulating throughout the Internet of a newly discovered venomous spider, which liked to live in dank places such as public restrooms and had bitten several people who subsequently died (the people, not the spiders).  Like many people who read those accounts, I began to feel leery of public restrooms, and started inspecting the underside of the seat whenever I used one.

But then it occurred to me: How many millions of people use public restrooms every single day?  Let's say six million, just for fun.  So two people out of six million had been bitten.  That meant the chances of me being victim of that spider were one in three million.  (This spider report turned out to have been a hoax.)

After picking raspberries recently (one of summer's greatest pleasures) I noticed an itchy little bump on my arm, which turned into a hard little blister.  Probably a bug bite.  Sweet Hubby saw it and told me to watch it carefully in case it turned out to be monkey pox. Monkey pox is a real disease and there are real cases of it, 5,189 to date in this country, which includes 120 in my home state of Washington.  That's 120 cases out of a state population of 7.512 million.  So my chances of getting it are one in sixty-two thousand six hundred.  Those odds don't seem worth worrying about, but because SH had been reading about monkey pox, it was on his mind and had become a concern.

This is one of the downsides of the Internet.  Stories, both fact and fiction, get passed around so quickly, become so thoroughly part of the social conversation and thinking, that they take on a size and weight completely out of balance with their size and weight in real life.  My chances of injury or death from driving, or from getting into and out of the shower, are much, much higher than from  monkey pox, but I drive my car and take my showers without a second thought, without a worry, while the thought of monkey pox gives me the shivers.  (Photos of pox victims are truly gross.)

I've decided to do my best to keep my thinking about the world's dangers on a realistic level, and to act sensibly in the face of real threats while ignoring the obscure (and sometimes completely imaginary) ones.  COVID is a true, and truly pervasive, threat, so I'll continue to wear a mask.  Monkey pox is an obscure threat, so I won't give it a moment of my precious time and thought.  There's too much in the world that deserves real thought and real worry - for example, will our democracy survive the insanity of the current GOP? - to waste a moment on the latest scare meme.