“Always sprinkle the goodies along the way. Be as tough as you want, but always sprinkle the goodies here and there. Because anything they can laugh at, they can’t hate.”
–Jimmy Cagney
Some days you really need to hear something like that. And boy is this one of those days.
See, I have this terrible tendency to load up too much stuff on my plate. I can’t say no.
Well, that’s not true. I can and often do say no. But not often enough apparently, because strangely enough there are still only 24 hours in a day. Go figure. I’m getting better at learning how to delegate things to others. When it’s something really important to me, like Pick Up Ax, it’s still hard though.
I think it’s turning me into Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Boy. In the past week, I’ve auditioned for eleven graduate schools programs all around the country, and now Tosca is getting ready to open. Plus I’m busy with Ax as both actor and producer, and then there’s the computer biz. After every project, I keep telling myself I’m going to take a week off and do absolutely nothing–after all, the down time is important too, right?–but I never do it.
The thing that really does it to me is the freebie (or close to it) web and graphics design work that I do for non-profit performing arts groups. I don’t keep track of the time since time is not tax-deductible, but it’s quite a bunch of hours I’ve racked up there, and they usually get racked up from midnight to 4 am. Not a prescription for good health (unless your Frank Sinatra, of course).
All I know is, something has got to go. The only question is what.
You know you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel when you’re looking to a fortune cookie for advice. I mean, even the Magic 8-Ball is a step up from this thing. At least the Eight Ball is a dedicated bullshit meter. A fortune cookie is nothing but an afterthought from a cheap Chinese restaurant.
Nevertheless, I got one today that was a mini deus ex machina. I was sitting at Pick Up Stix thinking about Pick Up Ax and wondering if I was ever going to be able to get that production off the ground.
It said “A project you have in mind will soon gain momentum”.
Sure, it’s completely generic. The project could be fixing the leaky faucet or picking the loose change out of the couch cushions (hey, that reminds me….). But I’m at that point with the show where I keep thinking “this could go wrong” and “that could happen” and driving myself nuts.
On a slightly different note, I’m very excited about the CD-Recordable/ReWritable drive I just got. I’m going to create a “virtual press kit” for Pick Up Ax reviewers. Rachel, the Goddess of Multimedia, is going to create a killer self-contained Macromedia Shockwave demo that will have our press releases, program, bios, photos, sound clips, a quiz of ’70s rock music, a Pick Up Ax screen saver, and even (if I can get permission) the full script of the play on it. This wouldn’t make sense unless you knew that the show was about the computer industry. I think this’ll make a great “hook”.
The CD-R is also going to come in handy in mastering an audio CD for the run of the show. All the music is Led Zepplin, Rolling Stones, Def Leppard, etc. and there are way too many cues to be swapping discs back and forth. Especially since Superman Bryan is going to be running both the lights and sound.
This thing will come together. But it’s not going to be easy.
