A nice night.

It snowed all day here. Hard. About 5:45, after dark, Jeanne and I cleared the driveway and sidewalk, taking turns with the snowblower while the kids sledded on a big pile of snow Jeanne built up for them in the front yard. We had fun being in the snowy yard, just in the yard lights, everything looking so nice under 6 new inches of snow, the kids laughing and sledding, everything sounding muffled the way it does with a new snowfall. Jeanne and Maggie made 2 big snowmen in the yard. Very relaxing and fun.

Then after that I went and met John, Chris and Emily and we had a brainstorming session for WTP while stuffing envelopes with our end-of-year mailings. Our first ever mass-mailing to a few hundred people. Raising awareness, and hopefully some funds! And we got to eat cheese and crackers, hummus and veggies and wine. Lots of planning, laughing, some really bad singing, and a nice sense of accomplishment, and anticipation.

Now, off to bed. Tomorrow is my last day being an EMU faculty for…well, some time I think. I’m not teaching next semester, (too much on my schedule already), and then by the time next semester ends I’m hoping WTP will be up and running full-time so that I’ll just be too busy to teach much. Not that I wouldn’t like to go back, because I did have a good time. It’s something I could see myself doing later, down the road.

First, though, I need to run a theatre. I need to tell the stories. It’s funny, the more I do it, the more I really fall in love with being a storyteller. That’s the main goal of any director – tell the story. (There are many, many related goals, and – like most jobs – many many other things you need to manage, master and juggle to reach your goal, but that’s the main thing; telling the story. Moving the audience with a well-told story.)

I enjoyed working with the students, and even if I never try and teach full time, I hope that every now and then I’ll be able to go and teach a theatre class or two at some university.

Now, however, it’s time to move.
Time to build.
We’re getting a building very soon.
3 friends and I are going to gather more friends, and create an entity.
A company.
A family.
A theatre.

I realized recently that one of the things I missed most about not having my old job was that, despite good intentions from most folks, I wasn’t really a part of that family anymore.
Not a close part, anyway. An extended relative, a second cousin who would drop in for visits.

But now I’m creating this…this opportunity, out of nothing, with some people who want it as much as I do.
We’ve got a lot to do. But it’s getting done. We’ve got a lot to learn, but we’re learning it.
And there’s something great about doing it together, with these people.

So tonight, I got to have a good time with both of my families.

Like I said, a nice night.