Looking around at the world around me, I can feel myself getting frustrated.

Is frustrated the right word? Maybe not. Listless? Looking that up right now: “Lacking energy or enthusiasm”. That feels closer than frustrated. In March we closed down the Williamston Theatre building to public performances, hoping for a few week hiatus while the world sorted out the virus.

That, of course, hasn’t happened.

And as the months have dragged on, I’ve found myself having a hard time maintaining my energy, my drive to create or produce or explore. There are some things I’ve done, like worked on being more fit (I’ve been walking between 3 and 5 miles a day since Spring), and I’ve been using a couple of apps and podcasts to work on learning the Italian language. But my frustration with the virus, the poor national response to it, the inability to produce live theatre, the question of HOW and WHEN to re-open the theatre… it’s been energy draining. (I know this is not a phenomenon unique to me, also!) I know that this whole year is an anomaly, and that we have to allow ourselves a little slack, but as someone who runs a small institution devoted to “making the world a better place through storytelling”, I am frustrated by my inability to do that, as well as by the fact that over the last few months I just can’t muster the energy to do much. Listless is probably the better word. I feel like I should be doing MORE. But I have no interest in re-inventing theatre for online consumption… maybe that will change in the future, but honestly one of the things I love about theatre as an art form is the presence of a bunch of people in a room breathing together with the performers. Anyway, that’s a whole topic that I could ramble about…. but instead I’m going to change the topic. Listless and frustrated is not something I want to be.

So, often, I find myself taking note of the things I have that I am lucky to have in an effort to make sure I’m not just being whiny and petulant. Here are a few of the things I’m grateful for this afternoon:

My wife will be donating a kidney to me! We find out recently that Jeanne and I are a match, and she can donate a kidney directly to me. She decided a long time ago to get tested and be one of the people to see if she was eligible to donate, but we never expected that she’d be able to give one directly TO me. Turns out that only happens about 5% of the time. I’m just overwhelmed with her generosity! It probably won’t happen for many months, because they’ll wait until my kidneys have given up the ghost, so hopefully the pandemic will be cleared up before the big event.

This past Tuesday, on December 1st, we had a wonderful “pandemic version” of our annual Giving Tuesday Play-a-Thon at Williamston Theatre. It was terrific, the plays were great, the performances were great, Zoom was mostly adequate with only a few challenging lag issues. The most wonderful part was seeing faces of people I hadn’t seen in months, chatting with them about the plays, stories, and seeing people who were looking forward to the theatre coming back in person.

Ted Lasso. YES – if you haven’t yet watched the tv show Ted Lasso, please do. It did not originally seem like anything I would be interested in (American football coach gets hired to coach soccer in England?), but after having many people give strong recommendations, I sat down to give it a try, and was HOOKED. I watched the whole series with Maggie, and then we convinced Jeanne to watch it and she fell in love so we rewatched it with her! Go watch it. It’s just one of the most hopeful, funny, heartfelt things and is a great remedy for the current…. world.

Decaf Chai Tea with Honey. Yeah, everything in my life is decaf now, and I’ve been enjoying tea more than ever. Even peppermint tea, which I expected to hate. But lately the decaf chai with a bit of honey has been a go-to favorite.

Today, I’m doing a couple of Zoom chats with people, and then I’ll be taking my walk. Then I’ve got a date with the couch and a good book. How do you fight off “listless”? Not sure, but I’m going to try!