A couple of years ago, I gave myself the chance to make some big decisions about what to do with my life. This is a story about loving and caring and finding out what you want.

My life was at a critical pass in March, 2002. For about nine months, I'd been working at "freelance web development," and had made about $500 at it. I'd been working part-time at an elementary school for a couple of months, and it was giving me a good blend of fun, challenge, and cash, without eating up my days. But I had quit my high-paying, powerful tech job nine months before, partly under the distant notion that I might try to put on a play. I knew what I wanted to do—I had solid ideas about a certain script; I'd already done a private reading of it, which had gone well, and the cast and observers were siked on it.

I was 24 and slowly running out of money. I knew it would be easy to say "I used to do theatre" or "I could have directed something," and I knew that I would never learn anything about myself if I didn't follow through. To be fair, I didn't quite know what I was doing. I had read a lot of theory, and done a few classes, workshops, and small-scale productions over the years, but I'd never been through a whole production.

All in all, I decided I was slightly underqualified to produce a play, and that I absolutely, singularly, terrifyingly had to do it.

But would I have the balls? I consulted with my then-girlfriend, a sweet dark-haired gal who was a beginning social worker and activist, and believed muchly in loving and caring and listening. She said vaguely encouraging things.

On the day the applications were due (for the Seattle Fringe Theatre Festival) I woke up in her bed. The office was to be open from 9am, and spots were first-come-first-served, so my cohorts were lining up from about 4am or 5am. When I woke up and rolled over, it was 11:45.

"Emily! It's almost noon!" I made a quick calculation of the likelihood that any of the 100 spots were still open. I noted the fact that without the Festival's support, I would be more than just "slightly" underqualified and I'd have a hell of a time promoting my show. I realized, in conclusion, that I had blown it.

"Emily! It's almost noon! Today's the day the Fringe applications are due."

"Mm-hmm," she said. I was appalled. Yet, in the spirit of follow-through, I had to do run the laps. It was essential that I make some demonstration of my spirited desire to complete—no matter how useless. I lept out of bed, pulled my trousers on, biked home in a frenzy, pulled the wrinkled applications out from whatever cranny they had been stuffed in, biked down to Broadway in Seattle and got some photocopies, then over the Fringe office. The front walk was littered with paper cups and there was a large tank which I assume had held coffee, for those lined up at 4am. I knocked. The Fringe head let me in.

"Are there any spots left, by any chance?"

"Yeah, a bunch! Just put your John Hancock here and put the application in one of these folders."

I did so.

For the duration of the summer, I spent a few hours each day working with the kids at the school, then reading and making notes on the play (taking some time out to blog my evolving life, of course), then four hours at night rehearsing with my dedicated, and relatively skilled, cast. I would come home around midnight, charged by the work and sweating from the bike ride, and then sit at the typewriter and type out a page of notes. It was one of the most learning-intensive periods of my life, as I grappled with the blocks faced by my cast, their differing desires, my own inability to communicate or to make space for their processes, my limited theatrical imagination, and the myriad practicalities that got in our way ("Did you bring the broom? Oh. Can we do a scene that doesn't have the broom?"). I was often frustrated, often glad, often embarassed; I blew about $4000 on the whole shebang, and never saw a cent of revenue.

But, there is a kind of learning that can only occur by going through, by putting yourself in the path of danger and forcing yourself to find a way out. The imagination gleaned through reading is a pale fire in comparison to this, doing. As the producer and director, I could never shrug off any failing, I could never just relax and point the finger. I was fully and constantly engaged, resolving problems theatrical, practical, and interpersonal.

Emily, on the other hand, was as blasé as could be about the whole experience. That she could not support me, nor see the value of this growth for me, put an unbreachable rift between us. Somehow she could witness a human being living at his fullest and be unmoved, while every day she worked to love and to care and to listen to others, ostensibly for their fuller development as human beings.

There seem to be two cultures in the world, that of those who approach life as a mountain to be climbed, and that of those who approach it as a wound to be patched. At my best, I am one of those who pulls the bramble out of my skin and keeps hiking, without washing the cut.