So, it’s happened to all of us. We hit a wall and we try to barrel through. We think, if we just keep going, we will get past our writer’s block, our editor’s conundrum, our director’s frustration.

Old beliefs die hard. I get it. I really do. We are taught so many things when we are young. A man will ride up on a horse and whisk you away to a castle and you’ll never have to work as a waiter or an office temp or dress up in a costume and hand out flyers.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who thought if you believed hard enough all your dreams would come true. So, she spent her days dreaming and believing and then one she turned eighty-years old and realized that she had been so busy wishing for something, that she didn’t do anything. The end.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Jane who wanted to create the best lemonade in the land. She worked very hard. And finally, she came up with the perfect mix. She submitted her lemonade to numerous state fairs and local beverage contests. And though her lemonade was the best, she didn’t get into one. NOT ONE. You know why? She didn’t market herself and didn’t have any social media following to speak of and so the big event planners were not interested in her.

So in this weeks’s podcast/vlog I’m talking about the Academy Awards and the marketing machine that really runs the film industry.

That’s not what I want to focus on here. I want to focus on my not so great lipstick in that segment.

Why do I do so many things? I often ponder this. Have I gone insane? Who do I think I am? Why is my dog looking at me like that?

Let’s take a look at the basic laws of motion to delve into this. (I want state clearly that I am no physicist, just a person that likes science fiction movies and learned enough to understand what the heck the characters are talking about…most of the time.)

“There’s no business like show business like no business I know.” sang a loud redhead. She shouted it so the whole audience (and then some) could hear.

I’ve been watching the 2022 Olympic figure skating competitions. It’s quite amazing to view. These athletes go out there, give it all they can, and are so happy when they do their best. Whether they come in 20th or 1st, if they surpassed their previous high scores for the season, they are thrilled. They are jumping up and down, clapping, smiling.

Coffee’s great inside the apartment. She plays, she eats, she pees. Outdoors, Coffee holds back on all of these and focuses on her fear of trucks, helicopter noise, a child screaming – okay, I don’t blame her on that last one.

And I thought as the final incident began, “This is my last camping trip. If the bear mauls us to death, no more camping. If we survive – no more camping and possible divorce.”

Last week I got on a flight to Florida. During the four hours I spent on the tarmac, I thought about all the time spent waiting on a film set. I think this was because they kept plying us with free coffee and by the end of the eight hours I spent on my two and a half hour flight, every flight attendant understood that I drank my coffee black and yes that meant no cream or sugar.

Creative people often describe how they suddenly get an impulse to create something. It’s like a switch goes on and they must carry the current out into the world. An idea pops up and then off they go to their dark editing room, their writing room, their artist cave. In actuality, this current is constantly flowing. It’s always there under the surface.

Last week, I went for a short run and when I was done, I started to stretch. (To be clear, I’m a person with sneakers whose only goal is not to collapse at the end of two miles and am not an actual runner.)

I had a wild and varying journey, trying many things out. Nothing was set in stone. If that were the case, I’d be in the NYC ballet or ABT hopping around a stage at Lincoln Center or directing bizarre versions of Chekhov plays in a small, broken down theatre on the lower east side which is still incredibly romantic sounding to me, even now.

It can seem like everyone around you is doing better than you are which can make you question your level of talent. Talent has nothing to do with it. This is a mirage; it’s snake oil. It’s a pipe dream sold by society on a silver platter that needs polishing.

I was always the kid that hung out with the “old people” who sat on their stoops in the Bronx more than I hung out with kids my age.

So my Aunt Dana said something to me the other day – or rather wrote it in a Facebook post – that has inspired this post. In no way is she responsible for this post…only this sentence:

Today, I had a conversation about whether women should only hire women to work on their films. It’s a tough question. So I’d like to pose another question…should men only hire men to work on their films?

Life is full of disappointments. People in particular can be very disappointing. Their motives are often completely unclear and their missing the value you have brought to them over the years is just stupefying.

Recently, I was at a FilmmakeHers meeting where one of the members commented that she wrote her last script at her corporate job where she was being paid to answer the phones that rarely ever rang.