Revolving Doors

I live in a New York City apartment building, complete with a revolving lobby door—both an entertainment and a danger for my kids when they were little. It is a daily part of my life, and has been for so long that I hardly think about it. Except for the fact that these days, I am beginning to see my whole life as a revolving door.

Strictly literally, the members of my household use that lobby revolving door at all hours of the day. When others are off to sleep, I am off to work. As I nap, others head off or arrive home. Around and around, day to day, who will be home, or eating, or sleeping at any given time is anyone’s guess.

There are days when life outside my home is no different. Who will be at work with me? With a shift-based schedule, it’s hard to predict from day to day. What will I do at work? With a job in news, it’s similarly hard to predict. And with a work force that changes daily from the pandemic, from company policies, from people’s life changes, all I can really do is keep my balance as that door goes ‘round.

Do I feel as though I’ve been spun through that door a little too fast? Some days. But somehow, a revolving door always gets you to the other side. So, as I juggle work tasks and home tasks and the movement of the people in my life, all I can really do is go with the turn. I will come out on the other side. It just might take more than one time around to do it.

Re:Connection

As an editor, I tend to spend a lot of time in a room by myself (except, of course, at the start of the pandemic, when I edited at home in a room with sometimes awake, sometimes sleeping children). It can be a peaceful little life. I interact with the machine, and the material. And for a short time, the producer who hands me the script and video, and the producer who approves the piece. It requires neither a lot of makeup nor a lot of baggage (literal or psychological). And that’s okay with me.

These last few months, however, I have been less of an editor and more of a director. I am no longer alone in a room. And while I am still interacting with a script and video, and with producers, I now also communicate with talent and other technicians and with anyone else who happens to be in the room or on headset.

I was nervous about the change. About learning the equipment and the routine. And about having that much connection. Yet, while my nerves continue to be at a slightly elevated level, the connection has turned out to be a good thing. I talk through, and I talk to, and I learn. I engage with people more, rather than just executing their vision. I connect.

And re: connection, I realize each day that this is an opportunity that came about because I allowed myself to connect. Allowed myself to believe the people who believed I could do it. Allowed myself to have some pieces of my past connect me to taking steps in my present.

So, re: connection may often be about who you know. But it is also about who and what you allow yourself to know. It’s taking that step from what’s comfortable because you do it by yourself, largely on your own terms, to what’s less comfortable because you are reaching and stretching and learning the rules of others.

Today I know more about more tasks and more people than I did before. Because I allowed myself a little more connection.

Re: connection—I re:commend it.

It’s Time

A few weeks ago, in response to my social media “happy birthday” to a former co-worker, he wrote “thank you” (because people do), and that he hoped I was still writing.

The truth is, most of my writing of late has been in the form of helping kids edit cover letters and college essays. And drafting forceful emails to accomplish things. Or simply “writing” in my head. But his comment stuck with me—through the daily chaos, and the overnight work shifts, and the noise of the world, and the revolving door of family and friends and coworkers. So, maybe that means it’s time….

Time…to allow myself to put out into the world what I’m thinking.

Time…to stop worrying that each phrase I put to paper and to the internet won’t be politic enough, or interesting enough, or good enough.

Time…to think deeper thoughts than how much sleep I will get this morning and what I will make for dinner tonight.

Time…to let everything and everyone go, for just long enough each day to write the few hundred words that I wrote, day in and day out, for five-plus years.

Time…to remind myself that while I may be a mother and a wife and a director and an editor and a technician and a short-order cook, I am also a writer. As most of us are, in fact, more than the two or things that people see.

So, with thanks to that friend who just had a birthday, here we go.

Because it’s time.