I am stuck inside my father’s body. More accurately, I am trying to get stuck.

Pretending I know what it was like to gamble with mortality on a 1990’s business trip to Japan. Running details in my head of a story that became cannon, repeated annually at Christmas or Thanksgiving dinners: the holidays being functionally interchangeable except one involved turkey and the other had a ham.

There was ambrosia salad that no one asked for, no one liked. I thought my grandmother invented it. I remember my father’s understated hesitation the year she started making a side batch nut-free so my father could partake. My father was allergic to legumes.

Aphasia unintendedly induced by elder cousins, the four to fifteen years between us an unintelligible gap—what did I know about high school, I was ten. Then later their decision to lead normal lives with spouses and home ownership and kids—so many freaking kids. And mine not to do any of that at all.

Thinking about that one year our uncle came home with pheasants he had shot, which his wife (my aunt) refused to cook, so he did it out of protest on its own, then served it to us terrible, raw, only I—a notoriously picky eater—apparently chowed down. I don’t remember any of this.

My father, shaking the pinkish bird-coarpse in his mouth like the hunting dogs that murdered them, which was a pretty funny joke. I never met my uncle’s hunting dogs. They lived outside in a kennel in the backyard of their mansion—I think it’s a mansion, Mom says it is mortgaged to the hilt—a backyard which to this day I have never seen. Or no, wait, my aunt served charcuterie on the screened in porch at the reception for my uncle’s funeral. So I have seen the yard and can confirm that it exists, though I have yet to experience proof of life from any living dog. Except for the pheasant they allegedly hunted, of which I have no memory, but am told I eagerly consumed.

I rev my engine with the story of my penultimate cousin commandeering his father’s shotgun while our other aunt, a pale fire, was in charge of watching the kids. My cousin climbing up on an ottoman, cocking the rifle, “everybody get down!” Thinking it was hilarious. To be fair, according to the story, it was.

I imagine being inside my father’s body. Not asking to be born the oldest son. Never asking to inherit the family biz. I imagine dropping acid then dropping out of Harvard, my wife telling me she is in labor during my MBA exams at KU.

Flying must be terrifying for him. For me. I have to keep reminding myself we are trying to be the same. We are the same. I am stuck inside my father’s body.

Stuck in this terrible little airplane transporting me from somewhere I don’t want to be to somewhere I don’t want to go, like that time I had a panic attack in the elevator pods at the St. Louis Arch: Gateway to the West. Then home to my wife, whom I likely do not love.

I am introduced to Wata-son, my translator for this business trip. Not knowing son is a curtesy title, not part of her actual name. I will repeat her name with an open, flat “a”— WAH-tah-son for years.

We are opening a franchise in Japan—not my idea. I do math on the margins of napkins calculating how much money I make in an hour. “As much as the president,” I will later tell my daughter.

I want to share with them how hard this is, but no one ever taught me how.

I am sitting, slumped slightly, back like a question-mark so my belly sticks out. Remembering as a child that my clothes came from a section labeled “husky,” as if I have always been different, but expected to belong. Sitting at this table. WA-tah-son translates, slowly, with glottal stops I will repeat later at Thanksgiving with my family because I have nothing else to say to them other than trying to be funny. I am proud of being funny. I’m funny, a funny guy, even though years later my middle child will be devastated to know that most of my “originals” were lifted from Steve Martin. Perhaps I was never as wild and crazy as I thought.

I think about the ceaseless hum that life turned out to be. Claustrophobic flights to Japan to build movie theaters that will never turn a profit. WAH-tah-son explaining blowfish is toxic. Knowing I am meant to admire, give thanks for this thousands of dollars meal, but not actually swallow anything, which is good because adding insult to injury, I am also mildly allergic to fish.

“If there was an award for most allergies and most severe, you’d win” my doctor said to me. Oranges, dust mites, an ongoing quest to get air particles down to zero despite the cigarettes I smoke inside my kitchen while binge eating donuts from Quick Trip, not taking time to pick the chocolate of the plastic film, but opening another five-roll, instead.

“Fuck it,” I think. I imagine that moment of “fuck it. I never asked for any of this.”

And hearing that hum, only the hum, language fading, sitting slouched, belly forward, black suit or navy blue, getting paid what the president makes. I have three daughters, one wife, no I do not think about my wife. I think about my mom, and the empty space she left inside of me because she was terrified having dropped out of Skidmore her sophomore year to marry my dad. Having not wanted to go to Skidmore, grateful to have married, instead. The therapist I will let in and the people I lock out like Lennie saying, “tell me about the rabbits” before George shoots him for his own good. All of that gets drowned out in the hum. This ceremonial meal laid out before me as a matter of courtesy for a very expensive business deal that will go on to be an epic fail.

WAH-tah-son with her gentle fricatives, did she explain to me that I wasn’t actually supposed to eat the fish? Maybe I thought it was funny. Maybe I was in a good mood and said something hilarious like, “down the hatch!” Maybe I got a laugh.

I cannot imagine how enormous the “fuck it” must have been in that moment. A binge eating middle aged human-sized father, whose pallet and histamines agree fish is a no-go. A non starter. Is this the first time I have ever eaten fish?

I imagine wielding chopsticks, or did I use a fork? Fork. Better image. Fat guy with a tiny fork.

Eating the blowfish. Putting the horrible fleshy creature in my mouth, thinking, “fuck it, down the hatch!” Chewing once like an oyster—my dad has never eaten an oyster. Too scary: “they aren’t even cooked.” Then swallowing.

And in that Schrödinger pause where the blowfish is in my body, but not inside my body, that inhale, that pause, before the laughter but after the joke, when I thought, “fuck it,” embarrassing myself frankly, having violated implicit customs, stupid American, I am told, and lived to tell the tale.

I imagine the sour taste of exotic seafood lingering in my mouth. And the transformation of this moment to a story I will tell years from now about WAH-tah-son and the blowfish, and how Dad strikes once again with another hilarious joke.

• No AI was used in the creation or editing of this piece. I even scanned those dang photographs one at a time with an app. Wait, that’s not AI, right? It can’t be. I did it like seven years ago when we were digitizing.

My new ten song collection of cover songs called Woman Love is out today. That’s scary, exciting, and pretty pretty freaking cool.

YOU CAN LISTEN TO IT HERE: https://kirkpasichproject.lnk.to/womanlove

It’s hard to get folks to discover new music without parlor tricks, the algorithm being what it is. But coming out of the circus, my singing voice was strong and my desire to make things was even stronger.

This album was a fever dream, recorded over five days on a whirlwind trip to L.A. It’s my fifth collaboration with Blue Élan Records, and my third with Kirk Pasich Presents.

It’s not funny. At all. Which was hard. Kind of. Definitely challenging at first.

For a long time my goal was to put everything that I do together in one room, which is why my original music was so deeply rooted in comedy. With this project, my goal was to let the music take on its own theatricality and focus on the songs rather than trying to impose a narrative on top of them.

Part of our selection process when choosing tracks was, “is this something that sparks resilience? Would I march to it in a revolution?”

Woman Love features an all-star studio band: Jordan West (Grace Potter, Cam) on drums, bassist Kurtis Keber (Grace Potter, Aly & AJ), Ty Bailie (Katy Perry) on organ and acoustic/electric piano, and Philip Glenn (The Show Ponies, Psychic Temple) on fiddle, violin, mandolin, and accordion, with backing vocals from Maiya Sykes (Leona Lewis, Rita Ora) and Nick Jackson.

I’m taking a course on Coursera. Why? Because I have a praise kink and it comes with a downloadable certificate. I also crave structure. The following is a response to my first AI graded assignment as trained by the virtual professors at Wesleyan University—I’ll let you know what she says when the algorithm finishes trawling.

ASSIGNMENT: Over two pages or so, write about a meaningful mistake that you made. Provide the setting and provide the information necessary to understand the process in which you were involved. When you are finished describing how you made the mistake, write about why you made it. Draw on at least one or two of the nouns you came up with earlier in this module as you think about your story.

MY NOUNS:
Shame, Anxiety, Self-sabotage, Incongruence, Ambition.

Bon appétit!

I remember my mom leaving a small stuffed animal bear with a sports jersey that said “St. Joseph’s College” on my bed. In my memory, it was holding a soccer ball or a flag, but I actually think I’m confusing it with something else. No, this bear was wonderfully simple, generic even, with handwritten sharpie letters in, easily recognizable as having been written by my mom due to her occasional substitution of straight lines instead of curves. Her signature, which I practiced forging just in case, starting with “M” for Marilyn like a triptych of italicized sevens. 777arilyn. I was always bewildered by the careful time she took to close the triple loop of our surname, Durwood, which the rest of us had taken to substituting with a line.

The teddy bear was her way of apologizing for her vocal dessert against my decision to attend St. Joseph’s College: for being somewhat devastated that I enrolling in a more prestigious institution, such as Yale, which, frankly, so was I.

Apology accepted. Three months later, I was off to St. Joe’s in rural Indiana where I was promised the role of starting goalkeeper and little else.

In the end, much good came from my time at St. Joe’s, which has since declared bankruptcy and is no longer open for business. Probably the best thing was a relationship the “only man I ever loved,” Adam—the first and only man—who went on to become a teacher near his home town, while transferred to liberal arts college and became gay. He took it fairly well, though I think we were both disappointed our relationship didn’t last. It’s still one of the best human experiences I’ve ever had, and I am infinitely grateful that Adam and I crossed paths. Our relationship was dare I say easy, a taste of ataraxia I have not experienced with any partner since.

My family rather exploded when I was in high school. I compensated by way of manic extracurriculars—mostly cross country, soccer, speech and debate, and becoming fluent in French, which served as the capstone in my hierarchy of needs.

I found words like “all-state” and “high-honors” a satisfying enough substitute for the “I love you’s” I was missing at home, and therefore pursued them like a heroin addiction. No, like oxygen. I needed them to breathe.

So when a random soccer coach from a random Catholic school in rural Indiana—“our grocery store is a Walmart” kind of rural. “Let’s swing by Grandma’s” only “Grandma’s” is a truck stop kind of rural—I was flattered. So many years of chasing. Finally the thrill of being chased.

I based my decision to enroll in St. Joseph’s College largely on the fact that that they had thrown a party for me on my recruiting visit, whereas other visits to places such as Wesleyan and Claremont McKenna felt awkward and strained. Like having a sleepover because your mom said you have to rather than for the thrill of having basement time alone.

The coach at St. Joseph’s college… what was his name. Blonde hair? Hired his younger brother as an assistant… I can’t remember and I don’t care to look. Full disclosure, I transferred to Amherst College after a year, so my memory of him is contained. Anyway, Coach So-And-So let two seniors out of practice early the day I came to visit. Discretely asked them to run to the liquor store (next to the Walmart) and show me a good time.

Y’all, when I say I partied on that visit, when I say that people were impressed when I answered multiple Jeopardy answers correctly—none of it comes close to shining a light on what it felt like to be loved.

Starting position as a goalkeeper. Show her a good time. Hand me those tuition papers. I am ready-freddy to sign.

My college advisor and I mutually agreed not to post my name on the bulletin board where my high school classmates stuck straight pin flags in a map with the name of the college or university to which they were headed in the fall. I was a star student, and my high school were lovingly embarrassed on my behalf.

None of this is the point. The point of my story is—

There I am, St. Joseph’s college, freshman year, wildly unadjusted. Totally unstable. I wrote poetry. I wept. My dad paid our cleaning lady to drive me the eight hours from Kansas City to Indiana. I bought cloud patterned bedsheets (from Walmart) and was delighted when my roommate and fellow soccer freshman had purchased basically exactly the same set—she was from Ohio. I assume the Walmarts were different there. Her parents helped set up her entire room and were miffed by the notion of my having been “dropped off.”

In high school, I made all-state in soccer two or three years out of four—I can’t even remember, that’s how many all-states I had won. Not only sports, but and debate. Still, soccer was my main squeeze. It was the thing I did every day, on a total of four teams ranging from varsity to club. I went to a tiny little private school where we lost every game, so I was used to a kamikaze style of goalkeeping, making irrational and unpunished decisions, routinely racking up fifteen or more saves in a half and still losing by five.

For reference, most goalkeepers make 3-5 saves in a match, and the average score of a women’s high school game is approximately 2-1.

My inhibitions were at zero because frankly so were the stakes. I was a bona fide ubermensch, overshadowing sloppy mistakes with incredible feats of tenacity and strength. Now that I was at St. Joseph’s College, however, a competitive team where decisions actually mattered, all of that started to change.

We used to walk out to the field to the song “Bombs Over Bagdad” which was accurate because it felt like going to war.

I remember no other details of the game I am about to reference other than I fantastically miscalculated my ability to catch a high, lobbing ball that had mis-fired from mid-field. I jumped as high as I could, which was pretty high at the time, thinking I could catch it at my apex, which would be impressive and sound. Instead, the ball Free Willied over me, slow motion, like dropping a glass of red wine on the carpet. Bounced once, twice, and then rolled gently into the goal. And me, stranded near the top of the penalty box with nothing to do than to retrieve it from the net.

It was embarrassing. For me and everyone else. What kind of numb nuts would—

Coach What’s His Name called Brenda (the back up goalkeeper until then best known for declaring her own name “Brenda” before she entered any room) and I in for a supplementary practice. Goalies only. Scout vs. Brenda. Whoever made the most saves was our starter fro now on.

I have no idea if I won or lost. I think I might have won. (I’m actually pretty sure I won.) I remember it was raining, and that I didn’t want to be a goalkeeper anymore. Er, I wanted to be a goalkeeper, but not in actual games. I wanted to play goalie wars, a drill I learned at sleep-away camp that was cut out the middle-men aka field players, and took place entirely in the penalty box. It was high scoring and high paced. That’s what I wanted. Over a decade of playing soccer with no idea I actually didn’t care for it at all.

When I transferred to Amherst College a year later, I retired from goalkeeping while still securing a spot on the varsity team. I walked on to the Varsity team two weeks into pre-season—I wanted to go on a camping trip, and it didn’t occur to me I should instead focus on my “goals.” The other goalkeeper was an a freshman who had actually been recruited who was less of an athlete than I was but way better at the actual sport. I may have been harder, better, faster, stronger, but Piper was good at the game.

I got used to my position as back up goalie, which in soccer terms means one who rides the bench. A place farther out of the limelight than I ever anticipated occupying, and honestly, a profoundly better fit.

It was less awkward as a bench warmer when my parents’ skipped senior day, and I found the softly abusive language the other goalkeeper used with me to “keep me in my place” familiar and safe.

So goes the end of my soccer career. I fell in love with rugby, then, too, retired from that sport. Rugby was a club, not a team, so our coach was allowed to get drunk with us occasionally after the games. Fergus meaning “man of strength.” Scottish accent. Alabaster cheeks that had, and would never see the sun.

Fergus was softly crushing on one of the worst players of our team, Angie, who never played but happened live with me in the dorms. Not a creepy crush: genuinely “if only…” respectful and kind. Also he was probably, what, twenty five? It never ammounted to anything other than that occasionally Fergus would hang out with us in order to get closer to her. And us.

Mostly her.

One night at Ruby Prom, Fergus was gently roasting us trying as a three beers in club rugby coach is wont to do. “Scout on the pitch is either like how did she do that!?” indicating some incredible feat, “or why did she do that?” meaning something boneheaded, such as whiffing the ball.

Who cares. I was drinking beer out of a solo cup with a crazy straw. Life was good.

I shall offer there is a lesson in all of this. And that the lesson, just maybe, is this:

Sometimes (often) I look back on my life and lament all the many awards I never won. The Peabody’s, Pulitzers, stadium tours, all the television roles I never booked, fellowships I was never fellowed. Then I think about the devastation of whiffing that ball freshman year. I imagine fumbling a touchdown in the Super Bowl and feel honestly pretty grateful for my spot in the middle of the pack.

My mom called me about a decade ago when she was moving out of her house, crying over her inability to undecorated my room, which was covered in trophies, certificates, and a mobile of medals which zig zagged across my bed. “So many memories!” She cried.

“So we’ll make more!” I told her.

She ripped off the plaques from my trophies—most improved, MVP, Clara Barnes French Cup, all-state—and found a place that repurposes used awards for underserved communities.

I still don’t easily receive “I love you’s” nor am I wont to give them out, also don’t try and substitute them with awards. Sure, I still play tennis from time to time, which I joke is because it’s the only way I get to hear my father say “love”—this joke is hilarious, he agrees. If you’re not from a lizard family, you wouldn’t understand, but for us it feels good. It makes sense.

Anyway, hope that helps with whatever you’re going through right now. Whatever award you didn’t win, whatever empty page in your scrapbook wakes you with anxiety in the night. I guess, just… remember you always have an option to turn the page, to leave something blank. Maybe you won’t win the World Cup or a Pulitzer, and that’s honestly pretty ok. It’s an honor to be nominated, and it’s incredibly peaceful to relax into the warm water of being absolutely nothing at all.

I ended up graduating cum laude from Amherst College, one one hundredth of a percentage point shy on my GPA to qualify for magna cum laude which my advisors had recommended.

When I transferred to Amherst College, they threw out my grades from St. Joe’s. A perfect 4.0 down the drain.

* Side note, I feel like grading is different now. 4.0 was as high as it got at the time.

I was pretty upset when it happened. Then I realized I could lie about it if I wanted. Say I graduated magna cum laude and no one would ever know. It doesn’t come up often, but when it does, I indulge myself in the lie.

• Here is where I put my “no AI” disclaimer, but on this one I did use AI to make the thumbnail image. Adobe Firefly. I’m trying to practice. Just in case. I used text to image for the background, but me with a soccer ball is an outtake from a photoshoot we did from my digital series. I needed to change the background because no one wants to see a dirty seamless. Other than the that, no generative AI was used in the creation of this post.

I’ve been tinkering with the idea of a “fictional autobiography” for a while now, as evidenced by my unearthing a file titled “Fictional Autobiography of Scout” which I started in 2015. It only has two entries in it, written somewhat stream of conscious. It touches on themes that still resonate now, such as existential uncertainty and desperately craving success.

I now know that a lot of what I was dealing with—that a lot of what I deal with is burnout of a gifted child, or so the Instagram pundits tell me. I found the article interesting, and felt compelled to share it with you now.

—

The Fictional Autobiography of Scout

Cleaning the spatula, Scout realized she would never be in a perfect relationship because she was so far from perfect herself. She thought about the end of all the movies, where adventure was in your backyard all the time, and thought how horrible it must feel to be so fenced in. Today was overwhelming.

She flipped the record over and felt guilty for playing dumb about the wine glass she had cracked while doing dishes, then knowingly replaced it in the cupboard, having broken another ceremonial alcohol glass earlier that week.

“Oh no, this is cracked!” Heather said. “Is it?” Scout replied, her face hot and already knee-deep in wine.

Scout felt guilty for being a monster, but also wanted credit for drying the dishes, which no one had asked her to do.

Scout had woken up sad today for probably no reason at all. She felt defeated by the passage of time, and let her eyes unfocus on the computer screen so that they could zero in on the split ends she was holding up to the glow. She loved their irregularity, like vigorously used paintbrushes, and lavished in pulling strands apart where they folded like the backward elbow joints of a caribou.

Scout was exhausted by life’s big questions, as well as some combination of hungover, dehydrated, and sick. She wondered if there was something more she should be doing. She worried that there was much, much more she should be doing. She wished she had not done all of the things she had done, wished she had done all of the things successful folks had done instead. She focused on her hair against the glare of her computer and pulled the strands apart: not all of them. Only the ones that were already broken.

Scout had an interesting relationship with food. She was hypoglycemic [incidentally, no I’m not. I have ADHD, which explains many of the patterns I am about to describe.] so when she became hungry, she tended to lose hope in life entirely, and therefore could not be motivated to eat. These bouts got better over time, but when she was very young, she would go for weeks without eating anything substantial, not knowing that not eating was the mysterious source of her sour appetite. Her father suffered from a similar affliction. Once, during a break up, he ate so sparingly for three months that his doctors told him he was dying, despite also being extremely overweight.

Scout used to drink Slim Fast in college. For the calories. Her father opted for Ensure.

At this moment, Scout was exhibiting involuntary co-dependency, waiting for her girlfriend to get out of a movie because she wanted frozen yogurt, but did not realize it was possible for her to go to Yogurtland alone. Before this girlfriend, Heather, she had called Andrew when she wanted frozen yogurt. At the time, they were best friends. Andrew no longer spoke to Scout except on vey rare occasions when they bumped into each other by virtue of their having so many mutual friends. Andrew had terminated their friendship somewhat unexpectedly, by drafting a strongly worded email, which he read to Scout over the phone, informing her ahead of time that she was forbidden from trying to respond.

Scout looked at the pile of air pollution formed piles onto her windowsill by virtue of living off a busy street in the city of LA. Scout often felt she, too, had been polluted by Los Angeles. She worried about her lungs, especially when sunning herself outside. She worried her soul was dying, and that she might amount to nothing in the end.

Scout loved her girlfriend. Very much. When they traveled around the world together, which they often did, Scout liked to pretend to plot her murder, not because she genuinely wanted her girlfriend to die, but because it was an entertaining way to pass the time.

Scout was born in October and identified strongly with being a Libra. She always assumed she was destined to be great.

“I am destined to be great,” she often thought as a child.

Now that she had entered a point when she identified as “ageless” she felt her odds of ever achieving anything meaningful was 50/50 at best. She tried to console herself by telling herself that it was entirely her fault for not finishing the things she started, for having too many ideas, for being altogether the type of person who is not capable of success. She cited her many “near victories” as evidence.

The evidence for her not being a successful was piling up steadily, so much so that sometimes, Scout suffered from bouts of spontaneous tears. She often cried in her office on the floor, which she had painted pink. The office, not the floor. The floor was tile with a faux leopard carpet on it which she had purchased from amazon.com. Once, she and her girlfriend had gotten in a terrible fight, and her girlfriend tore everything out of Scout’s office that did not belong to her.

Scout’s girlfriend was both richer than Scout was and had a stronger attachment to wealth, so most of the physical items in their shared apartment were hers.

In a rage, took the sheets and covers off of the bed. Removed the office chair and carpet that were now in Scout’s office but had previously been hers. She might have taken the desk, because that had also once been hers. It was drilled into the wall, however, and both of them were very drunk. Too drunk for power tools, at least.

The next day, Scout bought a faux leopard carpet off of amazon.com, but decided to keep the chair.

Scout was often very, very sad.

Scout’s office did not have a door, so when she wanted Heather to leave her alone, she would flip the small sign that hung outside the doorframe around to say “do not feed the bears.” The other side said “feed the bear,” and when that side was up, it was ok for Heather to come in and say hello or ask what she was thinking for lunch.

Scout could not write very well during the day. She was a night person, but wished very badly that she was a day person, instead. She had heard studies about how much more successful day people are.

Scout was really only happy when she was doing something. “The only way for me to be happy,” she thought, “is to either always be doing something or to eventually be ok with doing nothing at all.”

Most of what she loved to do was pick at the split ends of here hair, which is why she was doing it now, and also, why she would probably never be great. Too busy picking at split ends. That must be what it is.

I wanted to break the fourth wall for a hot sec and say thank you so much to those who are following along in the early days of this experiment we call Substack. I thought I’d take a moment to talk to you directly about why I started this—blog? I dare not call it “newsletter”—and prognosticate what I hope to both give and receive in our exchange.

Where to start?

In 2019 I sold my first (and only!) television show to an actual network and over the course of two long years of vision and revision, the show eventually—what do I say here, died? Didn’t move forward? Was grateful for the opportunity? There was a ton of executive turnover, to the point that the people who bought my show no longer had the power to make my show, and welcome to Hollywood, them’s the breaks.

Around the same time my pilot was officially TKO, a company called Spiegelworld, circus folk whose employment I had courted for a long time, offered me a job developing the role of emcee for their new show The Hook set in sunny Atlantic City.

My manager advised to do it because this writers’ strike is shaping up to be “really, really bad.” So off I went!

I don’t know if you’ve ever taken a large unplanned break from life as you know it, but it’s pretty incredible. Highly recommend. Driving through New Mexico in my 2004 Vista Cruiser, I felt what I can only describe as a weight removed. A total, terrifying, untethered freedom from the grind of being an actor/comedian. Feeling wasteful for not spending enough time doing stand up, feeling pretty miserable spending so much time doing stand up, auditioning for every pilot, booking none of them (ok, one of them. It changed my life and we’ll talk about it later) but that was years in the past, and now it was all driving to Santa Monica to shout “Toyotathon!” in a sea of “relatable people” trying to get someone to pay us for shouting “Toyotathon!” Years of writing more pitch decks and scripts, of keeping tabs on everything trying to make sure I wasn’t missing some opportunity to slide myself into the mix. All that was gone now. There was a writers’ strike now. I was moving to New Jersey.

I decided to stay in the circus for as long as I needed—until I knew what was next, cashing fat weekly checks waiting for clarity to ring out in my head.

Instead, I write to you today having taken up residence in the bardo, somewhere between tortoise and hare-ing towards success, which I think of as living a happy and generous life.

I left the circus a year ago. I’ve retired from auditioning—I stopped asking and so did they—and have built up an oeuvre of indie work—check out TAKE ONE THING OFF and YOUTOPIA if you haven’t already. I changed my Instagram bio from Entertainment Website (I was trying to be funny) to writer/director. I live in the woods and fall asleep every morning to birdsong. Turns out, I am nocturnal. Sunset birdsong cues me to go to work, morning birdsong cues me to go to bed.

I have a new TV show in development with awesome producers which is promising but not lucrative. I have an album of cover songs coming out on an indie label which is incredibly fun but not technically a job, and most importantly, I had a lot of time in the woods to sit and reflect, something our breakneck hustle culture rarely affords.

Most of what I do with my time now is write. What started as to-do lists, stream of consciousness, and an occasional formal journal, has grown to new heights. Take for example, this very substack publication you are (theoretically still) reading now.

Which leads me to my next—(and arguably my first)—question, what is it you mostly want to see in this place?

I started with weekly posts, which was ideal for exactly no one. Weekly newsletters are the right of cartoonists or publications with a legitimate staff.

I’ve moved to twice a month on hump days—except for today, which is Thursday because I forgot to use auto-post and lost track of the time—which feels like a better pace.

If you’re curious to what you are forward looking—you know that Instagram video where an elder millennial says “is everyone else still rinsing their hair in cold water because we read we were supposed to when we were children and haven’t forgotten about it since?” That’s how I feel about ending sentences with prepositions. Someone told me not to, and now forever I can not.

There is a short film making its way through post that I will sneak peak to you when it’s ready.

An album of cover songs rolling out between now and the end of summer. I KISSED A GIRL out now! Or COME TO MY WINDOW, which is also appropriate for pride.

There is a prose-baby memoir meets true crime exploring privatized mental health care in the 90’s.

Plus a lifetime of previously private essays I have written to try and make sense of the world.

For now, let’s keep it an experiment. A space to try new things and see what sticks. Mostly, I am so grateful to have you with me on this journey, both substack, and the one we call life. Thank you for reading. See you in two weeks!*

* technically thirteen days. Because it’s Thursday. And that was a mistake.

(No AI was used in the generation of this article except for spell check, which I have confirmed doesn’t count as AI. I do occasionally ask it questions about practical things, such as fellowship applications and a couple times I asked it for keyboard shortcuts in Premiere.)

I have been trying to keep better track of my dreams lately. Often in dreams, I think I am awake, so much so that some of my recurring dreams have made their way into the back of my mind as something that actually happened. For instance, I am often falsely persuaded that I have a Masters Degree in English. My usual stress dream is that I’m on my way to the airport but have too many belongings to pack. I think this is why I am constantly reducing my worldly possessions to that which can fit in two suitcases and a carry on. This dream came to me in big pieces. Some of which were difficult to describe.

On y va…

* * *

I dreamt of dystopia. Government take over. Police state. Surveillance and implanted trackers. What I wouldn’t give to have my REM cycle earlier in the night. I lay (lie, lay, lain) in bed until past eleven, despite my desperate attempts at an early bedtime to metamorphazise—metastasize into morning lark.

They implanted a tracker on the right side of my hip, where my sciatica often acts up. Many of us, strangers, held each other and cried.

I could fly, but not very fast. One of them, shaped like an old friend, someone I worked with a decade ago and haven’t seen since, Haneefah, could fly faster and chased me out to sea.

“Maybe we could live in the ocean,” I told someone I was bound to. There were two of us, maybe three? Who were somehow implicated in each other’s lives. I kept telling them, “believe me. I’ve had this dream before. The cities will bow to surveillance, but the countryside will starve.” I dreamt (within a dream) of a farm so remote, local police wouldn’t bother. I imagined cutting out my tracker and winced at the thought of the gore.

The police caught me for… I can’t remember now. And somehow, I assaulted an officer. Not intentionally, I think, but when given no other choice. A voice in my head ringing, “you can stop this. You have to try!” Like Atreyu and ill-fated Artax sinking permanently into the swamp.

Then there was another confrontation with a former company manager of mine. She had joined the police force and had also gained weight. I schadudenfreuded at the sight of her strictly maintained body overflowing in ugly floral fabric from fashion bug or dress barn. I hit her, too. Or, somehow, I lashed out. And saw her howling, face-down on the cement, then still as if planking or like a video game TKO.

We hid in crawl spaces. Cold was coming. I thought maybe we could find a boat, live out on the ocean. In my dream, our city was seaside. Grey buildings covered in shoreline fog. Hiding my face with my hair down like a hippie. I waked into a protest. People wailing. Bring them home. Walked away quickly because I was marked and wouldn’t make it if I was caught. I needed a golden identification card. An officer had confiscated mine. Walked away from the protest. I can’t. I’m too important. I am not ready to get caught.

We climbed through empty apartment buildings, searching for survivors or places where we, too, could survive. We thought of ways we might spare each other, now that we were bound. That I held the solution—I had had this dream before—but also this time, was the one who was marked.

Last time I had this this dream (within a dream) I was closer to invisible. Unmarked. Escaped to the countryside only to find it overtaken with factories, billowing black smoke like a Monty Python animation but darker. Like the moving pages of 1984 where the only industry comprehensive enough to destroy everything was war.

There were animals. A seahorse floating on land. He couldn’t fly, only float. A tiny dear. An even tinier dear. We held on to each other for comfort and warmth. I remember thinking I could save them. We could live in the countryside or at sea, eating seaweed and fish.

I woke up and fell asleep, woke up, fell asleep, desperate to see how it ends. How I saved everyone or at least those to whom I was bound.

I went to a Big Brother/Little Sister meeting—the charity, not the overlord. A benefit for a mentorship program that paired older mentors with younger mentees and asked a well dressed woman something banal. Mutually overcome by the sadness of things, Ield the crook of her elbow, and both of us cried.

The police, members of the enforcing party, arrived to scrutinize the gathering . I watched a man lie about his colorful outfit, a Marie Antionette sex-pot. He told the authorities his rainbow wallet was branded by an alcohol free spirit—the alcohol, not the ghost. A zero proof gin!

And how he’ll call that hotel once again to see if his actual wallet turned up. It had gone missing, and oh, was that a matching bracelet or ring? It’s a zero proof liquor of which this gentleman was a fan. They picked through his trench coat, which was more like a gown. Roco pockets held up by suspenders, the man in questions discretely offloading bottles from les poches to his friends sitting very still at a table nearby. The police tore open his overshirt. An ascot-inspired dickie-type halter top made pf sheer organza underneath. The gentleman was arrested on the spot.

“They’re coming for gay people. Overtly!” I thought. Indicating an increase in the magnitude of our oppression. I felt the hockey puck sized tracker device embedded in my outside hip. The tracker like a restaurant beeper that buzzes when your table is ready, and you are meant to return to the host.

I had been looking for my red parka, knowing it was about to get cold.

Haneefah returned, in a stylish skirt suit with a matching knee length coat. She chased me out over the ocean telling me even there, I was not, would not be safe. That definitively there was nowhere to go.

So I woke up. Saddened by my adventure. Merging it with fabricated memories and New York Times headlines, tossing it on the pile of dystopian apprehension. I slept with open windows. It was cold in my cabin, and I was reluctant, deeply reluctant, to get up.

The thing about writing is eventually, you actually have to write.

The first draft of this was a response to the following prompt in a writing salon hosted by https://www.village-works.org/

“And then there is the most dangerous risk of all—the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet that you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”

- Brianna Media in Nowhere for Very Long.

* * *

“I feel like it’s my social obligation as someone who doesn’t want to get married or have kids. Like, you have an awesome apartment and a job, and I get to live vicariously through that, and I moved into a van and am traveling aimlessly around the country, and you get to live vicariously through that. It’s balance.”

“I guess,” Lucia agreed. Bronte had woken up from his nap and Lucia felt the urge to apologize for taking time away from our oft-rescheduled coffee date to breastfeed. We, having failed many times at loftier plans such as going to a movie or catching the exhibit at such and such museum, had settled for my swinging by Lucia’s apartment fairly randomly one afternoon when I happened to be in town. She made coffee, which neither of us drank, and formally plated a handful of Trader Joe’s “appetizers” such as cheese squares and granola.

“Still working in real estate?” I asked. Lucia nodded.

“Unfortunately don’t know that many rich people who are buying and selling property, so… It’s bullshit, honestly… but I’m glad I got my license,” she added.

“Totally,” I agreed, having no real idea what she was talking about. Nor caring honestly. I stared at the blanket covering Bronte’s head and Lucia’s boob, the three of us at a mutual loss for words.

I focused on arranging trail mix into perfect bites, optimized for flavor and variety. One cranberry plus two cashews. Peanut and raisin in equal amounts. Pistachios, which were fine on their own.

“What are you writing?” Lucia asked.

“Oh,” I said, because one never knows how to answer that question. An instinct kicks in to throw out empty syllables so ones brain has time to think. “Oh, uh, excellent question. I… well… there’s a pilot that I’ve been, tossing around. But you know the market isn’t really…”

“What are they calling it? A compression? Reduction?”

“Yeah it’s some word they’re using instead of ‘the industry is fucked.’ Condensation? I can’t remember, but. Yeah.”

“What’s it about? The pilot, what’s it about?”

I hesitated. Unfinished scripts are like acid trips, no one actually wants to hear about them despite a compulsive obligation to ask.

“Burlesque.” I said. “In the early 2000’s. Neo-burlesque…

Ikea clock ticks ominously in the background. “How’s, um, Theo?” I ask, intentionally changing the subject. Theo is (hopefully) the name of her partner. “Remind me how you met?”

Even knowing she was jealous of my abundance of time to write, I didn’t want to talk about career. I was lonely from too much time on the road and wanted someone to talk to me about what it was like to be in love, or better yet, how stupid it was to be tied to a worthless co-parent who was basically like raising a second child in an archaic union aka marriage that actually makes no one happy, implying how lucky I am to be alone.

“We met in an art class.”

“That’s right!” I remembered. “Pottery?”

“Yeah. We both, I don’t know. And here we are ten years later.”

“Here we are.”

Here we are. Waiting for “catch up” to expire so we can return to the safety of our real lives. Still, who knows when we might do this again. Might as well soak it up while we can.

Lucia’s eyes scanned the apartment for things she wished she had organized before I arrived. I focused on trying not to sweat. The air conditioning felt stifling. I wished desperately for fresh air.

A humidifier hummed in the background. Lucia excused herself when Bronte started to cry.

“Sorry, he’s usually not so…”

As soon as she was gone I checked my phone, happy to be back in a world that made sense to my particular set of needs. I responded to of my quippy group texts and favorited an email about an upcoming ayahuasca retreat.

Years passed. Eventually, our Lucia and my friendship consisted mostly of a yearly text, almost always from Lucia asking, “what’s the best address for you these days?” Resulting in a holiday photo-card of Bronte starting kindergarten, in Hawaii, on a boat.

That turned into an email with a short update and Happy Holidays at the bottom. Sometimes Lucia took the time to alternate letters red and green, which was cute, if not somewhat over the top.

I told her when I joined the circus show and moved back to the east coast. She told me when she and Theo bought a house.

And so it goes. Lucia and I have Swedish Death cleaning our friendship down to its barest essentials—we like each other, and so we stay connected, a tether never broken even as stretches to something iridescently thin.

Ah, the web of friendship. Where nothing is left except for the fact that we love each other. That we genuinely care that the other is doing well, and sometimes, often, just that is enough.

Revised word-vomit from a passage that may or may not make its way into revisions of a play. Inspired by actual events. Bon appétit!

* * *

I got a “bad” haircut this morning and was immediately derailed. Cried for a while, drafted dozens of (unsent) texts to the stylist who did this to me. “Unfortunately, this cut still isn’t a…” now I can’t even remember the word. Win? Match? Fit?

They’re all so passive aggressive, which was the point, but I feel like I came up with something earlier that was douchey in a way that made it clear that the douche baggery was on the stylist’s part and not mine.

“It’ll grow back. It’s just hair,” hoping that when she reads “just hair” she’ll understand that both she and her life’s work are existentially irrelevant, like castles in the sand only worse, because she made me sad.

That complimentary reiki , the combination lavender AND eucalyptus oils,“Let’s go crazy—try them both!” Were for naught. Less than naught. Were damaging. Were unintended sources of pain.

I did text—“I didn’t realize we cut almost four inches!”

“We cut two and a half.” Like hell “we” did. I am confident that what I lost in your chair amounted to significantly more than that.

“Thank goodness for wigs!” or “finally got the motivation to re-style those halo extensions I wore in the circus.”

And me, who sat in her chair, being non-consensually transformed into a into a woman with a lob, a long bob, having distinctly come in asking for a curl cut and a trim.

I wonder if all the haircuts I have endured in my life—most of them bad—all the times I cried in the parking lot or ran home to put on a hat are because I am humbled by the thought of failure, and what I really want more than anything, what I want so fucking badly I’ve been almost able to taste it my entire life, is for my hair to be long, because that is how I’m told I would be the prettiest and have therefore deemed it a non-negotiable indication of success.

Then finally, I could pretend it is effortless. “I barely even get it trimmed!”

I avoided body dysmorphia most of my life by virtue of being effortlessly thin largely due to having undiagnosed celiac disease and generally too much anxiety to eat. (This ended in my thirties, relax.)

When I was little, mom used to spread peanut butter and honey on rice cakes and hand them to me sans plate, so that the easiest way to for me to dispose of them was to eat.

At seventeen I entered and won a beauty pageant—story for another time. Three months later my mom and I spent Thanksgiving in an Orlando, Florida competing for a national title in a franchised hotel. An off-duty judge threw me side eye for my passionate use of treadmill in the gym.

“You’ve lost some weight.”

Excuse me? You have no idea I have or have not lost. It is cross country season senior year. I’m not running to lose weight, I’m running because the opposite of running is failure. If the goal was to be skinny I’d pursue it quietly, in shame-corners like everyone else. If I wanted to be skinny I’d shut up and use the elliptical, which I am not not because Coach White told me it might shorten my stride, which is important because I have goals, lady. Bigger than this pageant! Bigger than anyone ever dreamed of! And all I have to do is keep running until—

I didn’t say that because I’m not an idiot. I saw how much we hated Jessie Spano’s wanting so badly to be perfect on the Hot Sundae episode of Saved by the Bell. Obviously, we could relate to Jessie Spano, but we weren’t outwardly proud of it. We didn’t fucking advertise that all of us were [Jessie Spano impression] “so excited” and “so scared.”

Look how that ended up. Elizabeth Berkley tried to take herself seriously and ended up in Showgirls, the butt of everyone’s joke. Now she runs self-esteem workshops through her non-profit, Ask Elizabeth.

That’s not what I was trying to tell you about. I can’t… My brain won’t focus… I’m so upset about my hair.

When I was in acting school, which after this and other reflective essays I have upgraded to “not a complete waste of time” one of my acting teachers, the co-owner of the studio, pulled me in front of the class.

She yanked the jeans up around my natural waist—I wore them baggy on my hips, and says, “anyone else want to get in here with Scout? There’s room for one more!”

Laughter all around.

The teacher goes on to talk about I am intentionally contrarian, how I “reject my natural beauty.” Then she asks Molly, who is seventeen, by the way. I’m twenty two—jurassic next to Molly—she asks Molly to come onstage, and highlights how Molly gets it because look how her jeans fit and look how her hair is styled and straight. Molly wears jewelry. Molly doesn’t self-sabotage. Molly is willing and able to play the game.

And the thing is, I thought I was, too. I thought those jeans looked really, really, good on me. I wore them on purpose in order to be admired or dare I say it, even loved.

Decades later, 2026. I spend an entire year, more than that!—trying to grow out my hair, after twenty years of also trying to grow out my hair, fearing every haircut they will take away all that I have worked for: “girl, we gotta get rid of these ends.”

“Stop messing with it! Leave it long.” I am fucking trying! And this woman, this stranger annihilates it to my collarbone.

“Just taking off what’s dead.”

Like thinning shears to my thinning soul.

For the record, my hair doesn’t look bad now, it just doesn’t look long, which regardless of personal preference I have been told correct. Invisible, even. I imagine people passing like factory inspectors flagging only my mistakes as they ramble past on a conveyer belt.

Contrarian? Me!? I am literally trying my best!

I once had head of casting at I think it was Fox? Maybe not even head of casting, but someone important say to me mid-compliment, mid-meeting, “where the heck have you been?” I nearly feinted.

I’ve been trying to get in here, you dumb idiot. I’ve been outside waving desperately to get your attention in this very room!

I didn’t say that. And she didn’t call me back. Not for the role of ex-girlfriend, barista, not even for hot girl who forces a spit take.

My friend Eddie told me one time, standing outside The Comedy Store, “every day in this town either changes your life forever, or it does not.”

It’s exhausting. Where have you been? Trying. I swear, this whole time I’ve been trying.

So the thought of venturing outside for someone to tell me “oh, you got a haircut” and admit I failed at something as basic as “haircut,” It’s unbearable. It really is. On top of of everything else. Which was quite a lot to begin with.

Dangling participle.

Which was quite a lot with which to begin.

*No AI was used in the creation of this piece. With the exception of word processing and spell check, this essay is technology free.*

Today there was a tick on the edge of my toilet bowl, which I discovered pants down, ready to sit. At first I mistook it for a tiny spider, which arguably it is, before recognizing it as a different kind of arachnid. One thirsty for my blood. I cut it in half with a kitchen knife, then cleaned the knife to make sure none of it remained. Hovered over the body making sure it was still, unsure about whether or not the arachnid nervous system is organized to feel pain.

Smart little guy before he died. Arms up and waving, on the front lip of my toilet bowl ready to pounce. Had it attached, it might have gone unnoticed for who knows how long. The backs of my thighs are conveniently out of sight. Maybe until the next time I took a shower, which is usually in the middle of the night when I am struck by an imaginary bug, the “heebie jeebie” which causes panic and an inability to sleep. I have found a hot shower tricks my body into thinking it is already falling asleep. Sometimes I wake up with red marks on my skin from the temperature of the water.

I should also note a red mark on my right buttock over which I have long fretted (not that long, maybe a week?) might be a tick buried deep into the soft tissue of my ass cheek. I have been unable to snap an intelligible photo to send to my friends in Los Angeles to confirm, and here, I live alone, the spot in question past the apex of my butt-curve, so from almost any of my perspectives it is occluded by either shadow or skin.

I picked at it a bunch until blood came out, and still no site of bug-life, so I’m assuming it is either foliculitus or a b-imple.

I think about him waving, the tick I have either murdered or defended myself against. Ready for the greatest leap of its life. How dare it try to feed its family at the inconvenience of my ass.

Earlier this morning I was weeding an invasive species that has taken over the yard and came across a garter snake, frozen, trying diligently to remain unseen. I thought about being scared of garter snakes, which for the record, I am not. How this snake is almost definitely unable to hurt me, but how Maud (my friend in LA) is terribly afraid of snakes and would run away at the site. Would ask me to shoo it from her vision, just in case some imagined scenario takes place.

What a strange thing to be an apex predator. What crushing amounts of control.

Are You there, God, It’s Me, Margaret is the handle I would use were I winding-up the tongue for a prayer, which at this point, I might be. I am that desperate to believe in change.

Something broke in me over the course of the pandemic. I lot the ability, almost entirely, to be productive in any way.

Since middle school I’ve been pit-bull-on-a-pork chop with my goals, staying up till wee hours designing outfits for middle school, popping No-Doz in high school because I was so excited* for extra-curricular activities seven days of week, even though one of those activities was straight up running—four years cross country all-state, baby. My friend used to tell me I’d have time to sleep in college, which now strikes me as absurd. No one sleeps in college, right? My New Year’s resolution the year I left New York was to try and take-off two consecutive days every month. I accomplished that once.

And then Covid happened, and either I snapped or there had been a crack somewhere in me for a long time. As it stands, six years later—has it already been six?—I remain pathologically incapable of getting shit done.

Burnout? Ok, maybe. But I rested. I gave up drinking—well, I cut back. I downloaded an app and have won multiple badges. Anyway, I’ve always done creative work. I’ve always been my own boss. Why is this so hard? My dog wakes me up at six every morning and I still manage to sleep until, I don’t even want to tell you. I shoot for “double digits” (ten, eleven, twelve) because single in either direction is absurd.

“But you’re writing this essay. That’s something.” Bitch, do you know what I’m procrastinating to write this right now? I shot a six minute short film a year ago that I haven’t edited. The rough cut will take me ten hours? Twelve? I haven’t even logged the footage.

I’ve downloaded spreadsheets and bullet journaled and brain dumped and hired an accountability partner. I’ve gotten angry with and forgiven myself. I’ve lowered my goals: “Just open the file. Write one sentence, that’s a win.” I even asked a chatbot to act like a productivity dominatrix, and yet…

“Covid taught me to lower expectations. Especially of myself,” said a dear friend of mine who was almost finished with her dissertation both before and after the pandemic. So now what? Is this just how it is? A minefield of rabbit holes with crafting experiments, recipes, and scrolling, oh the scrolling. Searches for “ambient music for ADHD focus.”

I don’t want to be broken. Or at least, I’m interested in breaking a different way. I want my freaking brain back, so I’m hitting enter on this post. I’m doing one thing all the way to the end. If Malcolm Gladwell were here he’d weave in a related social phenomenon, “and that’s why golf courses are bad.” Latif Nasser would tie this shit up with a bow.

But I’m not there yet, and it isn’t my goal. Right now the goal is hitting enter. Showing up for myself without memory or expectation. Forget about the restructure of my industry and how terrifying it is to do any of this for money and how even terrify-ing-er it is to think that you’ll never get paid for this again.

Do one thing. Hit enter. You opened up the file. You finished it. Right now, that is enough.

P.S. Whatever Margaret was praying for, I hope she got it too.

P.P.S. No spoilers.

P.P.P.S. I don’t know the right phrasing that folks use but no part of this was AI. Like, not even spell check. Wait, does spell check count as AI? Like, regular spelll check. Damnit. Now I have to google.

P.P.P.P.S. It does not.

* Jessie Spano, Saved by the Bell. When I first moved to LA Denis Haskins and I were friends and used to go to this one cafe in, what is that, Burbank? Once a month or so. I don’t remember how we met. Possibly, we briefly shared an agent?