I’ve done a lot of thinking lately. The 3rd anniversary of Isaiahs death has me reassessing everything around me. The last three years have been surreal. The covid pandemic dictated the shape of how I see the world around me, but it was something in which Isaiah’s death had taken to new levels. The world always has seemed a little off to me, but in May and June of this year, everything seemed off and in need of shaking up. So I did just that—I shook the Etch A Sketch with all of the powers at my disposal, and in the way I saw fit.
First I stopped working. Burnout had left me near total depletion. Covid took away any fucks I had to give about anything except what really mattered. Then coming up on the 3rd anniversary of Isaiah’s death and turning 51 was forcing me to think of things in very absolute terms. There was no room for unnecessary energy or activity in my life. The world is strange, and most of the time I just deal with the world on its terms, letting each day roll by as it is, but I found myself unable to do this, and in desperate need to shift the world to match exactly what I wanted and needed.
The math for my job wasn’t penciling out anymore. Living in Oakland seemed tainted by Covid. Audrey seemed like she has not just recovered, but was beginning to grow and thrive again—however I needed to be sure. The world just had that weird Truman Show like quality to it, but with some disturbing and dark Instagram filter applied. Nothing seemed real. It all seemed scripted and out of my control. I needed to shake the Etch A Sketch, and redraw everything around me, otherwise I wasn’t going to unable to continue functioning. It was that serious. I don’t know how to articulate it, but if I didn’t reconfigure my life and the world around me, I wasn’t sure I would be able to continue with the regularly scheduled programming.
We moved from Oakland, CA to New York, NY. I went from Postman, a startup, to Bloomberg, a well established enterprise. I spent May and June getting my head on my shoulders. I tore myself down and rebuilt myself back up. I had let myself get into pretty bad shape, though working too hard in a covid tinged world, but more importantly through ignoring my mental health. Luckily I don’t drink anymore, otherwise I think it could have been much worse. The result was still a very unwieldy couple of months emotionally, but ultimately something that was neatly wrapped up within 60 days and done in a way that caused the minimal amount of damage to Audrey, Poppy, Kaia and my well being (can’t speak for others). Something that I historically haven’t very good at, but this round I was pretty proud of my laser focus.
The world is a strange place. I find if I operate on purely the terms set by the world around me, everything can end up in a pretty sad state. However, I can be quite the dictator when it comes to protecting what matters most to me, and be damned everyone and everything else. Granted, for others, it can be pretty difficult to deal with me as a family member, friend, employee, or otherwise. If you’ve been in my life for a number of years, you have likely grown accustom to it (or told me to get lost)—I am an unwieldy bitch. However, I find that focusing on who I am and what truly matters results in being able to continue taking things to the next level professionally, and producing storytelling that matters the most to this ongoing production of the Kin Lane show.
