Balancing Act
Monday, May 4, 2009 at 9:18AM 
Balance. Ironically it's one of the things we're seeking for our family as we sell our belongings and move, voluntarily jobless, to another continent for a year. It's been too long since we've posted a blog, and aside from how busy life is getting just trying to prepare for the next year, I just finished working on a variety of television pilots. Long hours. Long weeks.
Pilot Season has always been the storm before the calm for my family. Post production folk all over Los Angeles bid farewell to their families and dive into pilot season. We know this is, likely, the last work to be had until the Fall. At the end of it we say goodbye to each other and hello to our families again (usually sleep for a day or two to catch up) and try to figure out how to re-insert ourselves into life at home once again.
Several years ago Brenna and the kids started leaving town to visit family during pilot season -- they're in Arkansas right now. Yesterday, I found myself sitting on the Warner Bros. lot on a Sunday, my first day off in a while, eating a sandwich in the middle of what used to be Stars Hollow, or Hazzard County if you want to go back a little farther, and might well be Eastwick, Rhode Island next year. I woke up to an empty house and couldn't bring myself to do any of the thousand things I should be doing to prepare for June -- as in the month after May, the month we're in right now. When I left the house to get lunch I didn't intend to go to the lot. Even as I left Togos with my sandwich I thought I was heading for a nearby park to sit and eat. Somehow I ended up back at Warner Bros. and it occurred to me, this is why I'm going so far away to seek my balance. The cosmic pull of the routine is stronger than my own free will. It's all I know -- what I've done my entire adult life. It's time for balance. Or maybe just a new obsession...
Reader Comments (6)
Beautiful.
Amidst the mayhem
A moment presents itself:
"Go, find your balance."
Wow .. Beautiful photograph Bob ...
And a strangely sad comment. I (more often than I'd care to admit) will frequently find myself doing EXACTLY what you described .. and for the same reason .. it's what we know. It's a bit frightening... we're all more intelligent than that, right?!
Thanks for the perspective. Damn. Now to RE-balance. Sounds like a lot of work. Maybe that's the point.
Thanks.
..Perfect! Absolutely Perfectly expressed.. I found myself with the same sort of "pull" Monday morning.. I've got SO so much to do before I move also.. And yet, the first thing I found myself doing was preparing to get to the Studio and dive into what ever was to be tackled.. It took me most of the day to hit the "reset" button, and "let go" of the imbalance! ..My wife is in Washington waiting for me to tie up the loose ends down here and join her in our new home.. Yet, 2 days later, I'm still having trouble knowing what that means!! ..Perfect! Perfect was this blog to help me understand what SO many of us in PPS have lived with for so many years, and though exhausted- -I know I'm going to miss it! ..and YOU, Bob! ..Thank you so very much for everything you taught me when we worked directly together, and for everything you're going to teach me in the next year (s?)!! Love to you and your family, Eric H
I have a picture of you in my minds eye, sitting alone on that fake town square, surrounded by facades of pretty town shops, all of them empty inside. It squeezes my heart. You are consequential, incandescent. You amaze me.