My So-Called 2021 Life

Part II

Part II of My So-Called 2021 Life

 I mean, if you fly back from England on a Monday and start a 23 hour drive to Texas the next day to do a virtual workshop on Friday and open a festival Saturday, only to have your car start drastically overheating on day two of driving and barely make it to the AirBnB and then site without fully dying, then run eight weeks of a festival technically still during a pandemic, after being unemployed for over a year/not doing your show for 14+ months (have the most fun at said festival, don’t forget that part), buy a new to you car because the mechanic told you that your beloved paid off car wasn’t worth saving, but then being too attached to the old car to get rid of it and shipping it home to have your local mechanic look at it, meanwhile after the festival you drive to your friend’s to watch her eight year old for a weekend, which is the first time you babysat that many hours in a row in your life, then get home for a week and a half before flying back to England (the more I fly across the ocean, the more free wine I get), navigating their entry restrictions again (a pre-flight Covid test, a day 2 and day 8 Covid test, 10 days isolation and a Covid test to get back on the plane) and planning your aunt’s travel to the states along with the protocols she has to go through, waking up at 4:30am UK time to get to the airport after staying up late to make sure the paper work is in order, then having your flight randomly change so you have two layovers instead of one and both the layovers require you to go all the way through security again which leads you to barely make it to your gates before boarding, oh and also btw, your checked luggage didn’t arrive in the US when you arrived in the US and the app says it’s still in Paris, then you land at 11pm eastern and discover that at some point on one of the planes, something happened to your phone charger cord (pictured), wake up the next day to do a promotional zoom meeting for a feature film you’re in then going straight into another meeting for another hour and a half, afterwards having a chat window open for Delta and one for Air France to find out where in the world your luggage is (having the chat windows is like being on hold but without music – it could be hours before someone can talk to you) because if it doesn’t get there that day, you have to buy all new make up for the weekend and your costume choice will have to change, finally to find out that your luggage will arrive from Detroit (NOT a city you flew through) that afternoon, then wait until 5:30 to get taken to the mechanic to pick up the new to you car that needed inspection, driving to the airport to get your luggage, driving home, unpacking from the UK trip to find that your eyeshadow exploded all over your make up case so you have to clean all those little things, then re-packing so you can leave early the next day to drive to Maine (I swear it said 7ish hours when I looked it up but then it said over 8 when I started my trip) to open a new festival that weekend, then what are you even doing with your life??

Not posting for sympathy or anything – just giving you the reason(s) why I haven’t answered your text, message, email, voicemail or fax yet.

Adding that before going to the UK to you discover that your thyroid might be not functioning correctly so you start medication to try to figure that out (explains extra weight gain at least) and that while in the UK, the 8, I, K, J and comma keys on your laptop all stop working consistently so you have to scramble to buy a USB keyboard in order to get your work done.