On Juggling

I took a course in children's theater in college. We produced a play about a troupe of commedia dell'arte players traveling the countryside. As I was playing the leader of the troupe, my professor wanted me to lead their parade into town doing something flashy and he hit upon the idea of having me juggle while walking onstage. I thought about our performance schedule, 10 shows through the local school system in theaters, gymnasiums, outdoors, all of these venues unfamiliar and unpredictable. Could I manage to learn how to juggle and walk through strange environments at the same time? My professor challenged me to do it, saying if I could make the entrance perfectly each time, I'd get an A for the semester. I'm proud to report that I got that A, but it wasn't pretty. One kid threw a tennis ball at me. Once the semester was over, there went my professional juggling aspirations.

I've been married for just over five years to a smart, patient and generous woman. We have two children, a three year old boy and a newborn girl. A friend told me once that having one child feels like a married couple plus one, but having two children makes it feel like a family, and I'm beginning to see what he meant. I feel a bigger responsibility to the three of them than I ever had.

I'm employed as a computer support technician presently, having spent five years working in the retail field for a major computer company. I've been at my present job for eight months, and while I enjoy the work, I've got my eye out for the next step.

If you were to ask me, though, what I really want to do for a living, what would I be passionate about, what would be that job that I love so much that I'd never 'work' a day in my life, I'd tell you I'd like to be a screenwriter. It began in high school, a feeling like the extra care I gave to essays and assignments meant I was having a relationship with words, characters and story that I wanted to continue for life. I had a group of friends that was as much into movies as I was and we saw everything we could, sometimes three in a day, followed by a stop at the video store. I managed that video store a few years later, managed a few movie theaters and finally went to work in the event video field as a way to make money telling stories onscreen as best I could. All the while I kept writing and rewriting whenever I could, but it always felt like I wasn't giving it enough time.

A few years back, I decided to give writing a harder push, pushing myself at first to put together a stronger portfolio of spec samples with my first true attempts to crash the industry to follow. I began a blog, The One Year Push, at first intended to focus on my writing, but eventually veering off into the other areas of my life, my marriage and my daygig. As I'd visit the blog later, especially after having passed my (incredibly naive) one year goal of making a sale, I felt the need to broaden the focus, to allow myself to comment on the rest of my daily life without forcing a link back to screenwriting, even if the whole point of blogging was to force myself to write on a regular basis, to sharpen the tools.

When it came time to think of a new name, I thought back to that semester of learning how to juggle and walk at the same time. In that show, I was juggling plastic apples. If I'd dropped one of those (and I did, plenty of times), I would pick it up and the apple would be none the worse. Now I juggle these three distinct elements of my life: marriage, career, aspiration. Dropping any of them isn't an option, they would bruise. They've all got weight, substantial heft, yet they need to be handled just the right way, I can't just palm them and toss them in the air.

The image became clear, and my blog had its new name.