Well, it’s Sunday night again – remember, Constant Reader, that I since I post these musings on Monday I typically write them the night before. I’m curled up at my laptop, my cat on my lap, WQXR’s “Old School” playing in the background (it’s the big Shakespeare’s Birthday episode). And I’m fighting off massive exhaustion, since before I got home from work I spent a good hour swimming laps at the pool, after getting off from work.
Since there’s a fitness center attached to the facility which provides my day job, I’ve been trying to hit the gym for at least a few of the days when I’m on site (typically four of the five days I’m at work, with one day still remote – thanks, pandemic). Over the next few weeks, however, I’m looking to increase that to five or even six days per week. Furthermore, there should be at least one or two weeks where I’d have sufficient time both before and after work to get in two daily exercise sessions – an hour or so of heavy weight training in the morning, and then an hour of swimming or other cardio work in the evening.
You might think, given that this is a theater blog, that all of this increased exercise is in preparation for an upcoming gig. And you’d be sort of right. Usually, however, the gig in question would be a role I’d be playing as an actor, which might require a certain physicality or pose a certain appeal to my vanity. This is not the sort of thing you usually associate with a playwriting gig – but that is precisely what I’m preparing for.
In a little less than two months, I shall be back in Valdez, Alaska, for the Valdez Theatre Conference. I shall have a full length one-act, Before Vinson, read at the Valdez Conference Center, perched on a bluff overlooking the still waters of Prince William Sound. I shall have another piece kick off the story relay portion of the Valdez Fringe, taking place just down the hill at a place called Magpie’s-on-the-Fly, an outdoor café with a performance stage attached. (Well, sort of attached – they’re both on the same lot. It’s Alaska.) I shall once again hear the bald eagles twittering (they don’t sound at all like you imagine) as they circle overhead. I shall once again behold the fearsome majesty of the Chugach mountains, and sit beneath them in the strange light at midnight, there where there is no darkness in summertime. And most importantly, I will once again be guzzling some fine craft beers out of Magpies’ mason jars, and gorging myself on their enormous cinnamon rolls.
Seriously, pastries are my Achilles’ heel, and probably responsible for the entirety of my pandemic weight game. (Stupid Starbucks runs.) And for that week, I know full well I’ll be eating a lot of them. And so here I am, committing to a brutal fitness regimen and hoping to drop between five and ten pounds, specifically so I can gain much of that back during after hours carousing during a theater conference.
Whatever gets you motivated, I suppose.