The Unboxing

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always liked the idea of writing. I remember there was a middle school assignment I had where we all had to pick a profession that we wanted to be when we grew up and, well, write about it. Curiously, I picked “Novelist.” I really don’t remember much else about the assignment itself, but I do remember my teacher doing a bit of a double-take when I told him what I picked… as if to say, “Novelist? What a waste. But actually… Hmm… I could see that.” It’s very probable I’m absolutely mis-remembering or mis-reading the reaction… or rather, projecting my own feelings. After all, I actually enjoy math and science and computers and technology… it feels like if I had played my hand differently, I could be in a very different and potentially very fulfilling career doing something else… but here I am doing the art thing.

But I digress. My point was: I always liked writing — I even kept a pretty updated Xanga for a while until someone found it who wasn’t supposed to and I deleted the thing — but I haven’t really been able to keep up with writing throughout the years.

I’d like to try again.

At this point in my life, the end of 2024, I’ve written a lot of EDIB scripts for Berkeley Interactive Theater, a lot of short pieces for various PlayGround prompts, and one full-length 134-page behemoth that I’m actively trying to cut down to 100 minutes with four actors…

…And I still have never kept up with a blog. I mean, why would I when I can just make facebook or instagram posts, right?

Well, yeah. Sort of…

But recently, I had a conundrum come up— a real, tangible, physical one, rather than an emotional one: I’ve been collecting programs and opening/closing night cards in a box since I started doing theater. In the beginning, I wanted to make a scrapbook of all of the things thinking there wouldn’t be much, right? Wrong. The box is overflowing. Overflowing. I have fallen completely behind. I don’t even know the order of shows anymore — It used to be a chronological stack and it’s now just completely overflowing. And I carry it through every apartment, never quite knowing where to put it and what to do with it, and it just keeps getting more and more… gargantuan.

So I asked a friend of mine, “What do you do with all your old programs and thank you cards and all that stuff? I mean, you keep them, right? For, like, sentimental value and stuff?”

To my surprise, he didn’t. He used to, but not anymore. He simply reads the messages and well-wishes… and then recycles them. What.

“You don’t keep ‘em, like… not even for a few years?”

“Nope.”

“What about, like.. birthday cards? Christmas cards…? Stuff like that—”

“Recycling.”

Weird. A solution to my problem, to be sure, but… weird. Like, emotionally. And yet, not entirely foreign. I had seen a few episodes of “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo” and the biggest life-hack I learned from that show was how easy it is to let go of something once you thank it. For me, that’s how I got rid of a lot of clothes — thanking them and sending them to either Goodwill or the dump. Maybe I could try it with my overflowing boxes…

With cards, it worked surprisingly easily. I spent an evening reading through old Christmas and Birthday cards, feeling all the feelings, and then recycled them.

But for my theater box… no… it wasn’t enough. Simply thanking them wasn’t enough to allow me to let them go. There’s something more I want to do with them. In fact, I already knew: It was my original goal. Part of me still wanted to make a scrapbook of some kind: an archive of the theater work I’ve done and seen and what I thought about them and felt about them.

But who would care to read something like that? If I posted it on Instagram or Facebook, it’d feel like I was… fishing for… something. I mean, I have so many actor friends. My non-actor friends might appreciate the posts, but for everyone else in the arts? I would probably snooze myself if I’m being honest.

So this is where this blog comes in. I finally have a website that I’m very happy with, and it’s easy enough to update and I don’t foresee it changing drastically any time soon. Maybe it’s finally time to start that blog and give it a good try? And, it’ll help me solve my problem of the overflowing boxes: I’d like to post about all my old shows here… and then recycle them. Future Louel and anyone else interested can read on through here, but it’d be completely voluntary and won’t be shoved in anyone’s face who’s just trying to doom-scroll in peace, ya know?

In any case, I like the idea. If it works out, maybe I can finally get rid of this giant box.