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This October marks two years since Bernie and I moved in together at our current place in Newton. It’s been a wonderful change for me, living with Bernie after spending almost seven years long distance, and into a better space that feels more like mine after eleven years in my old place with roommates. I’ve been very happy there, but it’s only recently that we’ve finally reached a point where I feel like we have the house arranged and furnished the way I wanted it.

For a long while now, my dad has been planning to downsize to be able to move out of and sell our childhood home. It’s been slow, since he was still working full time until this past summer, and I think the emotional weight of moving onto the next life stage has had significant impact. But he offered me my pick of a lot of the furniture, and there were a number of pieces I wanted to move up to my place. The biggest one was, of course, the library shelves, a beautiful set of eleven wood segments that held Dad’s collection from the Easton Press, handsome leather bound books he’s been building up over the course of the last twenty years. I’ve always loved them— I think Dad went to the trouble with them so my brother and I could grow up around beautiful books and develop our respect for them —so I’d been hoping to bring them North since I moved.

The problem had been, however, convincing Dad to just let Bernie and I move them. I think he still thinks of me as the child I used to be who was too spacey to take good care of her things, so he kept trying to get us to use professional movers. Which then were all either too cheap and do a bad job or too expensive and screw us. It took a confluence of events plus Bernie carefully explaining a moving plan before he let us just do it ourselves. However, when he finally changed his mind, we weren’t expecting to do all that labor the weekend we went up to visit, so the enormity of the job threw our schedule into a tailspin we’re only just now digging ourselves out of. But it means we finally, finally, have the shelves we’ve been saving space for in our house for the last two years.



They’re really beautiful, particularly the set we’ve filled only with the nice leather books and tasteful art objects we’ve put in the living room. It makes for such a wow when you first turn in from the doorway. I’ve always had this fantasy of living in a home that didn’t make me feel like a college student just figuring things out, and finally the living room space fits that.

The other shelves are in my office and Bernie’s on the second floor; we don’t have any one space big enough to display them all together the way my parents did. But we needed the extra storage space, as even with the new books, the shelves enabled us to unpack some our of own books that had been sitting in boxes since we moved in. It feels good to have finally dealt with that stuff.

It also helped me make the upstairs room that is supposed to be more office feel more comfortable and complete. But I will talk about that in my next entry.
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Little Monsters
stop motion shorts by Phoebe Roberts

Previous episodes:
Episode 1 - Eat Your Heart Out
Episode 2 - Made Wrong
Episode 3 - Creeping Over

This episode: Communication is key in healthy friendships. Ghoulia has to say the right thing to repair her relationship with Lagoona.

~~~

Episode 4 - "The Right Words"



Written, shot, and edited by Phoebe Roberts

With the voice talents of
Jackie Freyman as Lagoona Blue
Goreson Helles as Ghoulia Yelps

With technical assistance from Bernie Gabin

From @ BreakingLightProductions on Youtube

Teammates

Mar. 16th, 2023 08:37 pm
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In the seven and a half years Bernie and I were in a long-distance relationship, we managed the challenges of it pretty well. While we missed each other, we maintained an emotional closeness that lasted even though the physical separation. It wasn’t ideal, but it was… okay. Even so, when we were able to finally able to live together this past September, it was a huge improvement for both our our daily lives.

The one thing we struggled with was the inability to materially support each other in the day to day. It meant we couldn’t do much for each other if one of us needed help with something practical. So now, it’s a revelation to be able to actually take life burdens off of each other’s shoulders. When one is busy, the other can pick up the slack with making dinner or running the errands. If one’s sick or not feeling well, the other can take care of them. And just normal divisions of labor are possible, where one of us can handle the stuff the other isn’t good at or doesn’t like. The difference has been huge.

The past few weeks have been rough for both of us in various ways; tons to do at work, plus some minor health issues. But we’ve done a good job trading off picking up the slack for each other. Made it all just a bit easier to deal with. I can’t say how grateful I am to be able to work as a team these days.
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It’s been about two weeks since a couple of major life changes went into effect— Bernie and I moved into together into a new place we’re renting in Newton, and I started my new job as a full-time instructor at Lesley University.

These changes were very, very welcome for me; I’ve been feeling a bit stuck in place in these aspects of my life for a while now, so I’m delighted to have made these big forwards steps. Bernie and I finally got to end our seven-year period of long distance, and I really love being in our new place. It feels like a weight’s off me being in a home that feels like ours. Having roommates was tough on me, and Bernie and I getting to be together in the day to day and do things are own way is something I’ve been dreaming of for a long time. It might just be the excitement of the new and fresh right now, but I think this is going to make for a serious improvement in my everyday mental health.

I’ve also, basically at the same time, begun a new position at my longtime employer Lesley as a full-time faculty instructor instead of just an adjunct. This is a really big career step forward for me, so I’m very happy of the opportunity. If you know anything about the current state of academia, you know that full-time teaching posts have become harder and harder to come by, with most of the teaching load filled with part-time adjuncts that are not well-compensated. Getting to move up in an institution from adjunct to full-timer is a pretty big deal, especially with how competitive the market is. Considering more and more if not most faculty have PhDs now, I’m pretty proud of the fact that my accomplishments were sufficient to be hired even though I only have an MFA. It’s more money than I’ve ever made too, and while I’ve for many years held multiple part-time jobs, this is the first real salaried full-time position I’ve ever had.

Setting up a new house and starting a new job all at once, however, is a LOT. The house is coming together, but it’s been slow going, especially since we don’t have quite enough furniture for it. And I really love the place, but it’s definitely nicer than our stuff is! Still, I don’t want to just buy a bunch of things before I’m sure what we really want to live with. I haven’t even begun to work out my office, and the kitchen is only fifty percent of truly functional, so there’s still a lot left to figure out.

And the job is a lot as well. I have a large mentoring component in addition to my classes. I really appreciate not having to drive between multiple schools, but a very high level of student support outside of class is an explicit part of my position. I’m still figuring out what my days are going to look like, what the most effective student support strategies are, and how best to manage my time. I’m supposed to help with passing and retention rates, which is kind of a tall order, but if I do well, there’s a chance my currently-one-year-appointment could be made permanent.

All this means I’ve been busy enough that I’ve done basically no creative work since September started. It feels really strange, but I’m trying to just be okay with it. I think I need to prioritize building the new shape of my life right now, since laying those foundations well will put me in a better position later. And I really don’t want to burn myself out, seeing as these life and work chores simply have to get done. Bernie and I already decided we’re not having a live Hawking performance at Arisia this year, only sending our filmed recordings and maybe a Q&A if they want it, and with both of us in new jobs and the move it becomes even clearer it was the right decision.

So, good things have happened! Though they are a lot of work. :-D
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Now that everything has been arranged, I have some good news to share! Bernie has gotten a job in the Boston area, so this September, we are moving into a place we’re renting together after seven years long distance. I’m so happy and can’t wait to be together in our new house.

It’s really strange to think of having our own place. I have lived in my current house for eleven years this past June. It was called Illyria, as was the custom among the members of Hold Thy Peace to give their places Shakespearean names— my wifi network still uses it. I stuck here for as long as I did, outlasting many rounds of roommates, not because I adored the place, or even because I deeply wanted to, but because it suited my needs better than pretty much any other place I could afford.

I confess, I do genuinely love my bedroom. It’s the place that has felt the safest and most my own even in my worst moments. It was Home Depot orange when I first moved in, but I painted it a bright blue called Hundred Acre Sky. It’s spacious and comfortable, with plenty of light, lots of storage, and a small office space off to one side of it I have used for countless costuming and craft projects. This storage, this safety, this space of my own has enabled me to do so many things intrinsic to my creative outlets that are my most important pursuits. I can store all the stuff I need to do the work. I can put the bed against the wall and make a green screen studio. I can hide away from the world to think and dream.

The other special feature is the kitchen. The large, open blue-and-white space is the second thing that has kept me here as long as I have. I love to cook, and the spacious countertops made for ideal workspaces while the many cabinets housed my large collection of All-Clad cookware. It’s helped me to entertain in the way that gives me the most joy, cooking lots of food for large groups, and giving them a comfortable space in which to enjoy it.

Because I’ve been here so long, the place is “mine” in a sense. Most of the common furniture is mine, and I set certain ways of doing things just because they were like that when new folks moved in. But one of the things I’ve been most looking forward to is feeling like I can use the space without imposing, because I’ll be sharing it with my life partner. Also, I won’t have to be living on top of all my theater stuff. It will have its own space where it is not necessarily the same place as I feel most comfortable spending my time in. That will be a huge mental ease on me, and I’m really excited for it.

Not to mention the fact that Bernie and I can start our lives together in a way we’ve never been able to before. We’ve been together since 2013, but we’ve been long distance for the last seven years. I’ve missed him so much, and though it’s been basically okay, I’m so looking forward to spending our days with each other, and to get to work together as a team every day.
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After a four-month hiatus, I finished a chapter of my fan fic series! I didn’t mean to take so long. But I was in an intensive production cycle, and I just didn’t have much time or bandwidth left over for working on fic.

Additionally, for some reason, I was struggling with the part of the conversation I was working on for that part of the story. It was supposed to be Howard Stark confessing to some ways he’d recently been acting out as a reaction to some problems he’s going through, and Steve trying to balance his disappointment in Howard’s actions with trying to be nonjudgmental and supportive. The levels of vulnerability, defensiveness, compassion, and self-righteousness just weren’t coming out right.

But lately I’ve been in a quiet period and I missed it, so I was determined to buckle down and work my way through it. It’s taken me a couple of weeks— for some reason I just couldn’t seem to get it right! I couldn’t have figured it out without Bernie’s input. He doesn’t really work with me on my fan fic like he does my other writing just because I do it as a silly side thing on my own time, but he does consult for me now and then. And given his feedback helped me solve this, it reminds me what we make is always better when we work on it together. But this means I’ve finally cracked it, and with some editing I was very pleased with the result. I published the new chapter today.

This story isn’t the most popular I’ve written in the series. It’s a very… middle-aged kind of story, I like to joke. It’s about Steve and Howard Stark in middle age dealing with their odd friendship in the midst of some slightly old-fashioned masculine crises in the 1960s. It’s not the sort of thing your average fan fic reader is drawn to, so it doesn’t get as many hits as other parts of the series have. But I’ve enjoyed writing it a lot, and I’m proud of what I’ve made. So I’m super happy to have worked through my difficulties and continued it in the manner I believe it deserves!
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Bernie and I are having a disagreement about using narration in Dream Machine. Since we’re working in the Zoom+ form, which is limited in what we can visually depict, it seems like it might be necessary for a narrator to explain some of the action in order to be clear what’s going on. I concede that might be the case, but I’ve been making an effort to find ways to depict things as clearly as possible, to maximize the chance that we will not need to use one.

I am not a fan of narrators in visual media, film in particular. I feel like it’s often a crutch, used to explain to the audience what they should be thinking and feeling in the failure of the greater narrative to convey that using more elegant or more inherently cinematic means. My hope is that with my filming choices, the right editing, and well-placed sound effects, the action will be parsable without it. But not only does Bernie not believe that will be possible, he actually likes narration, or at least has no problem with it. I think he might actively prefer we include it here.

My current preference is to edit the piece together and see what it needs. We can always add it in, even if it means adjusting the editing slightly, with any necessary rewrites. But I’d like to see how it works without it first, just in case.

At the very least, I think if we use the narration, it needs rewriting. I think it needs to have more of a character to it, like an Arrested Development kind of quality. More snark, more irony. That might bring me around to the concept a little bit more.
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Got overcharged on my airport taxi because the driver took a wrong turn. My early morning flight, which I got here at four to make, was pushed back so far I’m not going to make my connection. I’ve been trying to call the airline and the trip booking website for help, but they’ve shuttled me back and forth between them a grand total of eight times this morning, with no assistance in sight.

And as if that wasn’t enough, I got pulled out of the security line by a TSA agent. That always fucking happens to me for some reason, but this time apparently the knee brace and tights I was wearing under my jeans meant she had to touch my breasts and butt.

I haven’t seen Bernie in a year and a half and I really do not have the money to do all this over again. Why wouldn't they just change my goddamn flight?

Eventually just bagged it on trying to get anything fixed about the old itinerary and went for a new one, on a larger airline. Still fighting to get the old one officially cancelled and refunded— there’s a weird miscommunication between the airline and the booking company —but according to policy I should be able to make that happen once the information sharing actually occurs.

I don’t get in until much, much later, and both connecting flights are a little longer. And even if I do manage to get the old trip refunded, rebooking put me already outside my budget for the trip. 😣 But at least I’ll get there without having to pay for a cab home and back again.

So I’m on track again, I guess. Had to go to a different terminal, so had to go through the security line again. Got pulled out like I always goddamn do— WHY? WHAT HAVE I DONE? —but at least it was the customary cursory pat-pat-pat instead of somebody pulling the waistband of my pants away from my body.

Now I just need to kill five hours before I can actually get on my way. Exhaustion is making everything worse, so I wish there were some place I could safely take a nap without creeping people out or my stuff being stolen.

I think somewhere, when I muttered about how I wasn’t enthused about having to go to Bernie’s family reunion, a monkey’s paw must have curled closed.
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I confess I always forget mine and Bernie’s anniversary. It’s the day before my mother passed, so I’m usually distracted around that time. But this month we’ve been together for eight years.

He is the partner of my labors, who works tirelessly to make my dreams into a reality. He has made and kept promises to me most people will never hear outside of fairy tales. And though we’ve been long-distance for seven years of those eight, he has never failed to be present for me.

He can do a little bit of everything that I can, plus so many things I can’t. He can get interested in anything because of how much he loves to learn. He is a man of unimpeachable integrity. He loves his baby niece. He will listen when I talk about stupid stuff. He thinks I’m beautiful even when I look terrible. He doesn’t even mind when I call him Dr. Piggy.

Happy anniversary to the Falcon to my Captain America, the man who does everything that I do— except slower.

Love you, Dr. Piggy.
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October Review Challenge, #22 - "What piece would you like to go back and reedit?"

In my entry on Old Shames, I mentioned it’s often tough for me to go back and look at pieces that I’ve matured past as a writer. While many of my old projects have okay bones and good ideas to them, I feel very avoidant at the thought of going back to fix these things and attempt to bring them up to my current standard. It probably would be possible to rescue many of the pieces I mentioned, but I don’t know if I could bring myself to do it.

The major exception to this is the first Mrs. Hawking play. Not that I think it’s that bad or anything. But I did initially draft it almost a decade ago, and my ability has evolved enormously since then. I suppose I have picked at it in various forms, given the need to adapt it to a screenplay pilot and into the substance of a proof of concept, but I have never gone back and officially rewritten the play itself. I think that’s worth it, as it is part of the canon of my current most important project.



And Bernie and I have been turning over the idea of getting to a point where we make really high quality video recordings of the plays, specifically staged for being recorded, without worrying performing for a live audience. It’s tricky to make a good recording of a play in normal performance conditions, so it’d be really good for having non-live versions of the shows to present for people who can’t make the live ones. But if we were to do that, I’d want to polish up the first script. Maybe even the second one, too, just to make sure they were up to the standard set by the current work. Which, if I may say so myself, is pretty high. :-)
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October Review Challenge, #21 - "What piece turned out differently than you planned?"

Oh, jeez. All of them, really, to one degree or other. There's always a point in the process of writing any project where I am struck by how the actual product is markedly different than what I was imagining in my head. Or at least, how the demands of realizing the idea necessitate it taking shapes I had not necessarily thought of when I was dreaming it up. That is just fine, that is what it takes to bring something from dream to reality, but it is striking how far it can drift. And that isn't even taking into account the fact that I usually collaborate with Bernie, who will bring his own perspective to things and often sees stuff in different ways than I do.



A recent example is a fairly mild one. In episode 3 of Dream Machine, "Change or Die", I wanted to include a B-plot where Derek and Josie have to run a gauntlet of technical people in order to begin work on the new show. I had an idea to represent the various technical departments as warring fantasy tribes with their own quirks and customs that they would have to navigate and appease to get them on their side. I was picturing a sort of whimsical travelogue centered around jokes satirizing techies and technical theater, which for a sitcom B-plot is acceptable. But when I brought the idea to Bernie, he wanted to give it a structured PLOT— which, as you know, is very much Bernie's style of narrative —with actual stakes. It made it much tougher to write, especially given it had to sit into the subplot of a short-form episode. We struggled with it a great deal. But ultimately it made the piece have more substance to it, allowed it to speak to our characters and not just be purely for the jokes. This is Bernie's world, after all, and he had stuff to say about it. So I'm glad we went to the extra trouble, even if in the moment it felt like torture for no necessary reason.

Good partners make you better, I guess. :-)
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October Review Challenge, #11 - "What is the most personal moment in your work?"

So until very recently, I observed a firm rule to never put too much of my own personality into my work. Let me be very clear what I mean by that— obviously all artistic work comes from the self of the artist, in a way all art is self-portraiture. But I believe that really good stories come from empathy and imagination. So I never wanted anyone to read anything of mine and feel like I wasn’t creating fully-realized characters with their own identities and voices, just me speaking for myself through them. I think that’s the mark of an immature artist who lacks the ability to put themselves in anyone else’s shoes. For this reason, I had a rule that no character I wouldn’t make any character that could be seen to be too much “like me.”

I broke that rule with Leah Lucchesi, the main character of Dream Machine. For an experiment, and following Tina Fey’s lead in my inspiration for the piece 30 Rock, I allowed her to be a pretty direct self-insert. Though I have kept her to be as unflattering a representation as possible to keep it from being self-serving, exaggerating all my own worst qualities to make her difficult, self-centered, and boy-crazy beyond even my own levels.

That means there is SOME stuff about her that is personal; Leah, too, likes Marvel actors, finds showering to be work, and thinks writing is the hardest job in the world, but it tends to the superficial. I’ve only alluded to actual meaningful things about me with her, such as how she’s uncomfortable when she feels out of control, and her fear that if she weren’t attractive nobody would give her a chance. I’ll probably do more with that eventually, but so far it’s been only the lightest touch.

The personal moment I’d like to focus on is from Mrs. Hawking part VI: Fallen Women— a moment that was actually personal to a fault. In one of the darkest Mrs. Hawking scenes ever, our hero confesses the physical violence in her marriage. With no constructive way to vent her rage and frustration, she would hit the Colonel in an effort to provoke him into fighting her back. She indicates it was a perverse attempt to prove to him that she could beat him in a fight, which would have risked exposing her secret and endangering all her work.

Twisted creatures


That part, thankfully, is not the personal part. But she explains her anger at how hard she has to work in order to be physically dangerous when you’re a woman— particularly in comparison to men. She talks about how a woman has to completely transform herself to be able to be stronger than what a man who doesn’t even try is just naturally. Which is something that personally infuriates me, and something that I think a lot of gendered violence comes down to.

It has a rawness and a realness to it. But the first time Bernie read my draft of that scene, he said “That is the first time I’ve ever read something of yours where I felt it was just you talking, not your character.” And that isn’t good; that is something I’ve been avoiding my whole writing career. I had to really work to make it feel like it wasn’t just me the author grinding the action to a halt to soapbox. Even though I do believe it’s something that makes sense for the Mrs. Hawking character, it had to really feel like her voice, like something she’d talk about in that moment. That’s why personal significance in subject matter isn’t enough. It has to be in the service of creating people who are more real, not less.
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I've been taking a class recently on pitching my dramatic writing work in hopes of getting representation and hopefully eventually a job in the industry. It's a brutal thing to break into, but hope springs eternal, and since marketing has always been my weak spot, it seemed like something that could actually help me at this point in my seeking a career.

I've been nervous about it, as situations like this tend to irk my anxieties and fears about all the ambitions I have that may or may not ever come to pass. Bernie has taken the class with me, which has made me braver. And we've actually done really well, impression our instructors with our absorption of the material and giving good feedback for the efforts of our classmates. We've even managed to make friendly connections with some of those classmates, which was something I'd have been afraid I couldn't do. I struggle with figuring out how to talk to people I don't know well, but as I said, Bernie's presence has helped me put myself out there, as he could sort of "tag in" to represent both of us when I was uncomfortable in the early section. Lucky for me, I can make a good engaged expression and have the advantage of charismatic good looks, which I think made me acceptable until I gathered my courage. It also helped that there were genuinely nice people in the class, several of whom I've enjoyed interacting with even outside of the classwork.

It turns out taking this class was well-timed, since Bernie and I got into the next round of a screenwriting competition with the most recent version of the TV pilot version of Mrs. Hawking. That was kind of encouraging, especially since we did a fairly major overhaul of it recently, under the advice of a literary manager we consulted with, to make it a little more cinematic and streaming-service-friendly. But the next stage of the contest was to make a three-minute video pitch for the project as if we were trying to sell an industry professional on the project.

All this past week, Bernie and I slaved over our pitch. We wrote like five drafts, refining it over and over again so that it would give the setting, the major character arcs, the themes, and a sense of the premise as established in the pilot. It was really not easy, especially given how short it had to be, but what we learned in this class was crucial for doing this. I've learned my vibe and manner works pretty well for this, so I shot a video of myself talking, informally but with a really strong grasp of my material. We even cut in some shots from the proof of concept footage, which we wanted specifically for marketing material, in order to illustrate the characters and journeys I was talking about. It might be a bit of a risk, as we get the impression the contest is expecting these videos to emulate the more informal, personal verbal style of pitching. But we thought it was worth taking since it might help us stand out and fire the imaginations of the judges watching it.

The prize for the contest is entrance into a program that introduces you to executives and managers to hone your craft to make yourself more able to enter the industry. And if you sufficiently impress them, they could possibly sign or hire you themselves. Nothing's a guarantee, but I think our writing has what it takes, and my manner and bearing, I'm told, makes me seem appealing to work with. All I lack is connection. If we can get in front of the right people, we might be able to sell them on us. And if we do well in this contest, it might be a shot.
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I love how much Bernie loves his new little niece. His brother Joe and sister-in-law Jackie had a baby early this year, a little girl named Shai, and Bernie loved her immediately. He wants to hold her all the time, despite having previously been afraid of how fragile babies are, and has learned to do all the things to take care of her, including feeding and changing. He babysits her on a regular basis and sends me pictures and little videos of her eating and looking with her big eyes and kicking her little feet. We call her "baby fish," an evolution of my habit of giving slightly unflattering animal nicknames out of affection.

I fear I may like children more in a theoretical sense than in a practical one— I love seeing pictures of her and watching Bernie mind her, but feel kind of overwhelmed at the idea of being responsible for a child myself —but I was shocked at how interested I am in how she's doing day to day or what she's up to. I like hearing her gurgling baby sounds and seeing her squashy baby head. And it gives me a lot of joy to see him be so tender with her, loving her so much he's enthusiastic to do everything to take care of her.


Squashy baby head.
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This weekend I came up to Alexandria, Virginia to help Bernie move into his new apartment. He got a place just a five-minute walk from the patent office where he works, a small but very nice one-bedroom place in a fancy apartment building. I like it very much; it's a real grownup place, and a real change of pace from everything in Boston that all tends to be a bit older and more run down. This is all so nice and new, with amenities like a gym and a swimming pool. I'm spending the beginning of the week in Maryland to help him unpack and be together a little. I hope we can make it nice for him, and I may get to miss the worst of the snowstorm, as the DC area probably won't get it as bad.

I have a lot of work while I'm up here. Bernie's got to work of course during the day, so I guess it's not the biggest problem. But before I get back, I need to grade a ton of papers, put together the very first week of my online class and post it to the website, and prepare for the new round of Vivat Regina and Base Instruments rehearsals. So I can't entirely treat this like a vacation.

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This past week, Bernie accepted a job with the patent office in Alexandria, VA. It's a pretty good position, with a good salary and great benefits, as well as a lot of flexibility and room for advancement. It'll be so great for him to really get his life going, which job searching has kind of put on hold since he graduated. It's not exactly what he wants to do long term, but it's a good move for now and I'm really proud of him.

But while it's definitely a good thing, I'm still a little sad because it means that Bernie and I are going to be separated for at least another year. I was started to get hopeful that he might be able to move back into the area by the point my lease was up and we'd be able to get a place together.

It's not the end of the world. Our relationship has been uniformly strong through all the last few years apart and I'm not worried about that part. As we also discussed, if something else he applied for (he's more interested in lab work or something a little more directly doing science) happens to get back to him with a perfect offer in New England, there wouldn't be much barrier to him taking it. And a year isn't that bad, especially if he's starting to make money, build his resume, and start really putting together his own life.

So this is definitely good news and a step in the right direction. It's just not perfect news, but then again, that's life. I'm grateful for the improvement.
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According to Bernie, I am somewhat capable of carrying on a conversation while mostly asleep. Usually it's just head shakes and nods, but pretty often I actually say things. But just because I can form words doesn't mean they make much sense. There are two particularly good things I've told Bernie while mostly asleep. Apparently in both cases he was trying to find a way to climb in around me.

The first time, I informed him, "I'm a globe. I take up aaaaaaaaaaall the space."

And the second was, "Be careful. There's a snake in the hole." I paused a beat. Then, "It's me. I'm the snake."

I have no memory of these, or any of the other weird things I've told him while asleep. But those are the two best ones he's reported. 😁
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It's just now past two years since Bernie moved home to DC to finish his PhD. He's since graduated, and is now onto job searching, so with any luck he's on his way to coming back to the area. But job searching tends to be a slow, miserable process, so I don't know how long that's going to take, and I miss Bernie pretty badly.

I guess it's not that big a deal. We still feel very close, and I actually enjoy long periods on my own. I'm prepared to deal with this as long as I need to. After all, there's a chance Bernie might get a job somewhere other than Boston, and right now I don't really have the ability or the desire to move away from my life and friends. But there's a lot of practical stuff that's impacted by his absence and that's the only part that really gets to me.

We're at the point in our relationship where we'd like to live together, which would be nice for all kinds of squishy reasons. But honestly I find myself mostly pining for the concrete advantages. I'm tired of living with roommates, but I can't afford to live alone, so living with a serious partner would help. Being able to find a place together would make the purchasing power go farther. I joke that a live-in boyfriend would be a roommate I'd be able to boss around, but it would be nice to have somebody I was comfortable asking things of in negotiating house rules and chore schedules, stuff like that. I feel better doing chores for the comfort of someone I can about rather than a stranger, and their care for me would make them more willing to contribute effort to my comfort.

And just little stuff. Helping carrying bags to and from the car. Somebody to run an errand you don't have time for. Making dinner for two people instead of just for one. Bernie was always so much help to me in everyday things, and I miss having that support. It's the only thing he really can't be from far away, and that's the part I have the toughest time over.

I know job hunting SUCKS, but I'm really hoping he works it out soon. Since I've made a little progress in my professional life, I've been making a little more money each semester. It makes me start to think of making progress in other aspects of my life. Making a home with Bernie is the next step I find myself hoping for. But that can't happen until several things get sorted out, so I guess I just have to be patient a while longer.
breakinglight11: (CT photoshoot 1)
I tend to miss Bernie in waves. I usually go long periods were the physical separation doesn't really bother me, as we talk constantly and our bond still feels strong even though we're not living in the same place right now. But when the waves of being lonely for him do hit, it tends to be because I notice something that just isn't the same without him around

One of the nicest small things Bernie would do for me is rub my back when I got stressed out or sore. I don't think I realized what a difference that made until he wasn't around anymore. It was great both for making my body relax when my mind wasn't so inclined, but I also think it kept me in physically better shape. I think I recovered from exercise-related soreness faster, and it combated the results of some of my unfortunate physical tendencies, such as how I slouch down into my chair and end up sitting on my tailbone. The exquisite machine feels so knotted up lately that it's been a real pain.

That's something you can get done professionally, but it's expensive. Probably worth shelling out for every now and then anyway, but sure was nice having somebody who did it on a regular basis for free.
breakinglight11: (CT photoshoot 1)
Bernie and I are very close to having the current version of the Mrs. Hawking pilot finished. As I said, I've had a really hard time getting perspective on how it's doing due to a persistent negative mentality I've been dealing with lately. On one hand, I worry I'm being too hard on it, but as soon as I start to relax, I worry if I'm not I might let it go out at less than its best. What if I miss something? What if I'm kidding myself? But I think we're finally where we need to be, or just about. I'm giving myself a deadline of the 27th, as that will be exactly one month since I spoke to the producer I want to show it to.

The show bible's also giving me trouble. Bernie thought it would be a good idea to hand one in along with the pilot, so the producer can read it if she cares to and get an idea of the whole show. We researched what it needed to contain, which is basically an overview of the direction and format of the series, plus the setting, the important characters, and the broad strokes of the arcs. It needs to be quick and efficient, no more than five pages, and I find I'm having trouble expressing things concisely. Right now my strategy has just been to vomit out whatever I can think of, while Bernie's cutting it down to size since he has a bit more distance from it. So it's not done yet, but at least it's coming along. It also needs to be done by the 27th so it can be sent in with the pilot.

As with the show bible, the biggest struggle with the pilot has been keeping it concise and moving quickly. It can never be allowed to drag. Right now it's fifty pages, which is not too bad, given that these things are allowed to fall basically between forty and sixty, but I don't want to go beyond that. It's an action story, and action always takes longer than it seems like it will on the page. There's also the one-minute-per-page metric, and an hour-long drama these days is usually only forty-two minutes, but it's more a guideline because some things are quicker, some things are simultaneous, and it's hard to represent that in the text.

Fortunately, we've had some good feedback from people. Bernie's brother Joe in particular had some interesting suggestions for punching up the atmosphere in the beginning, and for keeping the non-literal "specter" of the Colonel present throughout the piece. Joe suggested playing up the "gothic mystery" aspects of Mary first arriving in Mrs. Hawking's house, given how strange and unwelcoming she's supposed to find the place at first. This gives it a bit more of a surprise when we find out what secret Mrs. Hawking is truly hiding. Also, he had the idea to make the motif of the roses recur in the background whenever the Colonel is invoked. I really liked this, though it's tough to express "background" presences in text without making them seem too overt. Still, I think I incorporated it okay. I'd actually like to continue the idea with other characters in future episodes. Like think of something to indicate Gabriel as well, though I don't know what it would be.

I'm really close to done. I just want to finalize it, and make sure the show bible is clear and concise. That's the most important personal project I've got right now, and I've got ten days left to finish it.

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