Monday, Monday

So good to me...

My Mondays don’t feel like Mondays anymore. The only difference between Sunday and Monday is whether I’m taking my kid to archery or to school. I’m working all the time, primarily at home, pretty much every day of the week.

Part of keeping my sanity in the endless grind is structure. For me, that’s a 6 am poetry class (I love Sarah Ann Winn’s Poet Camp) or 6:30am aikido at ACLA, or morning pages, or marathon training (currently on pause because of stomach problems that are not-at-all related to the state of theindustrythecountrytheplanet). Late risers can’t believe I get up that early voluntarily. But it’s honestly the equivalent of a Xanax. Getting moving is the only way I stay mentally healthy when I’m locked in a development cycle the way I have been for a couple of years now.

The Mamas and The Papas, who sang Monday, Monday, which you can view for funsies HERE.

Lately I’ve been trying to write outside my house and take meetings in person when possible. Because I think we’ve lost something by not sitting face to face with each other, and I think we’ve gotten complacent about it. I see it in the way we speak to each other online. I see it on the freeway when nobody lets that one guy into the lane. I see it in political discourse. I see it on TV.

I think many of us knew during the pandemic that were experiencing a tectonic shift in humanity the likes of which nobody alive had ever seen, but we didn’t know that so much of our life would shift permanently online. The flexibility of Zoom removed real barriers — for caretakers, for people whose socioeconomic situation doesn’t put them in one of the entertainment hubs. That matters and I don’t want to lose it. But most companies bringing people back to the office are doing it because they own seemingly wasteful real estate, not because they’re building a culture of collaboration.

Here’s what I keep thinking about: our brains are taking video calls with friends and colleagues rendered in the same 1s and 0s as reels of war and ICE detentions. News of a big world over which we have zero control is no longer balanced by face-to-face interactions with people who remind us of their individual humanity. And it’s really hard to create from that headspace.

If you read my previous post on AI, I’m big on naming the problem so we can wrestle with it. And this is A Problem.

As more of our business goes online, we need to be intentional about finding a sense of creative community. So in two weeks I’m going to try something. I’m going to pick a coffee shop in LA and post it here. Anyone who wants to talk about writing, their next spec, indie film, or pitch — I’ll be there. I’ll probably be trying to write. But I’ll also be happy to see a friendly face and lament The State of Everything together.

Maybe we can make Mondays feel like Mondays again.