Back on the train
Well it’s been a while since I’ve posted here. For thirteen years I wrote new articles on my blog (formerly known as PSH for President on bmclassahan.tumblr.com) at least every few months or so, but when I submitted my annual Oscar column last March I had a sense more or less that that would be it for a while.
I was writing a book and about to dive into acting, yes, but there was another factor too and it had been creeping in for a while. When I first started writing about film in the early 2010s it was with the hope that it would catch fire, go viral, give me an out from an increasingly boring and soul-sucking job. But it didn’t happen. I reached out to a bunch of places and while the occasional rejection stung it was when I heard nothing that hurt the most, places like Grantland or The Ringer where I thought I would have been a great fit. Still though, I went on, figuring the path would really be a measure of just getting better at the craft, keep on writing, keep on reading, keep on being a tough critic on myself and finding ways to get better.
Releasing a book in late 2017 helped and gave me something to hang my hat on as I passed ye olde 30 plateau, but the aftermath felt similar to the earlier challenges, well received by my friends and family but nothing outside of that bubble. I was the proverbial tree getting knocked down in the forest with no one around to hear it and with not much other growth happening in my life it was pretty friggin depressing. I was a writer goddamnit! But why was I as far underground as a T-rex thigh bone?
I was still writing around this time, but with the onset of 30 and an increasing worry about my life direction I added some new things into the fold. Trying improv comedy was massive. Not just in crossing the acting threshold and expressing myself in a new way, but opening up socially and feeling WAY more comfortable around new people and old friends alike. I also revisited therapy for the first time in several years and faced these existential demons head on, and while the work with my life coach and therapist may not have immediately made a seismic shift in the life, it activated my engine of change.
When the pandemic hit, improv went away, which was pretty much the only thing I really enjoyed about living in D.C. at the time (besides my neighborhood haunts and friends (but surely not my 3 hour roundtrip commute). With the opportunity to work remote at my job I hit the road, spending a year in Richmond before settling in Los Angeles. And while the first year was tough to say the least, the second was one of the best, marked by an invigorating reentry into acting, being welcomed into a scenius-type community of truly excellent people, and returning to Europe for the first time in 10 years and completing my first Camino de Santiago pilgrimage.
Then I lost my job of 13 years, the only one I had known since college. Went back to Europe on a bit of a bumpy yet no less exhilarating ride then the one I had been on before. Met and fell head over heels in love with Paris. And returned to my new home again, changed in ones I haven’t been able to fully comprehend, and hoping to change more in ways I can only now imagine (and other areas I know I need to work on).
I want to write again too and not get carried away with things out of my control. I’ll write because I love to and if I don’t love it I won’t. The world of theater and film beckons and with it a whole new dimension to explore and grow in. Come what may. Let us go then, you and I…
