Moving Forward

As luck would have it, the first post of 2014 is also going to be the 100th post on Pooh Sticks. I have been trying too hard to think of something to write that does the confluence of essentially meaningless numbers justice. I wanted to look back at the past year and forward to the new. I wanted to set a tone. I wanted it to be most of all POSITIVE. Our 2013 saw a lot of difficulties and sadness and I'm ready for a new day. But events overtake that. Bad stuff happens all the time, it doesn't fit neatly into our divisions of time. Already this month tragedy has struck our community and serious health concerns struck a young member of our family, and we aren't two weeks into the new year yet. But this blog is about my happy place, be that Disney itself or the one we make for ourselves here at home by loving and celebrating and doing the things that make us happy together with those we care about. So today on Pooh Sticks we celebrate one of the great additions to my happy place, my family's involvement in community theater, because it just so happens that tonight I officially take the reigns of the Brunswick Little Theatre as president of it's Board of Directors. See, it's topical :-)

The story of our introduction to community theatre can be found in this post about Opening New Doors. Long story short, my friend Jen asked me one day to be her stage manager for the production of Wizard of Oz she was directing. I said "yes", then went home and Googled "stage manager" and began a journey into a world I had known next to nothing about. I can never thank Jen enough for helping open that door. It's really enhanced our lives by giving us a whole new vocabulary, mental and verbal, to use to interpret the world. We don't look at any entertainment, especially live entertainment, the same way. We always enjoyed watching "making of" documentaries and the extras on DVDs, but now we can relate to Peter Jackson's dwarf camp prior to filming The Hobbit because we've seen munchkin camp in Jen's back yard. They are amazingly similar. We watch the rehearsal footage on the Making of The Sound of Music special and can't help but recalling our actors doing all the same things during rehearsals for BLT shows. The perspective simply makes entertainment even more entertaining. Knowledge has a way of doing that, I highly recommend aquiring as much as you can, especially in areas you are now unfamiliar with. Add to that the many opportunities for family involvement that theater offers, and I can not recommend the whole thing enough. We love it.

So now I'm having to put my new-found knowledge to use as president of our theater board. I am still unclear exactly how this happened, it was mostly a matter of being the only guy willing, I guess. I do still feel a bit in over my head, but I'm getting over it. The board work is actually much more my speed than the show work (though I am learning!). I can organize and sell and move a meeting along as well as anyone. I've already achieved a few small victories (in my mind at least) and am more hopeful than wary moving forward. We have what looks to be a very entertaining season ahead of us and I have some very good people working with me on the board, so I think BLT's future looks pretty bright.

As does my own. My family is healthy and happy and loving and safe. I have another summer working as Jen's stage manager (this time on Into The Woods, a show I've actually seen on Broadway) to look forward to. We are planning a return to Disney World in the late fall to check out the Christmas happenings and the New Fantasyland expansion. The economic outlook appears to be helping my work prospects. All in all Moving Forward looks like a very good thing. And I'm dedicated to making it so. I wish you the same.