My last post was “On Moving:” which is so apt, because we have now moved yet again. I don’t consider it an “excuse” for not writing, but it is a reason; I wanted to write many times, but the language was not forthcoming, nor were the topics. My brain was unsettled, unable to sit on one thought (other than… moving) for long enough to break it in.

We’ve relocated to NYC. It’s been a long time coming, perhaps an inevitability. Ever since I visited the city for the first time—a heady 24 hours or so in 2011—each subsequent stay has gotten longer and more intimate. It’s easy for an actor to express this, of course; NYC functions as a potent gravitational center for the theatre industry as a whole, and even more so for the musical theatre subsect. I am one of many who have made this specific pilgrimage, memorialized succinctly by “The Star” in Annie:

N-Y-C! Just got here this morning!

Three bucks, two bags, one me!

N-Y-C! I give you fair warning:

Up there, in lights, I’ll be!

Annie

Moving to the city hot on the heels of a devastating pandemic, however, is a little unusual.

I like to operate on strategy, and for the last near-two-years the prevailing strategy has been to rest, “hunker down,” and avoid spending energy or money. There were some bursts of action, but they were plodding and measured, usually with an end in sight.

Now, this is the end in sight. The pandemic is far from over, but innovations have ended the necessity for stillness. In tandem with the world’s timing, this NYC move has triggered a hurtling trajectory into the kind of activity we left in the before times. It’s an expected shift, one we anticipated, dreaded, and begged to arrive sooner. And still, it has hit like a swallowing wave… there was no adequately preparing; there is only the surf.

I’m fortunate to have a built-in period of flexibility right now, like wearing a scuba suit in a tsunami. I have a contract set for the winter, which means a month or so of nesting and wrenching my schedule back to daylight hours. I can afford to breathe, allow the waters to take me where they will, and bubble up to the surface later. Meanwhile, I get a unique view into the swirling chaos that is the transition: what will it be like in a few months? Which currents lead to dry land?

So, while it is an energetic shock, we get a buffer against the most difficult parts. And still, we’ll use that leeway to unpack, to meet our new neighborhood, to negotiate ourselves into new habits. We are revving our engines, much like the traffic on our street, to test what driving will feel like again.