Theater commute

Someone asked me, not unkindly, if I was mad.

Fair question. I spend a big chunk of a day in a car so I can do musical theater: call times, cue sheets, last-minute cuts, the whole tech-week circus. Round trip, you’re looking at roughly four hours when traffic behaves. Traffic does not always behave.

So. Am I mad?

Short answer: a little. On purpose.

Longer answer: the madness has a budget, and I know what I’m buying.

What I’m not pretending

I’m not pretending the commute is “fun self-care” or a productivity hack. It is time I do not get back. It is gas and wear and the particular fatigue of arriving home after the show-brain has already spent the evening staying sharp.

I’m also not pretending theater is a side quest that politely waits until my career is tidy. It collides with the engineering week. Rehearsal nights and release branches do not respect each other’s calendars. Sometimes the right artistic call and the right shipping call both want Tuesday.

If your life only works when every interest stays in a labeled bin, this will look irrational. Mine does not work that way.

What I’m buying

I’m buying a craft that still requires my whole attention in a room with other humans. Software can be remote, asynchronous, and endlessly revisable. A musical number is none of those things once the downbeat happens.

I’m buying the kind of leadership that is not a slide deck: listen, adjust, keep the program coherent while the set piece is late and someone needs a vamp now. That skill set is not a metaphor I glued onto tech later. It is a parallel practice. (There will be a longer note on that someday. This one is about the miles.)

I’m buying belonging in a making culture that is not only tickets and standups. I like tickets and standups. I also like the moment the pit locks with the stage and the show becomes real.

Mad is spending the hours and getting nothing. I get something.

How I keep it from eating the rest of my life

Badly, some weeks. Better when I treat it like a real constraint instead of a romantic secret.

• The commute is scheduled, not “squeezed in.”
• Software work that needs deep focus does not get promised for the same evening as a long tech.
• I do not owe strangers a TED Talk justifying joy.
• When a production asks more than I can give without wrecking the week, “no” is allowed. Mad is also never saying no.

Local-first tools and offline-friendly habits help on the train-or-car margins, but they are not why I do this. They are how I survive doing this and still shipping.

So… mad?

If mad means “I chose a costly thing because it makes me a better, weirder, more complete version of the person who also builds software,” then yes.

If mad means “I have no idea what this costs,” then no. I know. I keep choosing it anyway, production by production, with eyes open.

Four hours for a pit that needs me. Instruments, not vibes. Sometimes the instruments are a steering wheel and a score binder, along with a clarinet, a sax (or two), a flute, an oboe… or the music director’s baton.

~ Trish