Hey Reader,

I put a bag of popcorn in the microwave and set it for about two minutes.

For the first thirty seconds, nothing happens.

NOTHING.

I start wondering whether the microwave is broken.

Whether I should open the door and check that the bag is still in there. Whether I need a different microwave.

Nope, none of that helps.

Then ....

one kernel pops.

One #@$)%ing kernel.

After all that waiting, there is a single piece of popcorn in a bag I was counting on to feed me. OK feed is a strong word choice, snack on.

And then, the rest of it goes, and it ends like a fireworks finale before the beep beep beep beep.

Most of this year has felt like those first thirty seconds.

I put work into things that didn't seem to give back. Calls that went nowhere. Craft I kept sharpening with no job attached to it. Questions I asked myself, and then sat with (stewed with). I felt a strange kind of doubt; constant like a hum. Is this even working, or am I doing the wrong thing?

Some of it is popping now. In directions I didn't predict.

What I keep noticing is where it's coming from. Almost none of it came from a pitch. The ones I can trace go back years, and a couple of them go back decades. People I stayed in contact with because I liked them. Work I did well when no one was deciding anything about me. That holds up on the personal side too.

The first summer BoothCamp wrapped up, and watching it was its own version of this. The craft work was there, and I saw what people did with their own agency. They stopped waiting for the audition or the booking to arrive and built something themselves. They became producers. Blind performers were in each of those rooms doing the same building, which made it even better.

Sometimes this business can go nose to the grindstone for long stretches. I'm grateful for every human moment that interrupts it.

If you're in the first thirty seconds of your own bag, the AD Playback Lounge is where performers put the work in together to heat things up (groan on the dad pun, I know...)

For the record, I take mine with butter, cinnamon, and sugar, which makes it closer to kettle corn.

Now I want cinnamon toast.