How I Spent My Summer (2022)

June: Topsail Beach

This past weekend we visited Athens, Ohio. To celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday. Also, to drop our eldest back at school. A second-year. A sophomore. There is much I could say about my sophomore year at Ohio University. It is enough to say I never accomplished as much as they have their first year, and I lazed away my first summer break from college while they worked and worked and worked. They are my inspiration and my motivation.

I have continued to recuperate from my eye surgery. There are good days and bad. Sleeping remains a challenge. And writing. And reading. I spend a great deal of time on social media, because that is easy. But even my relationship to social media has changed this summer.

July: Deck Time

Last month, someone contacted me via Twitter to let me know they have been made aware that something they had posted on that social media site I have reposted onto my professional Facebook page.

I post all manner of things on my Facebook page, related to playwriting, to spur conversation, sure. But also to generate attention.

However, I don’t know this person. Another playwright, yes. But they are not a famous person. What right did I have to repost their thoughts somewhere else for my own purposes? None at all. It was a mistake. I was wrong. I took down the post and I apologized.

This exchange occurred just as my family was leaving on vacation without me the day before I would undergo surgery on my left eye was extremely helpful. It meant that instead of spending the day feeling sorry for myself, I could spend the day hating myself.

July: Zoom Reading

Feeling sorry for myself means something beyond my control happened to me, that I am a victim of circumstance. And as far my eye is concerned, perhaps that is true.

But I do shit like this all the time. Social media has only enabled me to cast a wider net of people to hurt. Hating oneself, at least, places blame squarely where it belongs.

The ten days I spent on my own I had the chance to do a lot of viewing. I watched Under the Banner of Heaven, completed BoJack Horseman, a friend came over and we watched The Moderns, another joined me to watch Magnolia. Each and every one of these stories are about men who plow thoughtlessly through their lives, only tangentially aware of their own sense of entitlement. Viewing or reviewing them, I was acutely aware of my own failings.

July: College Visit

I have both thoughtlessly and also with intention damaged personal items that were meaningful to my ex-wife. I have ended friendships with one carefully chosen sentence. I have complicated relationships by saying things I should not have said.

I have transgressed. I have been inappropriate. I have failed to return that call. I have pretended to be asleep.

Early in the social media era, long before the #MeToo era, this guy I know posted something on Facebook along the lines of, “If you are a woman I have hurt, I want to apologize.” That was it. I was incredulous. I’m sure I wasn’t alone. No one responded. Because cringe?

August: Birthday Reunion

But, you know, I understood the impulse. We know we have done bad things. We want people to believe we are good. But we’re really not. I wasn’t when I was a sophomore at Ohio University. And also last month. When will I hurt someone next?

This is not really an account of how I spent my summer, except to say that I have been going through some things. Convalescing has provided an awful lot of time to go through them. My final year of grad school begins next week, and I wonder what I will be writing.

June: Theater Camp