20 Weeks on the road.

I start a new show today, the longest of my career thus far, spanning some twenty weeks; twenty weeks that will all be spent on the road.

The production office is only a few hours drive from my home so I can return some weekends, especially early on and after photography has completed.

It's not the length of the show that bothers me but the one-eighty from what I've been doing for most of the winter. The nature of a freelance industry is that you often get swaths of down time. I've been off since Thanksgiving. That may sound great but all the time wondering about when the next gig is coming and the transition from eighty hour weeks to languid days can be stressful.

I've made good use of the time, caught up on sleep, caught up on TV, walked for miles and miles, spent time with much-neglected friends and loved ones. This has been some of the most productive writing time I've had in several years. Still, it will be good to get back. I realized this winter that, for as much as I complain about the hours and expectations of my career, I'm not really happy unless there's a script in my lap and a crew swirling around me.

I hope I'm up to the transition. Tomorrow I go from sleeping 'til I feel I need no more and back to punching a clock, to the twelve plus hours a day, to the frustration and elation of movie making.

Here's to the next twenty weeks.