I spent a good chunk of yesterday taking down all the Christmas stuff, packing it up and putting it back in the storage closet.

So the holidays are officially complete around here! (And even though those few days between Christmas and New Year’s ended up being really challenging for me emotionally — see the end of yesterday’s post — it still was one of the happiest Christmases I’d had in a long, long time.)

At the end of the day yesterday, I chatted with Sandra for about an hour and we decided that today, after my shift, we BEGIN!!

Meaning — we begin working on all 3 of the huge projects we have on our plates right now. “The Guide to Being Fabulous” going to Off-Broadway; getting the original TV-screenplay version of “Tell My Bones: The Helen LaFrance Story” packaged for streamer TV; and then tackling the enormously time-consuming task of packaging the proposal for our new TV project for a producer who is waiting for it in Atlanta.

(The screenplay version of “The Guide to Being Fabulous” that we have already written Act One of and submitted to a producer at HBO (which could be Netflix now?), is on the back burner because we have, you know, way too much fucking stuff to do! Plus, we don’t want to move forward with the movie version until the play actually opens Off-Broadway.)

Anyway.

All 3 projects star Sandra, so the chances that all 3 projects will move forward at the very same time are actually sort of high, gang. So Sandra very compassionately and tactfully told me yesterday that even though I have decided not to cut back any of my caregiving shifts, so that I don’t stress about money, I need to switch my focus from now on and put my writing first and the emotional attachments to my caregiving clients second.

She is correct. So today I begin that, too. Which means I no longer have the luxury of coming home emotionally burnt out after a job because I need to be able to focus on the writing after my shifts.

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I’ve also decided to switch up my Saturday evenings now to include washing and doing my hair! Because I am really hoping that I am going to like this new church that is 3 minutes from my house and that I will be attending it every Sunday morning from now on! (Not that Jesus cares what my hair looks like but I do!!)

Here’s hoping I like it, gang. I will be going there for the first time this coming Sunday morning and I am really looking forward to it.

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And I have not lost sight of the fact that I have a NEW NOVEL coming out this year!! Yay! And I will need to participate in PR stuff for that, which will involve travelling.

Plus, I have that memoir that I really, really, really want to get started on, too. And that 12th Street Project I started on recently.

So I’m doing that thing where I turn over Time Management to the Universe and just let everything flow….

And maybe some coffee.

I’ll keep you posted!

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Okay, here’s this!

WAYNE! Getting the punch ready for the New Year’s Day brunch yesterday at the Union Club in NYC!

If you’re new to the blog — for many, many, MANY years, Wayne was a professional actor in NYC. Mostly live theater. A ton of Shakespeare, downtown. And, yes, I did spend many, many years hearing him say around the apartment: “Sire, hear me butt speak!!” Followed, perhaps, by the passing of the occasional gas…

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All righty!!

Ronnie Wood is offering 20% off all his art, site wide!!

Visit HERE!

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Okay, today I head back to my favorite 95-year-old Japanese man’s house.

We were planning on going out for sashimi & sake today. It is very cold but very sunny with no wind at all!

However, if his back porch is covered with snow and ice from Wednesday night, I don’t think we will be able to go out today. (He has a wooden leg, a cane, and, well, he’s 95.)

I’m hoping that some sort of miracle took place yesterday and that someone shoveled his back porch, and that we can still go out. We shall soon see. (His neighbors are really nice, so it could have happened.)

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Other than that —

After my shift today, I come straight home to another phone call with Sandra, as we begin the undertaking of the beautiful insanity.

Enjoy your Friday, wherever you are in the world, gang.

Thanks for visiting!

I love you guys. See ya!

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Let’s leave with this today.

Yesterday was the anniversary of Hank Williams’ death. (Someone on Instagram even posted a photo of his open casket back in 1953, which I’d never seen before, but it was creepy so I’m not reposting it.)

“Hank Williams’ official cause of death was a heart attack, but it was heavily influenced by his chronic pain from spina bifida occulta, severe alcoholism, and drug use, including morphine and chloral hydrate, which combined to create a deadly mix, leading to his collapse in a car on New Year’s Day, 1953, at age 29. “

I have always loved Hank Williams’ music. So let’s depart with this. I know I posted it recently, but here it is again!

The original demo from “Long Gone Train,” a song I wrote about Hanks Williams in 1992. Just me and my guitar in my room back then. Enjoy, gang.

LONG GONE TRAIN
(for Hank Williams)

There are men who were doomed to the legend
Of their own despair
Who linger like an echoed moaning
On a cold black air
They were lean high-rollers in the shadow
Of a ball and chain
Who were beckoned to their call to glory
From a long gone train.

Men who had railed at the virtue of their own reward
Who smothered in the lonesome comfort 
Of a long black Ford
And the Sheriff who was called to the scene
In a driving rain
Sent the body home on the rails
Of a long gone train.

CHORUS:
Cold as the steal rail line that delivered him to fame
Beaten by the hustler’s dream that had robbed his name
Driven by the fury in a heart that was real as rain
It all disappears in the slow procession
Of a long gone train.

There men who concealed their condition
From the broad daylight
Who would rage it wild and reckless
At the cruel limelight
And while the sane bystanders at the apron of the stage complained
How they wept at the mournful passing
Of a long gone train.

REPEAT CHORUS

There are men who will rail at the virtue of their own reward
Who will smother in the lonesome comfort of a long black Ford
And the Sheriff who is called to the scene in a driving rain
Will send the body home on the rails
Of a long gone train.

REPEAT CHORUS

© 1992 Marilyn Jaye Lewis
FIRST OF MAY SONGS, BMI