letter #36

It's been a year!

My dear friend

You know when you watch an episode of a soap opera that you haven’t watched for years and you say (in a suitably scoffing way), ‘I haven’t watched this for years, but it’s like I only watched yesterday.’ But then, on the other hand, when you’re deeply invested in a soap opera and you miss Tuesday’s episode and you sit down to watch Wednesday’s and you’re all like, ‘Wait! What happened? Did Kayla overhear Ridge saying he was going to take Phil Mitchell down once and for all?’

That’s what it’s like writing this letter, because looking back, I see it has been nearly a year since I wrote. And as is sometimes the way with life, everything is different, but nothing has changed.

I am halfway through the first season of my new show: Where to From Here? It’s about being middle-aged. When I was younger, middle age is exactly what I told myself I’d never write about. I equated the middle age experience with not only being mediocre, but with accepting mediocrity. I don’t know whether this is the classic ‘whatever you do, don’t think about a pink elephant’, but hahaha, that’s exactly what the show is about. Of course now that I am middle-aged, I find middle age to be a time that is rich with nuance.

When I started writing about middle age, I thought it would be one light-hearted show, and that it would be easy to write (might even have said, as I always do, ‘this one will write itself’). It turned out to be extraordinarily difficult, partly because—I realised far too late into the process—I was trying to say a lot in a small amount of time. Once I’d decided to say a lot less, it became easier, but I still wanted to say everything. So I reformed it as a trilogy.

This first show is about making peace with yourself. About looking back, remembering all the plans you had for yourself, and seeing all the things you didn’t do or see or become. And then, being okay with that. In that respect, the younger me who saw middle age as accepting of mediocrity was right. But she was deeply wrong in her interpretation of that process. What she saw as a weakness is our greatest strength.

So now I find myself at that lovely point of halfway between the opening and the ending of the first season. My nerves have settled a bit, the reviews have been great, audience responses have been wonderful. Yesterday, I found myself with the time and space to see past the writing and putting-on of this show. Naturally, I have made utterly unrealistic plans of how much I will write now, and top of my list is to write to you more often. Given it’s been nearly a year since I last wrote, I don’t think you need to be too worried about me flooding your inbox. But I’ve got a lot of thoughts about middle age and about being middle age—so many funny, urgent, frightening, wonderful thoughts.

I’ll either be back in a couple of days or sometime next year. But in the meantime, I will think of you often and with love,

Tracy xx