One of the things I love the most about my wife, Deb, is her maternal instincts. She has always had them. It was the epiphany that she would be a great mother some day, that made me see her in a new light almost forty years ago. One of her qualities that made me love…
Typically, when we are setting goals, we try to pick something that’s hard to reach. You want to do something you’ve never done before. Or when you get to a certain level, you pick the next level to get to. You “raise the bar”. The problem with raising the bar is that you are shooting…
It’s been almost two weeks since I enabled the timer on my phone. To limit the amount of time that I use Facebook and Instagram. 30 minutes a day. I had intended to allow myself 30 minutes each for FB and Insta. But it gave me 30 minutes for both. And you know what? I’m…
One of the biggest temptations for me is Food FOMO. Fear Of Missing Out. If someone brings in a treat, I want to have some. It’s easy to justify the indulgence. Just this once… The problem is that there’s always something that provokes the FOMO reaction. Two for one Teen Burgers! Free pizza! Homemade brownies!…
Burn opens in three and a half weeks. We’ve got ten more rehearsals to go. It may seem like a lot, but it will go by quickly. On the plus side, the actors know most of their lines. I’m the laggard in the cast. But I’m nearly there. The lines are coming. Slowly. There are…
Darn it! Why do I give into temptation so easily? The plan was to work on my lines and my songs. But the TV beckoned. I’d watch a little bit and hang out with my daughter. And then there was the Zoom call at 8:30. I was hanging out with my friends. Now, it’s after…
The number one question that I get asked about acting is: How do you remember all those lines? Memorization seems to be a fading skill for most people. Why commit things to memory when you can look them up online? Of course, when you’re performing in a play, you don’t have that luxury. You’ve got…
Many of us have heard the term “learned hopelessness”. Your ability to think for yourself and do things for yourself gets beaten out of you. From negative experiences. It a form of apathy. And in its most extreme form can lead to death. You just give up. Stephen Magness discusses this phenomenon in his book…
You never know what the day will bring. Yesterday, I saw a dead person. At least, I’m pretty sure they’re dead. The Emergency Services Technicians were giving him CPR. But there was no response. And then they put him in an ambulance. But the ambulance didn’t rush off. It stayed there for about 15 minutes.…
We are hard-wired to look for what’s wrong. What’s bad. What’s broken. And with those “glasses” on, it’s easy to overlook what’s good. What’s working. What went well. Last month, I missed two posts. I only posted 28 days, instead of 30 days. And my initial reaction was that I failed. Not only that, but…
peter gruner 