i’m going to take a short break from complaining writing about the house here, and do something i almost never do: write about work.

if one used this blog to create a [figurative] picture of me, it would be fair to assume that i am a happily-married cat lady who exists only to pursue cooking, running, and knitting, probably in that order. being somewhat at the forefront of the blogging movement* (er, and now lurking around in inconsequential obscurity for a dozen years), i established good social media policies for myself long before most companies, and undergrads, were grappling with them. my rule is simple: never put anything on the internet that i wouldn’t want my mother or my boss to read. extrapolating from that rule pretty much covers everything.

but this means that i don’t write about work very often. which is weird, given what a large percentage of my time and emotional energy are devoted to my career. but setting up filters and user accounts always feels like too much work and sort of defeats the purpose of the blog as it exists for me. i’m not writing to an audience as much as i am writing to the ether. the ether shouldn’t need a login and password. but i also know that anything that goes on the internet can eventually be traced back to me, and that net privacy is an illusion. and so i self-edit.

anyway, this is one of those rare occasions. i’m in Forth Worth, Texas, for the annual USITT** and Production Managers’ Forum conferences (held concurrently in the same city every spring). USITT is a highly structured week long conference featuring hundreds of sessions on a wide range of subjects, but primarily technical and management issues. the PMF conference is a highly unstructured conference in which 50-80 of the Production Managers in the country agree to get in the same room, and afterwards go to the same bar, for two days. in exchange for free conference passes to USITT and some meeting space for our own conference, we provide a certain number of conference sessions at USITT. and seeing as how we’re country’s theatre hiring managers, they like to have us at a conference that is largely devoted to helping young technicians and designers launch their careers.

i had a REALLY stressful week leading up to this conference. stuff with the house renovation is, well, expensive and problematic. (more on that in the next post). i had some of those tough manager moments at work that i CAN’T actually talk about on the internet. ben and i have made two road trips across Ohio in the past month, one for a funeral, one for a wedding. there has been ZERO downtime in our lives. winter STILL ISN’T FUCKING OVER.

i had agreed to be on a panel discussion at USITT a year ago and suddenly it was only a week away and i hadn’t done half the reading i had meant to and my panel group was scrambling to make our session agenda (session title: The Risk of Not Deciding). also i remembered much too late that i hate speaking in public. and that leading a session at this conference implies that i am somehow an expert, which i really really didn’t feel like leading up to this week.

i couldn’t back out of the conference session, but i started entertaining the idea of just flying in on Thursday, doing the panel, and heading home the first thing the next morning. but i knew that making time for these meetings with other production managers always helps me tremendously and i talked myself into staying all weekend.

one of the peculiarities about the field i’m in is that i don’t manage other people like myself. i manage a team of incredibly diverse, talented, sometimes difficult, sometimes delightful, always complex artists, artisans and technicians. i can’t do what they do. they can’t do what i do. so i often feel like a lone wolf at work. and i spend most of my waking hours at work. it can get really lonely.

these conferences are the one time each year that i get to spend 2-3 days with people just like me. who face the same challenges and frustrations. we can share the stories that we can’t discuss in our own theatres. we trade advice. i get new ideas. we stay out late in the bars and we don’t just talk about theatre, we talk production management. this week i met some PMs who are also fellow runners and we got up early every morning and ran along along the Trinity River and talked more there. i always leave these conferences feeling inspired and full of new ideas. i stop thinking about what my exit-strategy for theatre is for a little while and realize that i have a pretty amazing and unique job.

i’ve been attending these conferences approximately once a year for almost a decade now. and i just realized that a part of me finally DOES feel like a professional. i’m finally confident enough to speak up in the group meetings. i’m not an assistant or an associate and i run a respectably large theatre. my USITT panel lecture actually went pretty well. i learned some new things while planning it, and i think i shared a few good, original ideas. my colleagues seem to respect me. i just *might* be a grownup.

after dreading this panel lecture intensely for the past few weeks, i can’t believe this but i actually proposed a new session for next year and volunteered to lead the panel (session title: The Production Manager’s Role in the Design Process). i mean, i have at least 11 and a half months to procrastinate before i have to put it together, right?

* we still called them “web logs” when slithy-tove was opened in the spring of 2001. we also walked uphill both ways in the snow to get to school every morning.