Author: Michael Scherer

There are a lot of suggestions for writers out there, many techniques to help one engage in the discipline, to produce a sustained effort. All of this becomes relevant as I work on setting up a Substack, which I would like to incorporate into this website. It’s still a bit confusing, but I expect with regular visits to Substack, and regular posting, it will become more clear how to make it accessible and compelling.

The goal of the Substack is to tell the unfolding tale of a theater project I’m working on. Given the dim prospects of a Theatre Arts graduate in Idaho, it’s necessary to be proactive, and pick a project over which I have control and that I can grow and possibly tour with.

Family bonds keep me committed to living in Idaho. And previous college experience, with available transfer credits, makes Theatre Arts my shortest path to a college degree.

I just finished my first year in the Theatre Arts program at Boise State University. But looking soberly at the prospects of a Theatre Arts graduate in the state, and especially a Theatre Arts graduate of my (comparatively) advanced age, it becomes clear that I’ve got to get pretty creative to take advantage of this education experience.

For a variety of reasons, and these reasons will be fully explained in the Substack, I have decided to do a one-man show, a dramatic narration of the Gospel of Luke. The project has already run against some unexpected obstacles, but in creative projects, these sorts of difficulties are certainly to be expected.

There is no clear path to success, and I hope that by being active and open to possibilities, unexpected pathways may open up. It’s a risk. But adhering to standard practices contains no risk because there is no chance of success. I’m in a corner, and need to find my way out.

I hope you find this site useful and interesting, and it should get more so in the coming months.

Now that I have withdrawn from the constant melee of the big city, in Washington, DC, to a slower agriculture-based community, I have come to wonder what exactly to do here. I have a part time job, but I think I can do better than that. I don’t have much entrepreneurial drive, but that is the direction logic takes me. This is an opportunity, and to use it, and not waste it, I must start on business ventures that had faded out of view when I was on the East Coast.

I have some ideas, which will be explored further here, and in a Substack I am setting up. I do a lot of reading, and you would think that might qualify me as a writer, but it doesn’t. Liking pizza doesn’t make one a pizza chef. But I would like to pursue writing in some way, just to know that I didn’t leave that avenue unexplored. I am on the verge of attempting a shift professionally, and I suppose the chances of success are slim, but if I don’t try now, when will the opportunity arise again?

My second semester at Boise State University is drawing to a close. There was a period a couple of weeks ago where I simply could not do anything. I would pull up assignments on my computer and just stare. I could make no progress.

In this situation, a younger person conjures up intentions of ‘powering through,’ of rising to the challenge and overcoming it.

But being an older person, my strategy is more to take on the nature of water. To not flow where progress is obstructed, but rather to exercise patience and find paths of little or no resistance. And it was a matter of waiting. The fallow period passed, the complete lack of progress dissipated, and one day I began working on an assignment in a natural, unforced way.

It seems as though I will be able to complete all my class requirements for the semester. That ‘forcing through’ was not necessary. This seems to be a wisdom that comes with age, a more efficient strategy.

There is a saying from some far-off land, that if hard work made one rich, then the donkey would own the farm. And to some degree, up to this point, I have been a donkey indeed, trudging along in a set of rules that were superseded decades ago. It is a different realm with changed throughways, of fulfillment and success on unexpected paths. There is a way to plug into this machine, to adjust and learn until success. But now that is just a tenuous theory, as I continue to fail to adjust.

Actually I am trying to adjust to the university environment and its expectations. I want to learn and grow. School is a temporary reprieve, and a chance to hatch new plans. It would be nice to be able to make a living as an artist.

This time, I want to leave school with a plan, a strategy, for success.

It is a bit odd to be a theatre student at this age, and my perspective has changed a lot since I went to college as a young man. I am more interested in making money this time around, whereas when I was very young, I felt the urge to be liberated from the constraints of society, including the constraint of earnings. In some ways, I succeeded in that vision, but there was nothing laudatory in that success. I left the party, and felt proud about that, but then found myself in the dark without music or friends. The party is important, participation is important. Liberation is a lonely road, and ultimately no one cares about the liberated.