Working Through Snow

Getting back to this blog after a four-month absence has been a struggle, almost as much of a struggle as it’s been to continue working through the Blizzard of 2010. We’ve now been cut off for five days after the second snow. The first snow marooned us for only three days, before ploughs dug us out for just 24 hours between storms. For those who know me, you’ll know that Eaton Creative occupies a wing of our 150-year-old farmhouse, half a mile from the nearest road. Since the land belongs to a local university, we rely on them to plough us out but four-foot drifts on a driveway winding up the side of a hill render most snow ploughs ineffective. During the Blizzard of 1996 (when we were cut off for a week), a snow plough sent to dig us out even got stuck. Not that Maryland gets these winter storms more than once in a decade or so, but the Blizzard of ’96 taught us to hunker down, lay in large supplies of sustenance (mainly wine) and “wait for the spring thaw”.

Many colleagues who have stayed in contact by phone, Facebook and email over the past 10 days envy me the work “I must be getting done” with all this uninterrupted solitude. But I find myself intrigued by the law of diminishing returns that sets in after days of such isolation. With a kid’s drama in post-production, a major new series on Immigration starting production in St. Louis, and budgets to prepare for a series on longevity and African history, I’d expected to take advantage of this time to get ahead of the curve. But it doesn’t work that way; everything takes greater effort, and projects that filled my waking thoughts just ten days ago now feel distant and unreal. Even daily conference calls with my colleagues in Missouri on the Immigration series seem unreal, as though I’m looking at them through the wrong end of a telescope.

Partly it is the effort it takes to do simple things. Two days ago I dug a path up to the road where we parked one of the cars. We’d run out of wine so things were getting serious. Three hours later, I’d dug out the car and returned with milk and wine (normally a 20 minute excursion). Yesterday I went out to restock food supplies, expand the path to the road (so my wife could hike out without falling into snow drifts) and converted a laundry basket into a sled on which to carry groceries back to the house. It was a four-hour excursion and I returned exhausted and triumphant but with no energy or inclination to work on budgets or write editing notes. Even a trek to check on our next-door neighbor’s house, just five minutes away (he was gone when the storm hit and hasn’t been able to return), required a forty-minute hike through waist-deep snow.

Today the sun shines, the sky is blue, snow glistens a brilliant white outside my office, and I find I have even less inclination to work than I did yesterday (the law of diminishing returns continues). It’s like being sick; the everyday preoccupations of work and living retreat into the distance and the most ordinary chores (putting wet snow boots in the basement to dry or cleaning up the kitchen) take an energy toll out of all proportion to their difficulty. Colleagues call wanting to know when I will finish a rewrite, or get them a new budget, and I just sit, staring out at the snow with no inclination to work. Resolve leaks away like the icicles dripping from our gutters and my work ethic stutters to a halt. It takes me back to the Greek island where my wife and I lived for three years after we were first married. When the previous rhythms of life were cut, there was a period of listless inertia before new rhythms came into existence. It’s the same inertia I feel now; we live in such a busy world, focused on busy jobs, that we don’t see that it’s only the habit of being constantly busy that keeps us busy. The momentum of American life ‘feeds the machine’ and perpetuates an ongoing cycle of activity. Then along comes the Blizzard of 2010 and the cycle is interrupted.

A week ago I felt guilty about all those “must do” items on my production board that weren’t getting done, in spite of so much uninterrupted ‘free time’. But as time went on, the guilt dribbled away. I find it fascinating how quickly being cut off by several feet of snow creates a sense of disconnection and disregard for work that was of paramount importance just ten days ago. It’s lucky I know it’s temporary. When ploughs dig us out (maybe tomorrow) and, weather permitting, I fly to St. Louis tomorrow night, the Immigration series and my other projects will reassert the importance and urgency they had before snow started falling. Life will return to normal (I may even be inspired to continue this blog on a more regular basis) and the routines of TV production will cough, stutter and eventually run smoothly again. But in a strange way I’ll miss the cabin fever, the growing inertia, the lack of concern about previously important projects, and a realization that for this 'time out of time',life's realities have shrunk to a few feet of snow and a well-stocked wine rack.