Hyena Store Grand Opening

It’s finally happened. After nearly eight years of blogging about my experiences with and recovery from depression, I have nothing to say. Nothing that I need to say.

Over the years, I always blogged from an impulse to heal and to understand, and so there was an urgency to whatever I was sharing. But now that I’m fully immersed in what feels like a whole new life here in New York—new job, new friends, new home—it’s like I’ve touched down on the bottom of what I previously had thought was a bottomless lake. I’m no longer struggling to stay afloat.

And honestly, I’m tired of words. I’m a writer, and there are only so many words I have at any given time. I’ve kind of used up a lot of them at this point.

With the words that are left, I want to try out some new creative ways of writing.

Over Christmas, I bought myself a set of Lincoln Logs. I went to the giant F.A.O. Schwarz on Fifth Avenue, searched high and low until I found them, stood in the longest holiday line ever to buy them, and then walked 20 blocks home.

I love to build things, but we were on welfare in the early years, and so I got hand-me-down Barbies. It never occurred to me to ask for Legos or Lincoln Logs, the toys that would help me build entire societies, because I knew we couldn’t afford them. I remember playing with them once at a friend of a friend’s house, and feeling a sharp loss when we had to put them away. Their softness and heft stayed with me over the years, and when I finally realized in December that I now had the money to buy my own set, I was so excited! I could finally build my own little notched, interlocking worlds.

As a playwright, that’s what I do. I build worlds. I build them with words. But, like I said, I’ve been getting a little tired of the way I’ve been spending my words. So I bought the Lincoln Logs, and had a heydey for about two weeks, building all sorts of different homes and stores and outposts. Using such a different creative medium opened up the playful part of my brain–I built an Upper East Side pagoda, a log shrine, and a hyena store.

And then I turned to video. I want to try telling stories in a new way that matches this new space I find myself in. So I wrote up a couple of short scripts, roped some actorines into spending an afternoon with me, and shot two projects: http://www.youtube.com/user/calliekimball.

I learned a lot on those projects, and I’m writing some new scripts this month that I’ll shoot in May.

I’m building new worlds, and saying goodbye to old ones.

For now.