In those early days of the pandemic lockdown, I was like everyone else. Nowhere to go. Trapped inside my home with my family for months – unless I was making one of my valiant trips to the grocery store in mask and gloves as if I were a hunter/gatherer alpha male ancestor seeking food for my kin. A hunter-gatherer, I am not.

I am a writer.

And I was in desperate need to create. I opened the Final Draft software on my Mac and eyed the welcome screen, staring at the templates, when something remarkable happened. I started to write a play.

I had written a few novels, but I was not a playwright, thank you very much. What was I doing? Was I delusional? I don’t know, but I was writing. I was creating a world that felt real. Maybe I was just manic? The pages were filling up, which tended to happen when things got wonky in my brain chemistry, but this was different. This was dialogue! Troves of it. I was swimming in it. I was getting off on it. Then, after my first draft, I held a virtual table read with a bunch of actor friends.

It was at that moment that my life changed.

I heard my work being read back to me. My words! It was just a draft, but the reading changed my perspective on how I viewed myself.

A couple of months later, after continued readings and the lifting of Covid restrictions, my wife turned to me and said, “Whatever you want to do to be a writer, you have my support. Be a writer. Do it. LEARN!”

The next day I submitted my application to grad school, and soon after that, I became an MFA candidate in writing for Stage and Screen at Point Park University in Pittsburgh. Class of 23’. Holy shit. I was the oldest in my class, but I did it. I learned! Writing and creating characters and stories I care about.

I write from my heart because I believe that authenticity means something.

By now, my work has started to get recognized, which means something. Not because awards validate my work but because I’m comfortable enough to tell a truth about the ravages of mental illness in a public way. You see, I am bipolar, and I know first-hand how those who suffer from silent diseases can be marginalized by the ignorant – including my own family. Maybe that is why my work centers around those who experience trauma. Perhaps that is why I write characters who strive to break through the stigma of those unwilling to understand.

Thank God for my wife. She’s the reason I’m doing what I am doing. Because she believes it’s never too late to start.

She’s right, you know. It never is.