At the end of June, I knew I needed to disappear. Not forever. Just long enough to hear myself think again. But I couldn't go yet. And if you produce anything for a living, you already know why…
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You asked a team member for an update. A routine check-in. Status on a few moving parts you needed to track. The call ended with them telling you they felt grateful. Relieved, even. Like they'd finally gotten something off their chest. Sit with that for a moment. Because that moment -- the one where…
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It is closing night. The headliner is twenty minutes from walking out. The field that started this morning as a thousand separate people has become one body leaning toward the stage, and you can feel the air change before a single note plays. You have felt that shift before. The moment a…
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You ran the team debrief. You sat in the room while the department heads walked through what held and what broke. You captured the near-misses. You wrote down the protocols worth keeping. You did the organizational work, and you did it well. There's one debrief you didn't run.The one where you're the only person in the…
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The festival ended three to four weeks ago. The adrenaline is finally out of your system. Some of your team took vacation. A holiday weekend may have come and gone. The emotions have mostly settled. You still like your coworkers. And now, this week, the meetings are starting to populate again. This is the window…
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It's the Sunday after wrap. It's 2pm. You're in your kitchen. The laundry basket has been at the foot of the bed for three weeks. The fridge contains seven half-eaten things you can't identify. The garden has gone feral. There is mail on the counter you stopped opening in week one of pre-production. You haven't…
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Thirty-six seasons is a long time to do anything. It is long enough to see every kind of festival leader succeed and fail. Long enough to watch brilliant operators burn out in…
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It is 2am -- or it is 5am, which is the same thing by that point in the production week. Something has changed. Not the thing you planned for. The other thing. The one that wasn't in any of the scenarios you mapped before the event opened. Your operations director is looking at…
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