I participated in an improvisation comedy show last weekend that was a great success. I think we made about $900 for the theater. Here's how it worked: Three writers (me included) sat on stage with laptop computers. We watched improvised scenes by the group of actors and started typing away. We had to write a scene or sketch based on the improvisation. Then we printed off the scenes we wrote, and the actors immediately performed our scenes for the audience. It was a thrill!

Friday night I was one of the writers and Saturday night I was an actor. Writing was scarier! But it was fun to tackle something that scared me. I got great comments from audience members, and several actors told me they want me to write a part for them in my next play.

It's fun to learn you can actually pull something off when you initially doubted your ability. They say to do one thing every day that scares you. For the last year I guess I have just been living with the fear of being alone. Every day I have done one thing that scares me, and that has been to be without a relationship. No support. No partnership. That's a big one for me. It was nice to do one thing that scares me that has nothing to do with my status as a single person. And this was definitely in keeping with my theme for 2004.