Pat Young
@patmarathonman on the front porch of his brand new home purchased in quarantine.
-Theatre-
Pat and I were planning a time for me to come do the interview right in the middle of him and his partner closing and moving into their first home. That seems to be a popular thing to do right now; buy and move into a new home. I assured him we could wait until they were settled but he informed me I would be the first guest they had over and that was too big an opportunity for me to pass up.
I got the “nickel and dime” tour as I believe he called it and got just as excited as he did about all the projects they had planned. They both have their own offices and plenty of living space which is an upgrade from their space before.
So, of course, Pat was all smiles for our chat.
Interviewed 5.29.20
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Casey: So Hi. First and foremost, how are you doing?
Pat: Right now? Relaxed. The past few weeks have been kind of a whirlwind, but it's been different for us since we bought a house. Pandemic wise, though, I luckily did a whole bunch of work before everything fell apart. So I have a good nest egg. I'm not particularly concerned yet. I'm kind of just going month by month. As long as I can pay a mortgage... Hey, I pay a mortgage now!
I think it's weird not being able to see people that I want to hang out with. It is weird not really having any work, you know. I am still actively trying to find work. And that was a particular challenge in getting a home loan; trying to prove that we are still working. And even as an actor without a pandemic, that's a big challenge. This really is something that we've been wanting to do for probably a year, year and a half or so. Glad it's done.
We're working on stuff. We're keeping busy. We love to travel a lot. I was supposed to do the London Marathon this year. That's probably not going to happen. We were gonna try and go to Cooperstown. That's not gonna happen. We are probably going to do one trip, though, and that's to Utah where there's not many people. So I think as long as we keep ourselves safe, we'll be at least be able to enjoy that.
Casey: How has your family been doing during all this? Have you been checking in on anybody?
Pat: Yeah. So I have a younger sister and she has two daughters with a third child on the way. They had the oldest in pre-school; she got pulled out. My brother-in-law is a helicopter pilot and his job is kind of in limbo because not many people have to go on helicopter rides, but they're still managing. They're in Connecticut. So I feel like Connecticut is doing a better job than Georgia. But they're doing OK.
Casey: What have you been doing in quarantine?
Pat: Buying a house and working on a house pretty much. That has really been the main project.
So quarantine hit, I guess, mid to late March. We stayed in as best we could. Beginning of April when we had to pay rent, we asked our landlord, "Hey, any chance we can have leniency because we don't have any jobs right now? Can you help us at all with the rent?” And he goes, "I can get you jobs." So he was not helpful.
At that point, we started really going, "All right, maybe we should start looking into buying a house and see if we can do that now." So Mid-April is when we really started house hunting. So really, 90 percent of the stuff that I've been doing has been house related.
Casey: What do you miss about pre-quarantine? I know your focus has been on the house, but even when you were just hunkering down and staying home before, what did you miss?
Pat: Really, it's the friends. Being able to be with people. Being able to just go, “All right. I'm going to go do this” and not have to worry about is this necessary? Is this going to be safe? What precautions do I have to take?
I hate to use the word freedom. “I miss my freedom.” Just being able to go out when we want. You know, I miss that luxury. Let me say that. That's a better word.
Casey: Are you motivated to create at all? Yet again, I know you have been very distracted.
Pat: Yeah. Not as motivated as other people. I would say because I've been working on a house so much, I've been focused on just this. But now that things are kind of settling in now, I'm getting more into the headspace of, “OK, what can I start doing with Trivial Matters?” We set up some online stuff temporarily, but now I'll really have the opportunity to kind of see where it is going to be in the next six months. The other avenues of my revenue, I'm just kind of waiting on other people to be like, "So what do we do next?"
Casey: What do you think that timeline looks like? Specifically for Trivial Matters? But even for acting stuff.
Pat: Yeah, Trivial Matters. I was very optimistic we'd be in the restaurants by the end of May. That's not gonna happen. So I'm hoping maybe mid-July we'll be at a point where we can start letting people into restaurants. And that is me basing that on no knowledge whatsoever. So it's really just I'm waiting for the restaurant owners to get back to us and be like, "Yeah, we're ready for trivia again." Not much I can do there.
We've had a few auditions trickle in and we do them as we can. It's hard to imagine though that productions will be starting up soon since those have so many people. I mean, I can say the same thing about trivia. You want over 100 people in a restaurant. There's that many people in a restaurant, there'd be twice that many on a set. So who knows? I have no idea. I have no idea about anything. What is it? Socrates? “The only thing that you can know is that you know nothing.”
It's freeing and it's maddening at the same exact time. It's like there's nothing you can do about it. And at the same time, well, there's nothing you can do about it.
Casey: Do you have any sort of things that keep me sane during this? Obviously, you've been moving but are you running still?
Pat: Sadly no. I'm not running. I was running and then probably about a week or two ago I shut down running to just give my body time to relax.
I have a strong feeling London is going to be canceled. So that provides no motivation to go running. Although this past week, I have taken a couple of days. Just do a couple easy miles just to get back into the swing of things. Not really focused on time or distance. Learn the neighborhood. I was playing Guitar Hero for a bit and then basically came to a halt when we started moving. So that'll probably start back up soon. Yeah, that's basically what I've been doing. What I will say is I have been trying to do a checklist of “as long as I can do these things every day, I'll be good.”
Casey: Like what?
Pat: So, in the beginning of quarantine, it was:
Play Guitar Hero for a little bit,
Do a Duolingo lesson. German,
Go running if I wanted to or if it was on the schedule,
And any other things that needed to get taken care of. Like auditions, stuff around the house, stuff like that. So now that we're settling in, I'm kind of trying to get back into that routine.
Casey: You seem like you're handling this well.
Pat: I think so. I mean. While there are a lot of things that I wish we could be doing, there will be time to do them again. And the fact that we were able to buy a house is one of the big takeaways from this year. And it was a big thing. So if nothing else gets done, it gets accomplished this year. I feel like I'm handling it as best I can. My mind is always occupied on something. It's not sitting around going, "Well, what do I do now?"
Casey: That's good. I probably know the answer to this question, but I end all of my interviews this way; what do you think you'll take away from this chapter in life?
Pat: Wow, this is the one question that I don't know how to answer, because, it's asking me to be like, “What are you going to think about in six months to a year?” And it's hard to really fathom the idea that the entire world has essentially stopped for a couple months. The human race will somehow survive, I hope. I think that's the biggest thing that I can say.
That's all I can hope for.
