Croc and The Long Game: More Lessons

There’s this game my sisters and I used to play on my dad’s old PC in the late late 90s: Croc: Legend of the Gobos.

The family computer was in my parents’ room, tucked into the corner. So, the four of us would take turns helping this little pixelated crocodile try and save his Gobo family (think little cotton balls with eyes) from the big bad – Baron Dante.

It took forever for us to get through it, and I put my time in: sitting in the desk chair in an almost-dry bathing suit, trying to get my turn in before Hannah told me I was cutting in line. Up early on a Saturday, slurping blue milk out of a bowl with one hand and trying to beat another level with the other. Before school. After school. After homework, before bed. Lava caves, mines, mountaintops, mystical forests… that little crocodile went everywhere.

And there was this feeling I remember really, really well. The nerves that tingled before a new level started – the thrill of is this going to work? Could I be about to beat this, right now? Are we about to access a whole new level?

The door would open, and I’d jump over the bad little assholes (Dantinis) with the clubs, knocking them with my tail. And Croc had these fun little catchphrases like ya-bo! And kapow! Yippee! And it was so satisfying to press the buttons like I was some expert hacker and watch the villains turn to dust. But there was a part I hated – the jumps. He’d have to jump over these black pits of nothing. Yawning gaps of darkness. No matter what level we were on, or where he was – a mine, a sky palace, a forest – there would be floating rocks, and he’d have to jump. You’d have to jump. And hope he made it.

The sound he made when he fell is marked in my psyche. This ambulance-like, warbly yell like WAAAHHHHEeeeeeee… and it would fade out as he disappeared into the abyss, going from a shape to one lone, tiny green pixel while you could do nothing but slowly unclench your asscheeks and watch him go, stewing in your own failure. You were almost there. Almost at the next level none of you have seen, before. Almost the one who did that.

But you failed. And now you start over. Not from the beginning – it’s not that bad. But all that skill you just demonstrated? All that STEMgirl realness you just dropped on the keyboard, looking like a fucking savant in your braces and headgear? Gone.

WAAAHHHHEeeeeeee.

You start over.   

~

It’s 2025 as I write this, and I feel like I blinked. Like I was writing my goals for this year and outside my window the whole first ¾ of the calendar did a Notting Hill timelapse. It was a big year for us — Ross started a new job as a prison Psychologist – one that takes him away from home for three days at a time during the week. Which means I’m solo parenting these four small humans during that time. On one hand, *holds up a card that says HELP in bloody letters*. On the other, *holds up an Etsy needlepoint about not knowing how strong you are until you have to be*

And against all odds, I’ve been able to keep writing. This summer, I finished a (soon to be announced) book and a new short story that my agents and I were stoked about. Are stoked about. Calls started coming in – I got to pitch my own show for the first time. Not something with Marvel, not an OWA. My vision.

Meetings stacked up. My current count is at about twenty-two, with more of half of those being pitches. The other half were generals, and as I write this, I still have a couple left on the calendar. They all landed during the last two weeks of my deadline, the week I also was going to the Fantastic Four premiere, the week of Ben’s birthday, and the meeting with his orthopedic surgeon to see if he needed a third surgery (Thank the Lord, he doesn’t). It was a lot, especially when I was holding fort down alone.

But there was this excitement. Despite the impossibility of the industry – it’s so weird right now — I was reaching a new level. A level I’d never been at, before.

We had to find a way to make sure I could write while he was gone, so Ross hooked the Nintendo Switch up to the TV this summer. It was a compromise, because I didn’t want these feral kids playing video games for hours, and having it on the TV was a way for me to be fully aware of how long they were playing and what they were playing. It bought me time when time felt like what I needed most.

They were looking for a new game, and I looked up Croc. Turns out they’d remastered it and re-released it for Nintendo. So, eager to show my kids how cool I was, we set it up. Wanna see how cool your mom is? I’d ask (they’d say no, I’d take a turn anyway and then make them tell me I’m cool before I gave the controller back, etc etc).

It took me right back – the soundtrack, the effects, the lava. Ya-bo. Kapow.

The WAAAHHHHEeeeeeee.

Watching Cros disappear down into inky blackness, failure swallowing him whole. I hated that, but I know it’s part of the game.

I didn’t anticipate hearing that sound again so a) loudly, and b) often.

They played Nintendo between Ju Jitsu, time with Malolly, trips to the pool, and I cobbled together writing time with the help of my family, who are always there to help me carve out little bubbles of time to build my worlds.

With the help of my sister, Ashtyn, I made a pitch deck. I practiced and practiced. Made corrections. Edited.

And I started pitching. Feedback was amazing. I hit my stride. Two meetings a day. Three.

Kapow. Ya-bo!

I finished the book on time.

Yipee!

The things I love about this job are the same things that kidney-punch me on a regular basis. There’s always another level – another peak. A new mine, a new enchanted forest, a new sky castle. That’s exhausting and exhilarating, depending on how much caffeine I’ve had and where I’m at in my PMDD cycle.

You got an agent? You need to sell a book.

Kapow!

You sold a book? It needs to be received well.

Ya-bo!

It was received well? Hope it sells well.

It sold well, but not well enough.

WAAAHHHHEeeeeeee.

You can’t just get staffed. You have to get staffed again. You can’t just get staffed again, you have to get a writing credit. The show can’t just be good, it has to be renewed. You can’t just write something good, it has to be good and what they’re looking for – two different bullseyes rotating in opposite directions.

You pray the magic keeps happening, and that you’re talented and blessed enough to replicate the magic again and again and again.

Same level, doors opening again and again and again. Same intro music, same set jaw, same feeling of this is it. This is the one.

“We’ll circle up and call you right back”

Kapow!

They’re so interested!

Kapow!

This is so exciting

Kapow!

unfortunately…

WAAAHHHHEeeeeeee.

Start over. Maybe not back at square one, but far back enough that you think it might be time to turn the game of and go lick your wounds. In 2000, that would entail reading Harry Potter on my couch while cuddling with my dog Oliver and absolutely housing an entire Marie Callendar’s personal chicken pot pie. In 2025, it looks like reading Sarah J. Maas or Emily Henry, cuddling Cricket, and absolutely housing an entire Marie Callendar’s personal chicken pot pie.

But I always made my way back to the computer, didn’t I? I wanted to win, so I knew that I’d have to fail until I did. There is no kapow  without the WAAAHHHHEeeeeeee, as the ancients have said.

The show isn’t dead. Not even close. There are still meetings on the books, but whether or not this one works isn’t the point.  The Croc Lesson has been sloshing around in my mind for a month or so now as I again remember that if I want this, I have to be okay with WAAAHHHHEeeeeeee -ing a thousand more times. In more and more painful situations, in front of cooler and cooler people, with bigger numbers, higher stakes, from stratospheric heights.

And this? This level that has me crying after school drop-offs and wondering if I’m done – if I’ve peaked? There are so many more like it. Being a writer means majoring in art but minoring in grit. And honestly? Some days that feels like it should be swapped.  

I don’t know how many levels are between me and the Final Boss. Is there a final level? I don’t think there is. Noah Hawley isn’t done. Eric Kripke doesn’t seem to be chilling. I don’t see Shonda Rhimes or Mike Flannagan in permanent chicken pot pie mode.

And I’m writing this more for myself than anyone else. I don’t even know if I’ll end up posting this. I’ve taken a pretty definite stance on chicken pot pie that I can’t walk back, so I’ll think about it. But I told Ross this morning that I’d failed, again. My inbox was quiet after months of daily dopamine-spiking beeps. And I’m left with the realization that I’m back at the bottom of that liminal space Croc fell – the space where I might have to find a new story I love, fall in love with it, write it, edit it, and climb back up to try again.

And Ross reminded me that this space isn’t new. It just always feels new, for some reason.

So here I go again, I guess. Thick glasses perched, chicken pot pie in the oven.

Here for the ka-pow, here for the WAAAHHHHEeeeeeee.

Here for all of it.

(*For those of you wondering, my sisters and I did finally beat Croc: Legend of the Gobos. It took a year, and I remember the feeling of elation, triumph, and pride as we worked together to free Croc’s family from Baron Dante. I then bounced into the living room, screeching “we did it WE DID IT!” at the top of my lungs only to stop when I saw my mom sitting on the living room floor, eyes wide and unseeing as she watched the news. She tore her gaze from the screen to look at me, unsure how to respond because it was, in fact, September 11, 2001, and she could not have given less of a fuck.)