I was certain that my car had been towed. Somehow, I’d parked illegally (even though I was sure that I double-checked the signs), and my car was now somewhere else, and I’d never had a ticket before in my entire life, and this wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to me that day. And, yet, somehow, it was all for the best.

Pre-production is an exciting time, but then you have days like I had on September 16, 2013.

If you’re going to be serious about shooting a web series, at a certain point everything comes to a head. Your equipment rental is locked in. Your actors have arranged their schedules. The day you start shooting is coming up, and there’s so much to do. And you can’t stop for pretty much anything. All of a sudden, the project is way bigger than you are. You know the maxim, “The show must go on”? It’s because delaying by a day could mean that you’re screwing over dozens of other people, or blowing tons of money.

On September 16, less than a week before we were scheduled to shoot, LARPs: The Series‘s producer Benjamin Warner and I planned to go shopping for the show’s MacGuffin, the Eleventh Eye. About an hour before we were supposed to meet, my girlfriend of over eight years sat down with me in a Subway restaurant, and blindsided me: our relationship was over. Before I knew it, I was standing on a sidewalk with a few boxes of my stuff and watching her drive away.

I had to make a choice: either process what had just happened, or somehow put that on hold and make this shopping run with Benjamin. Except—I didn’t really have a choice, did I? The show must go on.

Months later, looking back, I’m still uncertain whether I should admire my tenacity or disapprove of my callousness. My life’s path was essentially rewritten in the blink of an eye, but I shoved that aside to shop for a paperweight. And I continued to not deal with what had happened for the following three weeks, during the shoot.

But the show must go on, and I think in this case it wasn’t because I had so many people counting on me (though that certainly factored in). It’s because I had to see it through. I needed something in my life to go right, and thankfully, I had a cast and crew who were able to bring the intensity I needed to keep me distracted from my relationship woes in order to get the job done.

I took a photo of Benjamin holding a glass orb with a lizard on it in a curio shop on Monkland Avenue. We had our Eleventh Eye. And as I walked back to where I had parked, I couldn’t find my car, and I saw temporary NO PARKING signs set up that I swore weren’t there before.

After twenty minutes of mild panic, I walked two blocks over to find my car, parked exactly where I had left it. Things were looking up, as long as I could keep my head on straight.

Of course, in a few days, shooting was about to begin…