🌟Maven 5Q: CK Steefel🌟

We can all use some Good Humor!

C.K. (aka Carissa) STEEFEL

Good Humor by CK Steefel

C.K. wrote, produced and performed an award winning one-woman comedy, which received the Backstage Bistro Award (New York) and a Top Ten Best New Plays in the Village View (Los Angeles). She optioned her first screenplay, which placed second in the Diane Thomas Screenwriting Award organized by Amblin Entertainment and UCLA. She was later commissioned to write a romantic comedy, based on an original concept she created. C.K.’s comedy, “PTA Wars” was a semifinalist in two comedy festivals and was optioned. Her spiritual/family script, “Emails From Heaven,” was a quarter-finalist in the Table Read My Screenplay-Park City and the International Faith and Family Screenwriting Competition and currently a quarter finalist in the Page Turner Screenwriting Competition.

CK has been published in Defenestration Magazine and Chicken Soup for the Soul and maybe more if she carved out the time to submit. She is currently developing comedic videos on IG, TikTok and figuring out aspect ratio on Youtube. She writes personal, mostly humorous, essays, and interviews Funny AF Women on her Substack, Good Humor. She is currently working on a gift/humor book and an historical fiction novel.

Extreme Seinfeld fans know her as Gucci in the episode, “The Keys,” and, Sylvia in “The Cigar Store Indian.”

C.K. received her B.F.A. from New York University and is a joyfully married empty nester. She’s still waiting for her kids to text her back.

What is the most surprising part of being in this stage of life?

Physically, the stiffness, the weird aches that are a mystery and you have no idea how they happened. That bruise? I don’t remember banging my elbow. I go to the PT for my neck but at my next appointment ask about the muscle that I think is above my kidney because I may have pulled it. How? I woke up. And because I now have a perpetual marine layer in my brain, I lose words, car keys, my glasses—oh but they were on my face the entire time.

Mentally, I surprised myself in the last year. I was never tech savvy but with hubby’s help I am learning Adobe Premiere pro. I can perform comedy and edit my own video skits. I get to be a comedian again. As hubby says, “It’s like you’re doing your one woman show again.” (In which I wrote, produced and starred in the late 80’s early 90’s to critical acclaim. Go me!)

What’s one new thing you’re trying to embrace in mid-life?

I don’t think I’m “mid” anymore. Probably more like ¾ of the way.

I’ve had friends who have passed already. When it’s a peer you can’t help but wonder about your own last performance. I’m trying to embrace the unknown, my death date whenever that will be. It’s realistically closer now that I’m in my final act. But does my life hold another hour on stage or five minutes? I’m hoping for an invigorating hour filled with family, grandkids (please Mr. G-d?), more dogs, maybe chickens before my curtain call.

If you could give yourself a piece of advice 20 years ago, what would it be and why?

I would have told my 42-year-old self to be more frugal. There are financial surprises as we age: inflation, corporate layoffs, medical insurance suddenly saying, “Hey, we’re done with you,” the dishwasher dies... I never thought I’d be eager to get to 65 so I could go on Medicare and get senior discounts. Ace Hardware offers 10% off on Thursdays. I can finally buy that Battery Daddy storage container.

What’s something that our generation had access to that you’d like to bring back?

TV without cable. It was so nice to just plug in the TV and not have to pay for 500 choices. Yes, we only had 13 channels but if nothing was of interest you were forced to read or go take a walk, catch up with a friend, or, hey, write a letter to a cousin and drop it in a post box.

If in the next 20 yrs your life had a theme, what would it be and why?

Learn baby learn. There’s so much more to absorb, discover, read, understand… This includes making new connections, nurturing community, learning from and helping others and hopefully educating my fellow humans as well. Did you know that irregardless is a word? Lo and behold a double negative equals a positive. I am not unhappy about this.

Good Humor by CK Steefel

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