I spent a few years of my life writing one-act plays in the wee hours of the morning before I went off to my job. Three of those plays were produced at small theaters in New York City (off-off-Broadway), as part of a bill of one-act plays by different playwrights.

Don’t hear me saying that “I made it in The Big Apple.” Although I could walk to the end of the block on 8th Avenue where my first play was produced, look east, and see the lights of Broadway, those lights were a million miles away.

Recently, I decided to look up the director of that first play of mine, the director to whom I had felt the closest. At the time that production took place, she was perhaps 30 years old, if that. She had grown up in the Midwest, and gone off to first Los Angeles, and then New York to pursue her dream (or “plan,” as she would have called it) to be a director. Actually, our working partnership extended beyond that one play, including my writing a screenplay that she produced and directed for a short film contest.

I found her likable as a person, if totally driven to succeed as a director. She spent her days managing the office of a high-powered Madison Avenue firm of some sort to “make the nut,” and her evenings and weekends ferociously and tirelessly seeking to develop projects she could direct.

When I looked her up on the internet, I saw that in the 20-plus years since we’d worked together, she’d directed an independent film that was streaming on Kanopy and a documentary streaming on HBO, and was currently trying to get funding to produce and direct a screenplay to which she’d bought the rights.

All of that can seem impressive, but we’re talking about a period of over two decades, and her directorial credits in that time did not amount to much more than the above, I couldn’t imagine they were enough for her to quit her day job, literally and figuratively. As far as where she’d set out to get to, that destination may not have been a million miles away, but it was still far from walking distance. Or maybe, rather than seeming distant to her, that destination seemed agonizingly close, but always just out of reach.

When I wrote the above sentence, something I once read, written by I know not whom, came to mind: “Sipping from the cup of glory is like drinking salt water. It wets your throat, but only makes you thirsty for more.” Or, as someone I know puts it, “The having doesn’t stop the wanting.”

I contacted her at an email address listed on the internet, but as is often the case nowadays, I had to go through what I can only describe as a rigamarole to set up a time for the two of us to speak to each other on the phone. You’d have thought we were trying to arrange a week-long conference on the island of Malta.

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When we finally did talk, it felt to me that while the driven part of her was still cemented in place, the part of her I had found to be connectable, the part that flowed outside the walls of her ambition, had dried up some.

These many years later, as I tried to get out of the starting gate with our “catch-up” conversation, it seemed to me that I was compartmentalized in her mind as a writer from some distant projects, not Rich, the person. It caused me to wonder how much more than “transactional” our interaction had ever been to her. I also noted that as a person now well into middle age, there was a certain “I coulda been a contender” acidity which crept in when she discussed her career.

As we wound down our conversation that had never really wound up, she asked me to send her some of my columns. It was as if she was incapable of talking to someone who she thought of as a writer without asking them to send along what they had to her. I didn’t think there was a snowball’s chance in hell of my columns finding their way into some kind of performance directed by her, but I said I’d send some along.

Part of the reason I agreed to do so was that I didn’t want our conversation, such as it had been, to end on the sour note of my denying her request. If the truth be told, another part was I figured a snowball’s chance in hell was better than no chance at all. I even said I’d also send an old play of mine she’d never read. Apparently, the fires of my own youthful dreams, though largely extinguished by the stiff headwinds of my own limitations and the drip, drip, drip of the waters of time, still smoldered some.

About a week after I sent her my writings, I received an email from her saying that she’d received them, was swamped with things to read, but expected to get to them soon.

That was several months ago, and I haven’t heard from her since.

I don’t expect I ever will.

Amherst resident Richard McCarthy, a longtime columnist at the Springfield Republican, writes a monthly column for the Gazette.