This is embarrassing, but the other day I found myself attempting to write a stand-up comedy routine. A Natasha Leggero performance I'd seen at least three times inspired me and I thought... "What do they [comedians] do? Just think of funny stuff over a certain period of time, write down those ideas and try them out on a crowd?“ I didn't want to get into the specifics at the time. I'm impatient. I wanted to see how long it would take me to write a joke. I tried not to put too much pressure on myself at first, but after 100 seconds, the pressure sank in. I thought "Well, you can youtube anything these days. Maybe I can find a video that will advise me on the art of writing comedy." The fact that I resorted to the internet to advise me on this is an entire tangent in itself. I will get to that in a later post (I promise you), but this experience and the utter failure that resulted from it, led me to the lesson in disguise. I need to write and keep writing. The second I put pressure on my self with this sort of thing, I end up doubting I will even be capable and resorting to outside sources of information and experience to get me through. This is more acceptable when the source is a book rather than youtube. I get that. It's a more respectable source, but it's 2019 and youtube is the visual encyclopedia of our time. It's insane how much you can learn from watching a 10 minute episodes of Drunk History or a TED talk about "The art of asking" (by Amanda Palmer- a musician and former painted statue/street performer). These are first hand experiences. These are people with talents and abilities to entertain and entice like no one else in the world. We have the pleasure and honor of entertaining ourselves with their entire life's work convienently displayed in a beautifully crafted 10-15 minute video that we are all too fortunate to play on our phones and computer screens. All of this was written to let you know... I'd like to be vulnerable with you. I’ll insert an excerpt from my personal journal in this post. I wrote this the day before I made this website:
"...To be honest, this is as far as I ever pictured myself living, so I am assuming I need to sorta figure out the next move (if you will) but it's hard to figure out what exactly it should be. I have all these things I do that I'm somewhat good at, but the challenge, I find, is figuring out a way to bring them altogether. I want my stories, experiences, humor, food, art, and style sense to blend into the fabric of my dream career somehow but I'm having a hard time making sense of how I will go about this..."
Well folks, I became a genie and made my wish come true. Granted, it took and is taking plenty of effort on my part, but it’s only getting better, clearer, and brighter with every passing day. The first step was losing fear of what the outcome will be. The second was coffee and the third was writing whether I’m in the mood to or not. In other words; loss of fear, caffeine and perserverance are paving the way.
