Recording an Album, 2

Come on, Bryson. Get back on the horse. Come on, buddy. We can do this.

Damage Control, aka Days I’m a Piece of Shit

It’s 1:30 in the afternoon. On a Monday. Monday, March 19, 2012.

So far today, I’ve been a piece of shit.

I don’t have a job, but I woke up by around 8 or 8:30. I watched a few TED Talks, and then I had a good breakfast. I even took Adderall, which usually means that I’m going to do something productive and focused with my day. At 9:30, it looked like this was going to be a great day. The beginning of a great week.

Then it all fell apart. I started playing an app on my iPhone - a mind-numbing, repetitious video game app.

And then it was 3 hours later, before I looked up. And now it’s 1:30. I haven’t done a damn thing today.

And you can’t start a day at 1:30 in the afternoon. 9:30? Yeah! 11 in the morning? There’s still time to build momentum. But 1:30? When the day is already more than half over? When you haven’t done anything except be a lazy bum so far?

No. Come on. Who am I kidding? The dye has been cast. I’m a shitty person today. And since it’s Monday, that probably means I’m going to have an unproductive, pointless week.

And, it’s already the 19th! It feels like March just started. God damn it I’m a piece of shit. What have I done this month? I haven’t read a book, I haven’t watched a movie, I haven’t done any amazing shows, I haven’t gotten into any clubs. What have I done, in 19 days? Nothing.

And honestly, at the end of March, we’re already a quarter of the way through the year. Seriously? A quarter over? I’m still writing 2011 on my checks! Or I would, if I ever used checks.

What have I done this year? Honestly, what’s different now than my life 3 months ago? I’m not making any more money. I’m not in at any clubs. I still haven’t been on TV. I still haven’t cleaned my room, for Christ’s sake. What the hell is wrong with me?

You know what’s really messed up? I’ve never had a clean room. It’s 2012. I was born in 1984. I’m supposed to be a 28 year-old man right now. Some days, that’s too hilarious to be sad. But today, that’s too sad to be hilarious.

I can barely see my bedroom floor. There are 3 glasses next to my bed, because I bring a new one in every night and never bother to take them into the kitchen the next morning. I know that’s a little thing, but the little things add up. Flossing? I’m lucky if I remember to brush my teeth half the time.

I haven’t had an hourly-wage job in 4 years. I say I love stand-up, but how often do I write during my days? I say I work hard, but how often do I choose a girl, or a conversation, over what I claim is my life’s passion? Am I any more disciplined than I was when I finished college and was trying to do this when I was 22? The things that took up my time - watching sports, playing games, chasing women - am I any better at living my life now than I was then?

No. That was six years ago. What has changed - really - in six years? My lifestyle is almost exactly the same - I live in an apartment, I eat pizza, and I go do open-mics at night. I never work out with any consistency, so my body is almost exactly the same - right around 150 pounds, like I have been for the past decade. My work ethic is the same - I go to plenty of open-mics, but I don’t call clubs, I don’t e-mail bookers, and I don’t work off-stage to tighten my jokes.

Sure, I’m a better comic now. But not because I’m actually any different. I’ve just been doing it for longer. Is that really a reason to get excited?

I’m the same person I was six years ago. You know why? Because of today. Because I’ve had six years of days like today. Where I wake up. And have a chance to not be a piece of shit. And then I fuck it up.

I feel bad that I didn’t do anything from 9:30 to 11. And no matter what I do the rest of the day, it won’t be as much as I could have done. So I spend 11 to 12 avoiding getting started, and facing that reality. And then I feel even worse for the next hour-and-a-half, because I know that clock is ticking forward.

It’s bizarre. It’s almost like I’m thinking if I live a day shittily enough, it won’t count.

Every year, Major League Baseball has a “Home Run Derby,” where the best hitters try to hit as many home runs as they can before they get 10 outs. So somebody throws a pitch, and if they swing and don’t hit a home run, that’s an out. And you just count how many home runs each guy hits, before he has 10 swings that aren’t home runs.

The thing is, if they don’t swing at a pitch - and just wait for a better pitch next time - then it doesn’t count as an out. If they don’t think it’s a good pitch, they can just let it go by, no penalty.

That’s kind of how I live my life sometimes. It’s like every day is a new “pitch,” a new chance to hit a home run. But I’m so terrified of not hitting a home run, that most days, I just end up not swinging at all. I end up taking the pitch.

It’s so stupid. Logically, I know that. Because that’s not how life works. In real-life Home-Run Derby, we get a certain number of pitches (God damn it, I’d like to get through ONE POST on here without turning into a motivational speaker. Christ).

I don’t know what my point is. So I’ll just go back to the one I planned to make when I started this an hour ago:

That was the mentality I fell into, for most of the first half of 2011. Last year, when I first moved to New York, I just got into a funk. I didn’t go to any open-mics the first night I was in town. Or the second night. And then all of a sudden, it was the first week. Then, I’d gone out 5 nights in 3 months. It just snowballed. I avoided facing the present, because to do so, I had to admit my past.

So far this year, I’ve been doing a great job of limiting the damage. Sometimes I’ll have an unproductive day, but I don’t let it become an empty week. Today isn’t going to be as productive as it could have been, but it can still be something: I’m writing this blog, which is something. And I still have time to head out and get some open-mics in.

But I gotta get going. And keep going. I’m a fuck-up. Oh well. Part of the game.

“Be Too Exhausted to Think"

I had a great talk with Eli Sairs last night. Eli and I have known each other for 7 or 8 years now, which is weird to say. We both went to Ohio University, where we were both jealous of the much more talented Eric Janeczek. But we kept doing our thing anyway.

I moved to DC after I graduated, Eli followed a year later, and then he established himself there while I was frollicking around in Austin, Texas. Three years later, we find ourselves united again, as struggling comics here in New York.

I mentioned to Eli that I’ve been depressed lately, and that I’ve been dealing with a lot of self-resentment. I desperately want to work hard here and try to get as good as I can at stand-up, but I find myself staying in a lot of nights. And that’s been an ongoing struggle since I moved here in January - this sort of self-sabotage bullshit. I want to do one thing, but I don’t do what I want, even though there’s no logical reason why I’m not doing it.

I guess I just feel guilty, for some reason? Maybe because I have been lazy in the past. And so I feel like a piece of shit. I feel like deep down, I don’t deserve to succeed. And so I try to make sure I get the result I deserve - failure - by not doing what I know I should do now, either. As punishment for some previous night when I didn’t go out, or some previous day when I could have been writing or working, but was just wasting time on the internet.

That’s probably part of it.

I think a big part of it, though, is a fear of failure. And a fear of judgment.

I worry that because I didn’t go out that much during the past year, I’m not going to be as good as I could be when I go out tonight. So I’m not going to be my best self. And I shouldn’t have to deal with people judging me for how I am now - because I could be better than this. I’m just not, because I didn’t work as hard as I could have. But if I could be better than this, then it’d be bullshit if I have to exist as the less-than-my-best version of myself that I am right now.

It’s easy for me to realize that if I keep having that same attitude, I’m just going to get older, and get more and more bitter at myself. I’m going to resent that my refusal to just shut up and live my life as my current self - instead of acting like a child, and throwing a 20-year-long tantrum because things aren’t perfect - is what kept me from being happy while I’m alive.

It’s a vicious cycle. And it’s one we should all make sure we’re not holding ourselves in. Because it’s our choice.

That’s the whole point. We wouldn’t feel nearly as shitty if someone else was keeping us from being happy. But it’s us. We’re doing it to ourselves, the whole time.

That’s why I feel so shitty sometimes. But if I look at it from another perspective, it’s also proof that I can fix the problem. Because no one is stopping me from being at peace, except me. I know I can get better, or else I wouldn’t feel like a such a piece of shit in the first place.

Okay...so how do I break the cycle?

Enter Eli Sairs. I was telling him all the insane, self-obsessed, knotted-up-Christmas-lights-shaped ideas that have been running through my head for most of the year that I’ve lived here.

And he said the best way to overcome those thoughts? Be too exhausted to think.

Be too exhausted to think.

I loved that. He said if I just hustle my ass off, and get to as many mics as I can, and completely fill my days with anything...at the end of a week, I’ll be too tired to worry about any psycho-analysis bullshit. At some point, you have a moment where you say to yourself, “Man...am I doing everything I can?”

And then you just kind of shrug and say, “Yeah. I am.”

Once you’re there, you can start worrying about how efficient the “anything” is that you’re doing. But at first, just get exhausted.

What simple advice. But what great advice. Be too exhausted to think.

Good call, Eli. Thanks for the chat.

2 Posts in 3 Weeks

We’ve kind of fallen off the wagon a little bit here at The Hajj. I’m trying to decide how I feel about that.

Apparently pretty happy, judging by the photo I just took of myself, as I write this. Let’s try to figure out why.

Most of my posts on here have been a commentary on the challenges of moving to New York, both personally and professionally, and attempting to break into the comedy scene here.

Well, the inactivity of the past few weeks is probably as good a lesson as any blog I could have posted. It’s hard to keep up with anything in life. It’s hard to not have other stuff happen that distracts you from a project, or a goal, or a career pursuit, or whatever.

For me, I spent 4 days last week back home in Pittsburgh, which was my first visit home since I moved here in January. When I got back last Tuesday, I immediately threw all my energy and focus into the fundraiser comedy show that happened this past Friday. It was a stand-up show that I put on in order to raise money for Resolve, the non-profit that my partner (romantic, not comedic - so Vijaya, not Lucas) runs here in New York, and that I am closely involved with.

That, coupled with trying to start a makeshift fantasy football blog, and getting sucked into that world, has taken up a lot of time the past few weeks. And I have no way of guaranteeing that I’ll jump back into this blog full-bore (pun intended).

I hope I get back to updating it more frequently. But life happens so damn fast. Sometimes before you even realize it, you’ve made your list of priorities in life. I’ve wanted to see my family for months. The only chance I had to squeeze it in was last week, and so I didn’t get onstage for 5 nights in a row. Then I went crazy putting together a fundraiser, and that cost me a few days of writing and a few nights of shows.

And though I haven’t made much mention of it in this blog, a huge part of the New York experience is financial. Maybe I’ll write a long, wordy blog about that someday. Just not today. But I don’t want to make it seem like that’s not something that hangs over your head constantly while you’re here. As it does everywhere else, of course. There’s no getting away from money, unless you go off the grid. And it’s tough to make a name for yourself in the comedy game when you’re living in a shack in the foothills of South Dakota.

So money is a priority, too. And for me, so is family. And so is Resolve. And so is writing out my thoughts, and trying to stay sane, and trying to make sense of life.

That’s not to say that I can’t pursue comedy just because I have other priorities on my list. They can each be my top priority, at different times and in different contexts. But they are all there. They are all things I think about, and that I am not willing to give up altogether.

Part of doing stand-up comedy is deciding how much of your life you’re going to give to it. It’s something worth thinking about, both before you make a move to New York, and once you’re up here. The answer is ever-changing. If I had to guess, I bet there will be months at a time, maybe a year or two at a time, in the future, when I fully devote myself to comedy, and I commit to making it my top priority. I’ve done so before, for 6 months to a year at a time.

But time goes by quick in life. So maybe I’m just lying to myself. Maybe the choices I’m making now are limiting the ceiling of how great a comic I can be. Or maybe being more well-rounded will make me a better artist than I could ever be if I only focus on the craft of stand-up, and not the substance of the message that it could potentially provide.

Or maybe I should just shut up and tell some dick jokes.

Hmm. Maybe. I doubt it, though. Maybe for other comics, that’s honestly what they should do. They should just be funny. And it’s not my job to judge whether or not that’s universally right. I’m not a comedy God, after all.

What I need to do is worry about what’s best for me. And for me, I think I need to keep trying to be honest with myself. And keep trying to be a well-rounded person, and to live my life as well as I can. And sometimes that will mean doing 20 sets a week. And sometimes it will mean writing 10 blogs a week.

And sometimes it will mean having to write one that tries to explain why I’ve blown this blog off for most of the past month.

That’s life, sometimes. I think I’m okay with that. Which is why I’m smiling as I write this. I’ll try to get three sets in tonight. Maybe three more tomorrow. Then Wednesday I’m on ‘Rubber Bullets’ - a great weekly show in Brooklyn, and by far the biggest show I’ve been invited on since I moved here. So I just need to keep working, and keep trying to make sense of myself.

Back to work.

Part 3 - What I Learned from Mike D.

Okay, now I’ll try to finish up my thoughts from Part 2, which was - in some disjointed way - a continuation of Part 1.

I just don’t really feel like I have a life that makes any sense up here. Not yet, at least. Without a job, it feels like my life is a house of cards, and it’s always a week away from collapsing. I’m not living a sustainable life up here.

No life is going to be perfect. And I know that. I think the question is, where is that line? Where is the line between “You can’t wait for everything in your life to be perfect before you pursue comedy, or you’ll never pursue it,” and “Any progress you make now with comedy is going to be Fool’s Gold, because you can’t truly be honest if you’re living a life with no base, and you aren’t at peace with who you really are.”

I don’t know. Does that make any sense? It does to me.

I wrote a joke about organic peanut butter last week. And it had some clever lines in it, and if I performed it for the next few weeks, and punched it up, and tightened it, then I would have had a new minute of clean, solid material.

But for me, personally, I don’t want to talk about organic peanut butter onstage. I want to talk about things that are deeply funny, not things that are forgettably funny. To me, truths are funny. I want to talk about truths.

When I’m onstage, I try to connect with the crowd by opening myself up to them. And if I do it correctly, I shouldn’t be afraid to look them in the eye.

I saw Mike DeStefano perform live one time. He died in February, a month after I moved up here. I’ll spend the rest of my career trying to remember what I saw that one set. He stared people down. He didn’t tell jokes and then search for a source of approval. He didn’t look for the person laughing. He made you own your response, as an audience member. As an individual. He made you know, that he knew, that you were there. You were both in the room. You both existed. He forced you to acknowledge that, because he was willing to acknowledge that.

He was willing to acknowledge that he existed, as he was. He was not afraid of you knowing that.

I don’t know if I have that right now. I don’t know if I’m comfortable with who I am as a person, and how I’m doing in my life right now. I’m living with my partner - she has a job, and I don’t. I owe money to half-a-dozen collection agencies. I don’t have health insurance, and maybe more damning, my partner has a history of illness, and I’m letting her live without it, too. I consistently make commitments that I don’t keep. I consistently let my friends and family down. I shirk responsibilities whenever I can. There’s a warrant out for my arrest in Texas, for God’s sake.

Whether I’m succeeding at comedy up here feels irrelevant. If I have to live my life poorly to become a great comedian, then I don’t want to be a great comedian. I want to become a great stand-up comic because I want to live my life well, and because becoming a great comic is a valuable use of the time I have. But if I’m going to experience some success in comedy, and then my life completely falls apart around me and I lose all the momentum I’d just built up...then what good does that do?

I think about things all the time. A lot of people say I overthink things. This could be one of those times. But even as I type this, I feel like I’m standing at the corner of 34th and 8th, with Lucas next to me. And it feels like in the world of comedy, other comics are bumping past us, or pushing through us, rushing to get to that next place.

If they know where they’re going, and why they’re going there, then more power to them - it means they’re going to get to the next place before I do. It’s very humbling, but I need to admit that I don’t know where that next place is yet. I don’t know where I am, and so it feels pretty pointless to start walking, when I don’t know if it’s the right direction or not. I’d look like I know what I’m doing, but I’d be faking it, and I’d have to face the reality sooner or later: I don’t have my shit together.

I hope I can find a way to pursue both living my life well and becoming as good a stand-up comic as I can be. But at least this week, I’m realizing that if I act like stand-up is the biggest thing I need to be focusing on, then I’m basically walking through life with my head down, terrified to make eye contact, just hoping nobody notices that I don’t know where the hell I’m going. Hoping nobody calls me on my bullshit.

That’s why I shouldn’t have moved to New York City, and that’s why I needed to. Because everything is in front of you here, and it’s up to you whether to see it or not. There are no excuses. You either choose to look your own life in the eye, or you don’t.

Man, I miss Mike DeStefano.

New York Struggles, Part 2

Maybe this isn’t a part 2 of that post from a few weeks ago. Maybe it’s its own thing.

It’s Wednesday afternoon. After having built up some momentum the past few weeks, I haven’t gone out either Monday or Tuesday of this week. I’m skipping the pick-up basketball game today that would also have provided a chance to check in with other members of the scene here. I don’t know if I’ll go out tonight, either. Tomorrow? We’ll see.

I may look back on this blog in three months and say that I was making excuses, or that I was scared of failure, or there may be some other explanation that is clear to me in hindsight. But right now, it feels like I’m making the right decision. It feels like I’m making the necessary decision.

I worked with Patrice O’Neal in February of 2010, or roughly 18 months ago now. I think of Patrice as the Charles Barkley of comedy - I value his opinion because he’s not afraid to say things that most people wouldn’t. Whether or not I agree, there are very few people willing to do that. And so I love picking his brain whenever I get the chance.

After we finished up the week together, we got into a really good conversation about comedy. He was critical of the feature act from that week, and since I had opened up for him, I asked what he had thought of me.

90 minutes later, Patrice finished up his criticisms, and we changed the topic again.

For whatever number of reasons, I respond pretty well to criticisms, so I was thrilled to have someone willing to take the time to dissect my life and my comedy to that extent. I got a lot out of it, and I think I’m a better comic for having some of my weaknesses explicitly explained to me.

One of the things he pointed out was that I was the same person I was three years ago, when he and I had first met. When I was working as a server at the DC Improv, Patrice came through, and I picked his brain for hours about comedy. Two-and-a-half years later, we were in a different city, and I was performing on the show...but I was still just asking questions. I think he made a comment that I was more of a reporter than I was a fellow comic. Something like that.

And I thought it was a pretty solid point. I’ve loved comedy since I was literally as young as I can remember. I’ve studied it. I’ve obsessed over it. But there comes a time when you can’t be a fan anymore - you have to stop dreaming about something long enough to do it yourself.

There have been many times in the past 18 months that I’ve wondered if I’m meant to lead a Patrice O’Neal or a Bill Burr type of life, or if I’m in denial that I am just not that type of person. Am I refusing to acknowledge that I’m too self-aware or that I think too much to ever fully jump in, lose myself in the pursuit of perfecting a skill, and then essentially waking up in my own life 10 years later, and being one of the best stand-up comics alive. Do I have whatever it takes to lose myself fully in the pursuit of a specific goal, i.e. becoming a great stand-up comic?

I don’t know. And you know what makes you wonder if you’re out of your mind? Living in New York.

Existence is an insane paradox here. You almost have to be crazy to think you’re not crazy for living here, sometimes.

Lucas and I stood at a corner in Times Square over the weekend, and watched literally thousands and thousands of people walk past us. And we talked about how crazy the scene around us was, with bright lights distracting everyone, with everyone in a hurry to get somewhere that almost certainly didn’t matter, either.

And at some point, we had to just kind of laugh. Everything around us was so crazy. And yet as we stood there, every few seconds, someone would bump past us, or push through us. And I think it occurred to both of us that to a lot of the people rushing by, we were the crazy ones. The ones that were standing there, frozen, trying to make sense of the chaos around us. We were out of our minds for daring to question whether any of this made sense. Whether New York City makes any sense. Whether the way we live our lives makes any sense.

And maybe they’re right. The point wasn’t lost on us - we were a step or two away from being the crazy guy on the corner, the one who says we’re all doomed, right before he craps himself.

That’s what New York does to you. It forces you to pick either running full speed ahead, even though you have no idea where you’re going, or being the small-town failure who can’t keep up and needs to get the fuck out of the way.

There is a middle ground, I’m sure. There is a place that feels like you’re able to be yourself, and pursue your best self. It’s possible to make New York City your own.

But I haven’t found that balance yet. And until you do, you run the risk of really feeling crazy, and feeling like a failure up here. The stakes feel high, higher than you’re used to. It’s mostly in your head, probably. But that’s part of what’s so insulting. There’s a 6th Sense quality to your life up here. You think you’re living a life that’s affecting other people, and that you exist in their world. But at some point you realize that nobody else is noticing you. Nobody else even knows that you’re there. And that’s an intense thing to get over.

Let’s explain how this relates to comedy - and why I haven’t gone out this week - in part 3.

Searching for Clues...

One of the most shocking things about the New York experience so far is how unspectacular the gains feel. It feels like you could become King of the World here, and you wouldn’t even notice. The difference between “succeeding" and “failing” here isn’t even a difference - the two are on a sliding scale, and it’s almost impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.

And in that way, there’s something dangerous about being up here. I’m tempted to develop a defense mechanism that just presumes anyone who says I’m crazy is the enemy. Anyone who criticizes my life choices is somebody that has given up on their dreams, somebody that doesn’t get it - somebody that is only trying to bring me down.

But if I do that, at what point am I being genuinely delusional? At what point am I crazy?

That seems like an easy distinction to make. If you get laughs, you’re not crazy. If you make money doing this, you’re not crazy. If you experience success, and receive validation, then you’re not crazy.

It’s been that easy, everywhere I’ve been before. There are ways to prove you’re not crazy. “I crushed tonight - exhibit A. All the young comics on the scene look up to me - exhibit B. People pay me to tell jokes - exhibit C. I rest my case, your honor.”

I’m not saying that evidence isn’t up here. But it’s a CSI crime scene up here, not an OJ crime scene. It’s not nearly as easy to see the evidence. And if you don’t see any evidence for a while, you start asking yourself, “Is there any evidence here? Am I going to waste my career trying to solve a crime that never happened?"

I don’t know. It’s not like there’s an easy journey to take in life. If I was at a company picnic last night instead of an open-mic, it’s not like I’d think I had everything figured out. If your whole goal is to be conscious of your own experience and existence, it’s not like there’s a short-cut to that.

It’s funny. Part of me gets to the end of these posts and wants to reward readers with a piece of advice or a nugget of wisdom. But everything I end up thinking or realizing really only applies to me, and so it’s tough to tell someone else what they should take from an experience I’m having.

So instead, I’ll just say to have a nice Tuesday. And go outside if you get a chance. Outside is nice.

They Can’t All Be Classics...

Yep. That’s right. I’m mailing this blog post in. How does that make you feel, reader? Good? No? Well, here’s a picture of me not giving a shit:

You see, I’m living my life by a points system right now, and I get points for posting a blog entry. That’s right. In the system I’ve set up for myself, this shitty post means I reward myself.

So clearly, it’s a flawed system.

Flaws and all, though, it’s a system that has helped me have by far the most productive two weeks in New York since I’ve moved here. I hit some sort of bottom a couple weeks ago, and I decided to get back to something that I’ve tried off and on for years - making my own productivity into a game.

I’ve always had trouble staying focused and getting the things done that I want to in life. That has been helped immeasurably the past 8 months or so by taking Adderall, but there are other things that I’ve found help me to stay on track, too.

For whatever reason, my brain responds to numbers. If you tell me to do 20 things, I’ll probably do none of them. But if you tell me I can get 100 points - five points for each thing - then the odds are, I’ll try to knock some of them out. I don’t know why my brain responds differently when you tell it to do 6 things instead of a half-dozen. But somehow, I’ve found that it does.

And thus, the past few weeks, I’ve been giving myself points for each time I go out to shows, for each time I perform a set, and for each joke that I sit down and write out. And at least so far, the results have been really encouraging, and they’ve helped me bounce out of what had become a prolonged phase of hibernation.

Oh. And I get points for posting blogs, and for being active online, as well. Which is why you get this post, which I probably never would have written if I wasn’t going to get points for it.

But I do. And so even though it’s not a perfect blog, or inspirational, or perceptive....it’s a blog, damn it. It’s helping to define the experience of our move up here. So I think it’s totally worth rewarding myself for it. Because I did it, damn it. I wrote it. I went online, I wrote something, and I posted it. So now, I can update my points total:

That’s the trick to New York, by the way. It’s not going to be perfect up here. But 90 percent of it is going out, getting onstage, and being willing to put yourself out there. That’s what the game is up here: Be willing to put yourself out there.

That, and try not to be a huge dick. And be yourself onstage. 10 bonus points for each.

New York Struggles, Part 1

New York has knocked me down. Bigtime. In a way, I knew it was happening almost as soon as I got here. And in a way, I’m just realizing it now. New York has absolutely kicked my ass since I moved here.

That’s what’s weird about it. It’s so easy to just survive here and feel like that’s an accomplishment. So you convince yourself that even though you’re not doing anything...hey, at least I’m doing nothing in the big city!

I think the big mistake I made moving here was forgetting that I’m not just a comic. I think that’s what comics forget when they move here.

I put off moving to New York for years because I wanted to feel like I was ready as a comic. I finally found that peace last fall, and I realized I was fully ready to come up here and take whatever the New York Comedy World had for me: failure, frustration, indifference - whatever. I knew why I was doing comedy. I knew why I loved stand-up. I didn’t just know I was ready - I knew why I was ready.

But I was so excited I wasn’t afraid of failing at stand-up anymore, I forgot that there were plenty of other things that could still overwhelm me. When I decided to move, I felt like McCauley Culkin in “Home Alone,” conquering his fear of his basement, and running out the front door to tell the world. "Hey! I’m not afraid anymore! DID YOU HEAR ME?? I SAID: I’M NOT AFRAID ANY-"

And then right as I was most confident, the non-comedy parts of life showed up and put me in my place, just like Kevin’s neighbor Old Man Marley and his shovel.

I’m realizing as I’m writing this that while I’ve gone through some pretty stressful life changes the past six months, that really doesn’t explain why I’ve been avoiding going out and doing stand-up since I moved here. So let’s just call this “New York Struggles, Theory 1” and try to be more honest with myself.

I’m not saying this isn’t a legitimate point - moving is always crazy, and moving to New York multiplies the shock to your system. Updating, shifting, changing, canceling, forwarding, signing, moving, setting up, settling down...it’s just a logistical nightmare that weighs you down for months. And that’s not to mention the emotional element of a move - you leave the life you were living behind, and have to basically start a new social life from scratch. Almost every job people get now is through someone putting in a good word for you, so when you move somewhere and don’t know anyone at first, it’s tough to find a job that isn’t pretty shitty. Especially if, like me, you’re so embarrassed by your uninspiring resume’ that you don’t follow-up on half the opportunities you do get.

Oh yeah - and in addition to all that, when I moved here, I started living with my partner, which I’d never done before. She and I are still together, but if you’ve never co-habitated with your significant other, let me just say that it’s an...intense shift. You just don’t realize how different your life is. Most of it is positive, honestly - but it’s just another big shock to how you live your life.

So, yes. All of the overwhelming, life-is-hard crap has thrown me off some. But I knew that before this week. In fact, before this week, that was the bullet I had in the chamber of my Excuse Gun, ready to fire it at anyone who asked how New York was going. There’s more to the story, though. New York has knocked me down in a different way. It’s not as easy as I want it to be. As much as I’ve been trying not to admit it, I’ve just been scared.

At Times, New York Really Breaks You

I’m back in Austin, Texas, for this week, helping to host this year’s Funniest Person in Austin competition at Cap City Comedy Club.

I had a blast hosting last night, and I’m excited to host again tonight. My job at these shows is to do about ten minutes to warm up the crowd, and then after all the comics have gone, I have to do another 20-30 minutes while the judges deliberate.

Even though the audiences are dead tired by the time I get back on at the end of the night and there’s no chance to crush anymore, it’s still fun to connect with a crowd and play the role of comedically tucking them into bed.

The opportunity to have these longer sets is something I don’t take for granted, and no comic ever should. I miss longer sets like crazy. I haven’t featured at a club in months. Part of that is due to the New York move, but it’s mostly due to the major shift in my performance style, and my reluctance to book gigs because I don’t want to ruin the trust that clubs have in me that I’m not going to compromise what is, after all, the headliner’s show. I headline the occasional one-nighter, and fellow comic friends help me out by offering feature spots whenever they can, but I really miss having the freedom and support I felt - and the opportunities - that came when I was living down here in Austin.

Those longer sets exist in New York, to be sure. Just not in your first few months. Not at all.

I understand that for stand-up, New York has the highest possible ceiling, which is why I came, and why I will stay. I understand that in due time, if you’re good enough, you’ll have the chance to secure those sets that are longer and come in front of more people. And if you succeed in New York, New York can reward you with the exposure that helps you secure more and more of those sets, all over the country and the world, and gets more and more people to show up when you do them. And eventually - in theory - that success can allow you to start headlining shows and being fully able to make a show your own.

So in the long term, I totally see the value of living in a place like New York or LA, and pursuing your craft there. All I’m saying is that in this moment, I am back in Austin, and in a few hours I’m going to go onstage in front of a few hundred people that will be excited to see comedy, and I’m more aware than ever that I need to be thankful for that.

Time to shower and get ready.

An Apology For Our Lack of Updates

It's no secret that Bryson Turner - one-half of The Comedy Hajj team - teeters from severe bouts of mania to epic emotional withdrawals triggered by extreme depression. Some days Bryson spits out enough gold to make Weezy jealous, and the next day he can barely muster the energy to get out of his air-mattress. This was an especially trying week, as Bryson felt most of the ideas pitched were unworthy of his time. This is a shot of him earlier in the week.

Fortunately, he's bounced back, thanks in part to a project he finally considers worthy of his skill: it's the biopic he's writing about a robot who struggles to pursue his dream of becoming a stand-up comic. The working title is "Always On." Keep an eye out for previews.

Paying It Forward

I think this will be a fairly short blog. I just want to document my feelings right now, as I am very inspired by Lucas' productivity. Lucas has been writing at a frenzied pace these past few days, and it's something that really impresses me. I have ideas for blogs to write pretty much every day, but I end up not writing them, because I'm afraid of what they'll end up being. I have such high hopes for an idea in my head, and if I actually write it out and it becomes something that exists, instead of something that I'm imagining, then all of a sudden it's not nearly as great as I told myself it would be.

I just read something Lucas wrote that he posted on Facebook. I thought it was amazingly perceptive and completely ballsy for him to open himself up as much as he did. It deserved to be in a book, not on my shitty Facebook newsfeed. I commented on it.

What else can a reader do? Did he expect me to be so inspired by what he wrote that I dropped everything in my life and flew to Egypt to protest? What do I really expect of someone who reads something that I write? I don't know. But the longer I don't write something, the more that reaction would have to be in order to justify how long I've put off writing it in the first place. It's a vicious cycle, and it's almost as if I don't write something immediately, without thinking about it all, then it will never get written at all.

I'm trying to not be stubborn in my ways - I'm trying to be willing to have art affect me. Lucas' art is affecting me, and I consider how he lives his life to be a form of art, if a bit more well-disguised.

Maybe in a way all of our lives are also a work of art, that we are working on constantly. The problem is that if I think of my life as a piece of art, I tend to do the same thing with it that I do with most blogs I don't write. I think in my head about all the awesome things I could do, and how awesome my life could be, and then I get bummed that I haven't started doing it already, and then I don't want to face the reality of the minimal impact that even a great life would result in.

Who are the most influential human beings ever? Maybe religious people? Jesus? Muhammad? Surely they would be satisfied with the impact they had. Right?

Well, both preached non-violence. Is there still violence in the world? In fact, are there certain believers of both who are violent in their names? How about Gandhi? Would he be happy with his impact? Martin Luther King, Jr.? Malcolm X? Does racism still exist? Are inner-city public schools still shit? Would they be happy with their impact?

And this is when I realize the flaw in the thinking. No one person can ever really be satisfied with the "impact" they have, because you can't control the "impact" you have on people - on individuals or on the world as a whole.

You can't choose how people interpret what you do - all you can control is your own existence, your own decisions, and how you life your life. How people interpret this blog is out of my hands. But I've written it, and I wrote it in part because Lucas chose to write his. So I'm glad he did, because it helped me live my life better. I love the idea of being able to pay that forward. But I don't need it. This blog is what it is. It stands alone.