My New Life Coach

For years, I’ve been jealous of how my younger brother lives his life.  He’s five years younger than me, but the dude just gets it.  He reads all the time. And he seems to enjoy his life.  Maybe he’d have a different interpretation.  But he sure seems to have his shit together.

He graduated from college this spring with a major in Mathematics, or Statistics, or something like that. He’s applying to jobs right now, looking to move out west, far far away from our family’s home outside of Pittsburgh.  And frankly, if you knew our parents, you would applaud the decision.

You’re the 5th GoogleImages result, Harrison. Also THIS is the picture that comes up.  Double loss, buddy.

I’ve done a great job this year of surrounding myself with brilliant people.  They’ve bettered my life, and made me happier along the way.  I wouldn’t have made my special without my friend Andrew, I wouldn’t have started doing a podcast without my friend Lawson, and I wouldn’t have gone to so many open-mics without my friend Subhah.  A ton of different people have helped make me a better version of myself.

With that in mind, I came to Harrison with an offer:  he was unemployed, and had nothing to do.  I have any money, which is more than he’s making right now.  So instead of just watching our dad get more depressed and our mom get more delusional, why not take on a part-time job as my life coach!?

It was an offer he couldn’t refuse.  Or, more accurately, an offer that he easily could have refused, but was cool about and agreed to do it.

So the past few weeks, we’ve been meeting over the phone, twice a week.  We set up goals at the beginning of the week, then check in mid-week to see how things are progressing, and quite simply, so that I remember that time is moving forward.

Harrison has been helping me figure out what works for me.  What things do I do that prevent me from accomplishing my goals?  What things do I do that distract me?  And more importantly, what things do I do that help me accomplish my goals?  If I exercise in the morning, does that make a difference?  If I drink a glass of water before I go to sleep, thus waking up more hydrated (almost like a reverse-hangover effect).  Does that help?  Does staying at home to write?  Does being around someone else help?

Basically, I’ve just started paying more attention to my own life.  And while the results aren’t overwhelming yet, I feel thrilled about the progress so far.  I really feel like I’m headed in the right direction, and pushing toward growth.  Part of what I want to accomplish is getting back to writing more blogs.  So I guess you’ll be able to see what kind of an effect this “life-coach” experiment ends up having.

Take this blog, for instance - the one you’re reading right now.  Last week, one of my goals was to write a blog about the progress I’m making on my special.  It’s been an incredibly frustrating process, trying to finish it and edit it and get it out.  And so I wanted to write about that, and document it.

But at the end of the week...I hadn’t written it.  It was something I wanted to do, but for whatever reason (or number of reasons), I hadn’t completed that goal.

But instead of just hating myself for not doing so (my traditional strategy), Harrison and I talked about it.  It’s been 5 months now since I taped the special.  Documenting those 5 months is a huge task, in my mind.

So instead of judging me or blaming me, we lowered the goal.  This week, my goal is to “write a blog about anything.”  It’s less specific, and less daunting.  And maybe, if I just write one about anything this week, then I’ll be more comfortable writing about the special next week.

Improvement isn’t about blaming yourself into being productive.  It’s about understanding why we don’t do the things we want to be doing.  It doesn’t make sense that we don’t do something we want to do.  So it’s not about bullying ourselves, at that point.  It needs to be about figuring out why.

I’ll finish this blog in about 5 minutes, and then chalk it off my list of goals for the week.  And it’ll feel pretty good when I do.  So that’s cool.  But one last thing before I do.

This is something I just found in me and my brother’s shared google docs:

How embarrassing for Harrison: he confused me with Boomtown Bryson

I had mentioned to Harrison that I waste a lot of my free time playing apps on my phone.  Especially any apps or video games that have RPG elements to them - which stands for “Role-Playing Game,” and basically means that the more you play the game, the better and better your character gets.  For some reason, if I’m playing a video game, and my character gets better and better the more I play, I get HOOKED.

And so knowing that, Harrison asked me what level I felt like I was, in my own life.  I thought about it, and said that if a character could potentially get up to a Level 60, then I feel like a Level 7 or 8 right now, in my life.

I didn’t really think too much about that conversation, until I saw that Harrison had messed around and made an “RPG character” version of me. Specifically, a Level 7 version.

It’s mostly just making fun of me.  But in a weird way, just seeing the picture above made me more excited to make this an awesome day.  I already went running, ran some errands, and now I’m finally writing a blog - something I’ve struggled to do for the past few months.  Now to work on my hygiene...

This is what it’s like having amazing people in your life.  They do awesome things, and you get excited, and inspired, and you’re in a better mood, and you want to do what you can to keep up with them.  They make you excited to live your life, because even if you’re not as “exceptional” as you thought you were, there’s still exciting and awesome things happening in your world, all the time.  Harrison is one of those people, and after being a huge part of my growth while he was staying here this summer, I knew my life would be better off with him in it.

So I low-balled him an offer to become my life coach.  And he said yes.  And then because he’s rad, he’s hitting it out of the fucking park.  He’s doing stuff I never thought he’d bother doing.  But he’s trying his best, and it’s helping to make me live a better life.  Already.  After two weeks.

My brother is rad.  So are a lot of people in my life right now.  Lucky me.

Write a blog about anything:  check.

Recording an Album, 5: Why I Matter

In many ways, I’m a lucky person.  There are the easy and obvious reasons - I’m a white male, which is a helluva good start, at least in this culture.  But there are a lot of other reasons, too.

I try to get along with people, and I try to live my life passionately.  I try to allow myself to experience a full range of emotions, and - probably more uniquely - I try to be willing to show them.  I try to embrace emotions.  I’m not totally sure why.  I’ve definitely taken more after my mother in that regard, as opposed to my father.  My father is a stoic dude.  My mother tends to wear her heart on her sleeve.  I lean toward the latter strategy in life.

That means a couple of things.  It means that when I’m happy, I think the people around me can tell.  Which may very well be a nice thing for them - I’m not totally sure, because I’m me, not them.  But it seems like when I’m happy, sometimes I’m able to add to other people’s day, even if it’s only in some small way.

There’s a trade-off to that, though.  I show my emotions.  I experience my emotions fully (or at least I try to).  But that means that when I’m sad, I let myself be sad.  When I’m scared, I let myself be scared.  And I show that to people, in the same way I show my happiness.  I share my emotions with people, which has the potential to impact people in both a positive and a negative way.

Really, those are some of the main decisions we make, throughout our lives.  Who do we open ourselves to, and who do we offer ourselves to.

Two different questions.  I think most of us spend time thinking about who we are going to open ourselves to.  As in, “do I trust Brad enough to really care what he thinks?  So that if he said something hurtful toward me, it would crush me?  Is his opinion worth enough - and do I think he understands the power his words would have - that I’m willing to open myself up to that risk?”

I think we spend a lot less time thinking about who we’re willing to extend that to.  We think a lot about who impacts us; we don’t think nearly as much about who we impact.

That’s part of the reason I think of myself as lucky, I think.  Because I feel like for whatever reason, a lot of people allow me to impact them.  A lot of people have decided to at least be minutely invested in how I’m feeling, and how I feel about them.

This could be an entirely imagined thing.  I could be completely delusional.  And certainly, I think we are all a little bit delusional, when it comes to how important we think we are.  I mean, my entire life, every single room I’ve ever walked into, I’ve been in there.  Every single one!  Can anyone else say that?  No.  No, they can’t.  So I must be, like, the most important person ever!

We kind of have to think we’re more important than we are, or else we’d lose our minds.  With the world over-populated as it is, it’s kind of a dick move for each of us not to kill ourselves.  I mean, we’re not Einstein.  And even if we were Einstein, we’d probably just end up accidentally inventing the atomic bomb, or something crazy like that.  So really, all of us should just realize we’re no good for each other and go jump in front of the nearest bus.  It’s the polite thing to do, really.

But we don’t.  Because all of us are a little bit delusional.  We all think we matter.  And to make sure we keep thinking so, we convince ourselves that a few other people matter, too.

So maybe that’s where I come in, for other people.  I’m lucky, because for some reason, I’m able to make people feel like we both have something in common.  Male, female, straight, gay, trans, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Indian, Asian, healthy, sick, wealthy, poor, free, imprisoned - I’m spending my adult life trying to help people understand that there’s some overlap to all of us.

Often times, I try to use myself as the Rosetta Stone - I may not be what you are, but you and I are still the same.  We are still connected.  And in a perfect world, if I can make enough individuals feel that way, then people can see each other as equals that otherwise wouldn’t have.  Through me.  And if I can do that, then I prove my importance.

So maybe that’s what people see in me.  They see a desire to matter.  They see a need to be delusional. And maybe they see an admittance that I’m delusional - a lack of shame in it.  I know at the end of the day, the world doesn’t need me.  But if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to pretend it does, so that I can get some shit done.

I think we all want to get some shit done.  I have friends that are able to just shut up and get to work, and I admire them.  My older brother is that way.  He’s a worker.  He shuts up and gets things done.  He goes to work every day.  He does a good and honest job.  He likes working on his cars.  He fixes them, or he works around the house.  He does things.

I know others who can’t seem to get out of their own way.  They can’t seem to deal with the fact that they don’t matter.  So they go through life feeling shitty.  Because they want to do something great.  But on some level, they also know that no matter what they do, it’ll be a drop in the bucket.  And that’s best-case.  Truth is, most of us will live our whole lives to make a drop, and it’s going to miss the bucket.

Or, as a great philosopher once said:  Life’s a bitch.

So what helps us do our best, even though it won’t matter?  Again:  delusion.  We just have to live our lives as if we matter.

That’s what I’m trying to do:  to live my life as if I matter.  But that’s a tough thing to do, because if I matter, then it means that if I fail, then that matters.

So that’s why I think I’ve been struggling so much, as I try to get my thoughts together, and prepare for these shows in June.  Because I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself, because I want to matter.  And part of the reason I want to matter is because I feel like there are people who I matter to.  And I matter to them, because they see an overlap between themselves and me.  So if I fail, and I don’t matter...then I’m forcing the people who are invested in me to face the reality that they don’t matter.

Wow.  What a weird, warped sense of reality I’ve presented to myself.  If I don’t matter, then it’s proof no one who has ever cared about me matters?

Ha.  Delusion indeed.

Even if I never record these shows, this has been a great experience for me.  I’m being forced to face my fears, and I’m learning about myself in ways I never thought I would.  It’d be nice if I wasn’t so in my head all the time.  But it is what it is.  Better to have it documented.  Sigh.

Recording an Album, 4 (in defense of drug use)

Well, it’s been 8 days since I wrote a somewhat-depressed, “I’m failing" post about my upcoming album recording.  And honestly, I haven’t done all that much in the week since.

Despite that, I feel pretty optimistic today.  Last night, as I was riding the subway to a couple open-mics, I put together a list of goals for this week.  Just a half-dozen or so goals, relating to my preparation for these shows.

That list isn’t a huge deal, but it at least gives me some direction to go in.  And right now, I just feel like I need some definitive direction.  I need to be able to say, “These are the things I need to do next.”  In the month or so since deciding to do this, I haven’t had that concrete, “my-job-for-today-is...” kind of thinking.  And right now, I’m looking for concrete steps.

(and, for the record, not like this concrete).

So today - for at least one day - I’m going to try to go to work.  I’m going to try to have a plan, and to use that plan as a framework to get where I want to be, come the night of June 8.

Not rocket science.  Just work.

Also, adderall.  Work, and adderall.  I’m going to try to humble myself enough to admit what my reality is:  that without feeding my brain an amphetamine, I can't consistently focus on what I want to.  For a bunch of different reasons, I find that frustrating, and I have to fight the idea that if I can’t sit down and write without the help of a drug, then I guess I’m just a lazy piece of crap, and I don’t deserve to be successful in life.

I don’t know.  Let me review, very briefly:

When I don’t take an amphetamine (the class of drugs that Adderall is in), I tend to get overwhelmed by the enormity of the task at hand.  So if I’m trying to read a book, it feels almost impossible to do so.  Because there are so many books I want to read.  And there’s so much knowledge I want to gain.  And I can’t even read this book all at once - it’s going to take weeks to get through one book.  Each page takes a minute or two, so I can’t read it all at this sitting.  Even if I get through it in a week - that still means I can only read 52 books this year.  And I have maybe 50 years left (or one day...but let’s not even get into that).

So that means that best-case, I can only read 52 x 50 =....2600 books in my lifetime.  There are millions of books.  And I don’t read a book a week.  In fact, every time I think about picking up a book, I start thinking about all this, and so I don’t even bother starting.  I’ve finished maybe one book in the past four months.  One every four months means...3 per year, 50 years...150 books.  Out of all books, ever?  Man, I hate myself.  I’m just gonna go check ESPN.com

When I do take Adderall, it just kind of feels like getting to zoom out from an ultra-close-up shot that my brain was in.  I zoom out, and I see that it makes sense to write this current sentence, because this current sentence is a part of this paragraph, and a part of the point I’m currently making about Adderall.  And this paragraph is a part of this current post, about my struggles in preparing for my shows on June 8 and 9.

And this post is a part of this blog, which is an ongoing look at the joys and stresses of moving to New York City and doing stand-up comedy.  And this blog is a part of what I’m doing with my life.  So even though each of these sentences might seem trivial and meaningless on their own, each one is a part of a much larger whole.  So I don’t have to freak out while I’m writing this.  Because small things are not meaningless.

That’s what amphetamines do, for me.  They allow me to more fully understand cause and effect.  Without them, I might write one sentence, or read one sentence, and then immediately be discouraged by what a tiny impact each and every current moment can have on me, on my work, or on the world.  But when I add those chemicals into my system, I find peace with how little I can do in any given moment, because I understand that at its most, my life can only be a series of moments like that.


There is no secret way to freeze time, or change the past, or take short-cuts.

I can only write each of these words one at a time.

But those words formed that previous sentence.

And these sentences are forming this blog.

And so on.  And so on.

For much of the past month, I’ve wanted to prepare for these shows so badly, and make sure I earn the attention of everyone there, that I’ve been trying to make 2 months of preparation happen spontaneously.  I don’t trust myself to continue my own work later.  So I panic, and refuse to work in the moment.  Because the progress I would make in the present isn’t enough.

(I was scratching my head in this picture, for the record)

_____________________________________________________

I resisted taking Adderall for years, because I hated people that used “ADD,” or “ADHD” - or whatever the hell they decided to call their laziness - as an excuse.  I was an underachiever for almost my entire life - but at least I owned it.  I wasn’t like the rich kids, the pampered kids - the kids who cheated by taking a drug.  Even if I wanted to learn something, if I needed a drug, then the answer was simple:  clearly, I didn’t want to learn it enough.

From maybe 4th grade on, I developed a set of rules that allowed me to “win”:  acknowledging reality was more important than actually succeeding.  Sure, those other kids were getting A’s.  But would any of them be able to laugh at failing?  Not a chance - I was special.

Even as a 10 year-old, I told myself I was a lazy piece of shit.  But I was accountable, god damn it.

Now, as an adult (Webster’s definition, not mine), I’ve realized I have the opportunity to become what I was sure I’d never be:  a good student.

I don’t mean that I want to be a slave to my homework assignments, or that I want to blindly copy down the story of the wonderful partnership between the White Man and those not-so-Indian-after-all “Indians.”  I mean the good definition of student.  Like the type of student that realizes that’s bullshit because they wanted to know shit for themselves.

I think that’s what’s been so terrifying, about this upcoming performance.  It’s not a book report in front of the class, exactly.  But in adulthood, there are no more book reports.  We don’t have to get up in front of the class, if we don’t want to.  But by putting together this performance, that’s essentially what I’ve chosen to do:  I’m doing a book report on a book that can’t be written down.  I’m trying to give a book report on life.

That’s what’s so terrifying:  almost every book report I ever gave, I was bullshitting.  Because I hadn’t read the book.  I hadn’t done the work.  I wanted to, but I never did.  They were torture for me.  I was never trying to push other classmates, or encourage them to grow with me - my only goal was to survive.

Well, I’m 28 now.  I don’t have a teacher prodding me.  I don’t have parents scolding me.  Nobody else was even given this assignment - I basically just announced to my world, “Hey! Who wants to hear a book report I wrote?”  Can you imagine what an asshole I’ll be if I don’t read the book this time?  If I give a book report - voluntarily - and the whole time, I’m just trying to survive it?

There’s no point in that.  I don’t want to just survive anymore.  I want to be the person that I wanted to be as a child.  I want to give a cool book report, that makes everyone in my class say “Wow, that was cool!  I should read more books!  And give my own book report!”

That’s the ultimate dream for my shows in June.  I want to make book reports cool again.

_______________________________________________________

When I ask people what they regret from their life so far, most people say the same thing: “Nothing, because if I changed anything, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

I understand.  What’s done is done, and it helps us stay sane if we decide that everything that happened, “happened for a reason.”

If I had been able to just sit still and do my homework when I was 8, I wouldn’t be nearly as funny as I am today.  I was ashamed that I couldn’t get anything done, and so I used humor as a defense mechanism, and as a way to make the stakes seem lower to the authority figures.  For long stretches, I did almost nothing as a student, so I compensated by learning how to be funny.  I learned something else, too - and this is the part that set me apart from other kids:  I learned the exact moment when “funny” stopped being a positive and started counting against me.  I learned to pay attention to the mood of a room, in large part because I had to - my F in Chemistry was both a joke that the teacher was in on, and a very serious problem that I was committed to changing.

Those lessons help me understand my world, to this day.  I wouldn’t be the performer - and certainly not the comic - that I am today, if I’d been given Adderall as a child.  Maybe I would have still become a comic - I’ll never know.  But many of my skills - my comedic timing, my cadence - were born out of necessity.  If I wasn’t good at reading, I’d better get good at something.  And it had better translate to teachers and students - I better be able to connect to the whole room at once.

With Adderall, I wouldn’t have needed to do that, and so I probably wouldn’t have.  Not to the same extent.  And so I wouldn’t have gotten years of practice, developing those skills.  And it is those very skills that will be on display, come June.

Do you see the dilemma?  Adderall can help me prepare for my album for the next two months, but no-adderall has been helping me prepare for it for 20 years.  So part of me wants to just not take Adderall, and trust that my brain will come up with something and make it work.  There is a part of me that believes that, for sure.

But there’s a difference between not having any regrets, and not learning from your past.  I have no idea who I would be today, if I had been prescribed Adderall at age 10.  All I know is that I’m not 10.  I’m 28.  And I can’t control any point in the past.  Or any point in the future.  All I can do is live in this moment, and try to live it as well as I possibly can.  And for me, that best-lived life includes putting a drug into my system - an amphetamine - that alters my brain chemistry, and changes who I am in a small but momentous way.  So for today at least - and hopefully for the next six weeks - I will be taking amphetamines 5-6 days a week.

But I have been swayed before, and I could very well change my mind again.  So if you disagree, then I would genuinely love to see your book report on it.  If not, come out on June 8 or 9 - maybe then you’ll be inspired to give one of your own.

Bryson would like to thank the following drugs for helping him complete this lengthy post:

1. amphetamine salts

that is all.

Hi, from last month

I’m not writing much right now, so I’m just going to post this picture.  It’s a picture I took of myself while I was home last month, visiting my family.  In this shot, I was at my brother’s office, where he works.

I like this photo, because of

A) How dirty and unprofessional I look in it, and
B) The confused and/or judgmental look of the woman at the desk behind me.

Keeping up a blog is hard, yo!  So is keeping up a career and a family.  Just imagine if I had to do either of those.  Or both.  Dear lord, my life is easy.

Comedy - WITHIN Life

I haven’t written on here for two weeks. I’m going to be writing on here a lot in the next few weeks.

A lot of what I write won’t be about comedy. Or at least some of it probably won’t be.

I don’t think that’s doing a disservice to this blog, or to its readers. Because comedy isn’t life. Comedy is some shit that happens in a life. Comedy is what I do, not what I am.

Wait, scratch that - it sounds douchey, and it’s not reality.

More realistically: Comedy is what I’m trying to do - not what I’m trying to be.

But comedy is not life. And this is not a comedy blog. It’s a life blog.

No, scratch that too. It is a comedy blog. But it’s a chicken and the egg thing. Comedy is nothing without the everything else that surrounds it. Comedy can’t survive on a diet of itself. It’s like everything else: pretty soon, it needs something else to keep going.

I know people that live and die with every set. Their lives are pretty sad, honestly. From my vantage point, they’re missing out on a huge part of life. Specifically, everything that isn’t comedy.

I love comedy. I love getting to do stand-up. But my life is more than that.

Some comics believe that previous line takes away from my comedy. I, personally, think it adds to it. And it raises the ceiling of what my comedy can become.

I hope I never throw life under the bus for the sake of comedy. I have no problem getting consumed by comedy. I have no problem with comedy “owning” me for stretches of my life. As long as I remember that nothing can own me unless I let it. I’m a person. And as a person, nothing can own me unless I let that person - or thing - own me.

I will let comedy own me. But I hope that I never let comedy own me against my will. That’s something different. That’s when it becomes an addiction. That’s when I’m not in control anymore.

I see comics like that. But it’s not just comics. It’s people. I see people like that. I see people owned by money all the time. And it’s sad. I want to have money. I want to be comfortable. But I never want to be owned by money. I never want money to be the force that directs my decisions. Because at that point, I’m no longer making the decisions - money is. Do you see the difference?

So this point - it's not really about comedy. It’s about attitude. It’s about my “philosophy” toward life. What is my philosophy?

If I let chasing-comedy make my life decisions for me, then I’m no better than someone who lets chasing-money make the decisions for them: neither of us are in control of ourselves. Neither of us are thinking, really. We’re just following a script, at that point.

I don’t know what I want to do with comedy. But I want to do it within a life lived well.

I don’t know what that means, either. But that’s part of why I’m doing comedy in the first place. I feel like if I can be funny enough - if me and other comics can find a funny that no one has found yet - then it could be a clue about how to live a life better.

Carlin did that. He didn’t decide what was funny. He was more humble than that. He searched for funny.

What did he find? He realized the funniest thing in the world was that some people cared more about which words we’re saying than which countries we’re bombing.

He wasn’t trying to be funny. He was pointing out things that were so not funny -- it was funny.

Some of the funniest things I’ve ever heard? Are the things that are the least funny. Pryor’s points about race. More recently, David Cross’ thoughts on 9/11, and our response to it. Louis C.K.’s points about love and divorce.

Go back hundreds of years. I know this is giving myself away as a nerd, but I swear to God, Henry David Thoreau had some hilarious points about what a bunch of shitty hypocrites our Founding Fathers were. They started a bloody, murderous revolution because the English were mistreating us by taxing our tea, but then when we started our “more perfect union,” we kept their policy of owning other human beings as property.

Really? The tea was their deal breaker?

That’s what funny is. Something is so wrong, it’s funny. And something is so funny, it makes us realize we’re wrong.

It may sound like I’m dismissing comedy that’s just silly, or stupid, or doesn’t seem to have a “point” to it. I’m not. Sometimes, the best point a comic can make is just that we’re taking everything way too fucking seriously.

A comedian should never feel bad about being silly or stupid, if that’s what feels right to them. They’re probably making a way better point - by doing what feels right - than the comic that goes up next and tells a joke about labor unions, with no joy behind it, just because that’s what they’re “supposed” to do.

Here’s the thing: I can act cocky all I want, but I have no idea what I’m fucking doing in this life. I really don’t. I can probably convince some people that I have my shit more together than them, but I don’t. I just don’t. I might be doing this whole thing all wrong.

But I’m going to try. And since I have no way of knowing one way or the other, I’m going to do my absolute, very best - to have a fucking blast along the way. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll try to help others, and try to encourage other people to be happy, too. But I’m going to really try to have a fucking blast.

More soon. I’ve been in Pittsburgh, with my family, the past ten days. I can’t wait to get back to New York, and back to comedy. I love it, and I love what I’m doing with my life.

I wrote this on the 2nd floor balcony of my brother’s new home. It’s a little cool, but nice enough to write outside. I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of an old car he used to own. It’s slightly reclined. Life is good.

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.