Getting High For Stand Up & With A Girl

Yesterday was the first time I did a set while high. But I wasn't too high, I was on my way down. I had gotten high 5 hours earlier, then did a set and crushed, in front of 10-12 people at 2:00 am in the morning. I was dripping with raw honesty. More than usual.

So now I'm reminding myself to not try to recreate that experience. Because that's always how people get in trouble. When you're high you understand that there's no future. But when you sober up, you try to make another future where you understand there isn't one. It's going back to the same comfortable well, and that's how you get dependent. Drugs get a bad rap for that, but I do that with food and the internet CONSTANTLY.

Because food and the internet are also drugs. And so are people. Anything that can interact with the chemicals in your brain is a drug. So really all of existence is a drug. Life is a constant drug induced state. Weed just gives me different glasses to look at existence through. So far, they're my favorite glasses.

The other thing is yesterday was the first time I got high with a girl I like. And to be fair to her, I made sure I got SIGNIFICANTLY high. High enough that I couldn't believe in a future, high enough that I couldn't use language to appear to be honest but not really be. I gave myself no options, no way out of it. I was dead set on us being high together for the next few hours.

And it was a beautiful thing. We shared a beautiful night together. Nothing physical happened. But that means more to everyone reading this than it does to me. Because I'm not keeping score. I'm living my life.

The weird thing is I've only really been hanging out with women for about 7 months. And I've also only been incarnated in this form of an unconditional lover of people for about 4 months. So in many respects I'm a spiritual baby. But I also love the journey I'm on. There's no one else on the planet I'd rather be than myself. I'm in the driver's seat.

I'm happy when I'm growing, and to me growth isn't about having a desired outcome. It's about moving forward. Yesterday I put myself out there to a girl I like. And it was beautiful. Because it was growth.

I love all of you unconditionally. 

Even you, impending snowstorm

As Usual, Patrice Shows Up

NOTE:  I was journaling yesterday (which I strongly suggest to everyone), and as he often does, Patrice O'Neal came up.  As I was writing about him, I realized that the anniversary of his death was tomorrow (today, as I'm writing this note).

Through the past year, I've thought of Patrice often.  The guy tried.  That's what I miss most, I think.  He really did try.

I realized midway through my journal entry that I was going to publish it.  So that's what this is.  I hope you all have a great day.

____________________

Wednesday, November 28, 2012. 3:39 p.m.

The Alley, NYC

I'm not really in the mood to journal. But I'll try to do it for 15 minutes. What I would really like to do is...

I'm not really sure. I wanted to write that I want to work on the book idea I have with Steph Simbari. But I'm not sure I'm really that excited to do so. It's just not that big a deal.

What am I writing? I'm writing without evne thinking. And not in the cool, free-writing session kind of way. I'm just typing garbage. AT least that's what it feels like. Maybe not. Maybe everything is something. That's probably true. Why did I write that it's not that big a deal? I don't know. Myabe it was just the natural thing to write after I just wrote “I'm not sure I'm really that excited to do so.” Or maybe I actually meant it, specific to this situation.

I'm really struggling in my life right now. But not in the way that I have in the past. In the past, I just haven't done anything. Now, it's not that I'm not doing anything. It's that even when I do something, it still feels like nothing. That's the terrifying part, probably. I'm starting to really try, and really use my days to the fullest, and it still feels like nothing is changing, nothing is getting done, and nothing is progressing. Nothing is worth doing. There it is. Nothing is worth the trouble of doing it, just for the minimal results it will bring, even best-case scenario.

So that's what I have to start making peace with, or continue to make peace with. The idea that even when I'm working at peak efficiency, it's still not a sexy result. It's still not that great.

So that's the fight. That's the battle. That's what I need to continue to realize, but also to overcome.

Not overcome, maybe. I just need to make peace with it. Literally. I need to realize that it will never go away. That reality will never be “defeated,” per se'. But I can make peace with it. I can make peace with the monster. And it's a presumed monster.

It's a monster like Patrice. I've been taught to be afraid of it. But have I ever talked to it? Have I ever gotten to know it?

That's it. I need to talk to my monsters. I need to talk to my fears. I need to get to know them. I owe them that. And selfishly, I owe myself that. Some will be a dark energy, like Neil Constantine. But at least some of them will be light. Almost like air. It will be incredibly uplifting to meet them, and get to know them.

So who is this Patrice? This Patrice is the idea that even if I succeed beyond my wildest dreams, it will still feel like nothing.

Okay. Hi. It's nice to meet you. Sorry that this is awkward. Or not “sorry.” Whatever. You get it.

Haha. The first time is always awkward. It's a joke I have. Or a point, I suppose. But you gotta go through the weird first time, if you ever want to get good. Right? I say yes. It's funny. So I trust it.

Do you ever want to be funny, Deepest Fear? Are you funny sometimes? Does it bug you that everyone gets sad when they see you? A lot of people don't even talk to you.

Even the “scary” people – the ones with a “dark” energy – I bet it's worth getting to know them when they're drunk. You get to see into a soul in a way that you wouldn't see otherwise.

I've been afraid of you for a little while now. The thing was, it took me a long time to get to meet you. Because I've been meeting other fears along the way, almost like they were blocking me from you. So now that I'm finally meeting you, Fear That My Best Will Change Nothing, I have a bunch of assumptions about you. Assumptions that probably have nothing to do with you.

I thought you could kill me. I thought you were surly, and that you liked seeing people sad. I thought you went out of your way to ruin people, to ruin their days, to make them feel like nothing.

Wow. My first instinct is to apologize to you. But that's not the way I want to live my life. Even when you apologize, it's still about me largely. “I'm sorry.” It's still about me. I'm patting myself on the back for being willing to finally stop being an idiot.

Well, Deep Fear, thank you. Thank you for being so patient. Thank you for waiting, longer than you needed to, for me to figure it out.

I just took 10 minutes off from writing. Because I realized that tomorrow is the 1-year anniversary of Patrice O'Neal's death.

Was his life pointless? I think he was frustrated with how meaningless his best efforts were. But the dude was a human being. Louis C.K. Dedicated his special to him. Jim Norton dedicated his special to him. He was a tremendous influence on me, and anyone who I have any influence on, he'll be a huge influence on them. If I'm not mistaken, Stephanie Simbari was a tremendous fan. Calise Hawkins is still impacted by his words, by what he had to say, by how he tried to live his life. There were many. And the number is still climbing.

I think I may have miscast you, Fear. How frustrating it must be for you. Frustrating to want to be a positive, motivating factor for people. And then most people end up hiding from you. Most people resent you, because you represent things, because you bring things to light that perhaps people don't want to see. And so you take the brunt of the punishment. People say they hate you. People do hate you. But they shouldn't. They're just not thinking rationally.

That's what Patrice was. Patrice was fear, personified. But fear isn't a bad thing. You're not a bad thing, Fear. But I've miscast you all these years. I've thought you were there to hurt me. I thought you were the bad guy.

I think I just realized I'm going to publish this. I'll make it public. Cool.

Patrice was fear. In that way, Patrice, you're still with me. You were the energy of Fear. But Fear isn't a bad thing. Fear isn't mean. Fear is love. Fear is Love. So someone like Neil, who comes off so negative, who so embodies “fear” - yeah. That makes sense. People like that, they're like human fire alarms. Not always pleasant to be around – in fact, usually unpleasant – but they are negative out of a desire to be positive.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

People that personify “fear” - if they were in fact “evil,” or whatever word you want to use, then they wouldn't be so uncomfortable to be around. It wouldn't make sense. It wouldn't be the worst thing to do. Fear is not the bad thing – it's the friend that doesn't want to see you blindsided by the bad thing that might happen.

I have family that are proud Republicans, and I have family that are quiet Republicans. Fuck quiet Republicans. If you are what you claim you are, I can shake your hand. I don't care what you are. Be a pedophile. Just don't tell me you're not. That's what evil is. Evil is dishonesty. That's all that evil is. It's dishonesty.

Patrice was many things. But he was, above all, not dishonest. That was what his life goal evolved into – to be righteous. To not lie. Half the reason he wanted to understand himself was so that he could make sure he wasn't lying to anyone about who he was. He didn't want to hurt anyone else's pursuit of understanding.

Evil is dishonesty. Patrice was the opposite of that. Patrice was love. Patrice was Fear. But Fear is Love. Patrice is Love.

Damn I miss that dude. Like, in the human form. In one collected grouping of fat, black, dude. But he's still here, really.

But still. Fuck. It was fun to see that in human form. 

4:26 pm, Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Back when I wore collared shirts
(February 2010)

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, 6: Finally - Happiness!

Well, I record my first album 2 weeks from today.  And I think I finally broke through to the other side.  I’m actually pretty excited for it.  Nervous still, yes.  Terrified still, yes.  But I’m also looking forward to it.  I’m excited to be stupid, and be funny, and to just have a good time with it, and not worry about how it turns out.

Don’t ask me to repeat that sentence in an hour, by the way.  But that’s how I feel right now.  And I’ve been feeling good about this whole thing a lot lately.

Sometimes I forget how easy it would have been to not do this at all.  I could have just kept plowing through, night to night, waiting for someone to tell me that it’s time for me to evolve.  Waiting for some Oz-like voice to tell me that it’s finally time for me to receive my brain, or my heart, or whatever I think I’m lacking.

But instead, I’m putting my money where my mouth is (or perhaps more accurately, I’m putting my friend Andrew’s money where my mouth is, since he convinced me to do this by offering to produce the shows and fund the project.  So maybe I’m not as ballsy as he is...but still pretty ballsy, I’d say).

This is going to be fun.  The venue is cool, the people that will come to support me will be cool, and we’ll all have a good time with it.  No matter what, on June 10th, I’m going to be proud that I did this.  So...good.

Don’t let my smooshed-up face fool you -- I’m starting to get really excited for these shows.  I’m going to have a blast with them.  Whatever they are, I’m going to own them.  I can’t wait to see where we are.

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.

Encouragement vs. Discouragement, part 2

This is a continuation from Part 1.

It’s March 7. I’ve been in New York since I got back from home on January 3. I took one night off in January, and one in February. I’ve lost track of the numbers, but I did between 70-100 sets each month, which puts me on track for about 1000 sets this year.

In a way, that should be really encouraging. I’m working hard.

Objectively, I can see that. When I look at myself from an outsider’s perspective, I can see that I’m growing. And that I’m evolving as a comic. I’m getting better. Being in New York is a good thing for my career. It’s going to provide me with a ton of opportunities, as I continue to work hard here.

But night to night, as yourself, it’s hard to see that. Because one night doesn’t seem much different than the previous night. When you’re in the flip-book, you can only see one page at a time. You don’t get to feel secure by seeing that you’re moving. You just don’t.

So that’s what I’m starting to experience now. I’ve had a wonderful four or five months.

I’ll probably write a longer entry about this sometime, but let me briefly explain something: You know that “New York Comedy Scene” you’ve heard so much about? Well, it doesn’t actually exist. In reality, there are probably 8 or 10 different scenes here, if not more. They just all happen to exist within the same city. But they aren’t the same scene. You could become the king or queen of one of those scenes, and 80 percent of the comics in New York will still have no idea you exist.

This past October, I decided to embrace the scene that revolves around The Creek and The Cave, a restaurant/bar/comedy haven in Queens. In four months, I’ve hustled, and tried to be vulnerable onstage, and tried to stay true to my gut. And from what I can tell, I’ve become one of the more respected comics of that open-mic scene.

That’s very encouraging, and I’m trying to make sure I appreciate the respect of my peers, and embrace my role as one of the leaders of our particular open-mic scene.

But it can be tough. Tough, because even during the past 4 or 5 months - when I’ve been making so much progress - it mostly felt like nothing was happening. No one day was noticeably different than the day before.

The word I’d use is numb. You start to feel numb to what you’re doing. What you used to give a shit about, that’s just “Tuesday” now. So what do you do while you wait for a definable change? Is that numbness a good thing, because it means you’re so bulletproof, you can do 20 sets a week without going crazy? Or is feeling numb, and not even noticing doing 20 sets a week...is that what crazy is?

Does that make any sense? When you stop feeling pain, is that being tough? Or are you in denial that you’re going paralyzed?

I don’t know. Logically, I can look back at the past 5 months and see that I’m more respected. I’ve grown. But what is there on paper? What proof is there that I’m in any different a spot than I was? What proof is there that I’m stronger now, not just feeling less?

A huge part of this comedy game is not being crazy. But another huge part is not going crazy while you’re playing. Sometimes I feel like New York is the best place to go to find out whether or not you are crazy. But it’s also the easiest place to go crazy.

That’s New York. That’s stand-up. That’s life. It’s encouragement and discouragement, both at once. It's tough to figure stuff out sometimes. I don’t know what my own flip-book looks like.

Doing What We’re Supposed To

I’m working on a couple ideas for this blog right now. I’m trying to put together a lengthy, multi-part essay about the idea of “making it,” and what the hell that even means to any of us. And there’s one about the club scene vs. the open-mic scene, here in New York. But honestly, blogging is hard sometimes.

Writing sometimes feels like your thoughts are mashed potatoes, and your brain is the serving spoon they’re stuck on. Sometimes you have to almost violently fling them out. You gotta stop trying to look smooth, because you don’t even know if all the strength you have is going to be enough.

So I’ll keep trying to fling this stuff onto the screen.

I just had a conversation with two of my roommates. The one is Jason Saenz, a fellow comic up here. And the other is my ex from the past couple years, Vijaya.

I mentioned to Jason that it seems like things have been going well for him lately. Which is true - he’s been making a lot of things that are silly, dumb, and just really, really fun. I love this video he made last week. And he’s been doing a ton of stuff like that lately - just having a lot of fun doing sketch stuff with the UCB Theater, and writing and filming more and more projects.

And he said he totally agreed - he’s been having a really good 2012 so far. In fact, the past month or so has been great for all three of us. And we realized it’s pretty much because of the same reason: we all stopped trying to do what everyone said we’re “supposed to do,” and we just started doing what felt right.

For Jason, that meant shifting away from stand-up, and more toward writing and sketch opportunities. There can be a notion here in New York that if you’re not doing stand-up comedy, you’re not “really” doing comedy. There can be a good bit of snobbery about stand-up here, just like everywhere.

I’m sure it’s the same in every facet of life. There are day traders right now that are shitting on some other day trader because he decided he didn’t want to deal with crude-oil-futures anymore. You know? Because if you really give a shit about day-trading, then you’d deal with crude oil. Everything else would be nothing without oil, you know? So if you’re not trading that, then you’re not really doing it.

At some point, fuck the people that tell us what should feel “right” to us. At best, they’re just confused-ly trying to help us, because they think that whatever they feel, everyone else feels that exact same thing. More likely, they’re terrified that they’re making the wrong decisions, and so they try to make sure you’re doubting yourself, too.

The reality is, we’re all different. That’s some 2nd-grade-level shit, but we should have a re-test on that every week. Just because something feels right to you, or makes sense to you, doesn’t mean that’s what feels right to me.

That’s where bitterness comes from, I think. Because if I’m doing exactly what I want with my life, then I’m not bitter toward anyone else. Then, I’m happy that Jason does sketch comedy, and that Vijaya builds peace in Africa.

But if in my gut, I’m not sure I’m doing what I actually want to be doing, then I start wondering if I’d be happier doing something else. Should I get into sketch? Would I be better off living in a village in Africa?

And that’s when I start looking at other people that are doing other things, and start hating them, because I doubt myself.

When you’re willing to ask yourself “Am I doing what I want to be doing?” and the answer is “Yes,” - you see people doing something else and say “I hope they feel this way, too.” But when you’re just doing what other people say you’re supposed to be doing, you see people doing something else and say “I wonder if they’re actually happy.”

If they are actually happy, then that means you’re wrong, because you’re miserable when you don’t have to be. So in order to avoid questioning your own decisions, you have to make them feel as shitty about their choices as you do about yours. If you can prove they have as much fear and doubt as you, then you’ve destroyed the evidence that you could be way happier, and could be living a better life along the way.

I have no idea what this New York experience is going to bring me. I don’t know if I’ll ever be on TV, or if I’ll ever perform at the Cellar, or what will come of all this. But that’s one thing I want to bring to this scene here: I want to make people realize that we should all be doing whatever feels right to us. And that whatever feels right, that’s okay.

Take this blog. I talk a lot of bullshit on here about philosophy, and about “what comedy means,” and crap like that. And that’s okay, because it’s what I love doing. Some people get this blog, some people don’t get it, and a few people really get it. I’m cool with all three.

Right now, in New York, I’m safely at what I would call the “open-mic” level of the scene here. I don’t do any clubs, and I don’t do any prestigious alt-shows. And that’s where I should be right now. I’m trying to make a point of enjoying this phase here, whether it lasts another week, or another ten years.

You want to know something funny though? My favorite comics are not the ones most similar to me. Of all my open-mic peers, my favorite comics are the ones that do exactly whatever the hell they want onstage.

There’s a dude named Billy Stiteler that occasionally tells jokes and occasionally just quotes the shitty lyrics of delusional aspiring rappers from his high school. There’s a guy named Tony Zarat, who just tries to do the stupidest things possible, whether it’s have a conversation with a ghost heckler from the future, or think of how many different ways he can call the audience a bunch of chodes. There’s a comic named Michelle Wolf who loves performing so much, you almost feel like you’re interrupting her by being there to see it.

Those are three people that I’ve learned from, since I moved up here. Because I feel like no matter what happens to any of them in this silly comedy game - that we mistakenly think is so serious - they’re not going to be on their deathbed and say “I wish I’d done what made me happy.”

And that’s the trick. We all want to “succeed” at this comedy thing. So we do what we think we’re supposed to do. Because we think that will get us on TV, or it will get us Montreal, or it will get us on Whiplash, where Hannibal Buress will see us, put in a good word at ‘30 Rock,’ and then take us on the road with him.

But it’s backward logic. Why do we want all that? So we can make a living doing this, yeah. But largely, we want that “success” so that we can impress other people. We want that success so other people see us and say “Wow, I wish I were them.” Because we presume that if someone else wants to be us, that must mean we’ll want to be us.

But it won’t mean that. That’s what I realized today, talking to my roommates. Jason and Vijaya and I - and I’d guess Billy, Tony, and Michelle - are all fairly happy right now, because we’re doing exactly what we want to be doing. Six different lives, six happy people. Because we’re all different. And if you’re annoyed that you wasted 10 minutes reading a few-thousand words, just to hear a lesson from 2nd grade...then go write your own blog.

No, really. I actually mean that: Go write your own blog. Or write more sketches. Or move here to New York. Or quit comedy and become a teacher. Just do whatever you want to do. Fuck what I and everyone else says. Do what feels right to you.

Heavy-handedly, but with love,

Bryson

A wink and a thumbs up? I really AM a great guy!

An Artist

There are so many words.

Even if you don’t count “dog” and “dogs” as different words, there are about a quarter-million different words in the English language, at least.

The world is becoming more and more connected. Because of this, unique languages are dying or merging together. But as of right now, there are roughly 6000 different languages, throughout the world.

Some of those languages probably aren’t as annoying as English. But for fun, let’s say each language has the same as English - a quarter-million words.

250,000 x 6,000 = 1,500,000,000

Right. So about 1.5 BILLION words in the world, give or take a few.

When you look at it like that, it’s tough to really care that much about any single word. Should I really waste 2 hours writing a blog about the word “artist” when there’s still one-billion,-four-hundred-ninety-nine-million,-nine-hundred-ninety-nine-thousand,-nine-hundred-ninety-nine words left after that?

I don’t think anyone had ever written out that number before. Damn it. We’re up to 15-billion-and-1.

Language is so damn annoying! I wanted to finally get into my point by saying “Comics often disagree over whether we should even call ourselves ‘artists.’” But then in my head, I said “Hmm...should I say ‘comics’ or ‘comedians?’”

I think language’s heart is in the right place. Language wants to clarify things. But a lot of the time, it just ends up getting the way.

A story:

When my older brother and I were kids, we used to go to the creek by our house, and we’d try to catch crayfish. Preston would actually catch them, and I would always pretend I wanted to, but I never would, because I was afraid of getting pinched.

Catching crayfish was a blast - during a warm summer day, they’d just chill out, nestled safely under a rock. So if we found a decent-sized rock, odds were, there was a crayfish under it! The gameplan was simple: you pull up the rock, they freak out, and then the chase is on.

We haven’t done this for 20 years, but I still remember the process. And what always impressed me was how well Preston slid his hand through the water. And how precisely he was able to lift the rocks at the bottom of the creek, six inches below the surface, without disrupting everything around it.

That was the trick to catching crayfish. Before you put your hand in the water, you could see everything, crystal clear. It looked like the water was just thicker air. But then as soon as you moved that rock, all hell broke loose. The movement jostles the dirt and the dust around the rock, and in a split-second, it’s everywhere, and you can’t see a thing. The water’s murky, and muddy, and it holds that way. It takes about 30 seconds for the water to even start to trust you again. And by then, the crayfish is long gone.

That’s language. We want the rock out of the way, but we don’t realize how much that will complicate everything around it. We want to use words to explain how we feel. But most of the time, we’d be better off looking someone in the eyes, and trusting they’re going to understand. We worry they won’t, so we move the rock. And our water gets muddy.

I consider myself an artist. Not in the sense that the term makes me special, but in the sense that...well, it’s a word. So it has to mean something.

You can look at the technical definitions here. But the technical meanings of words don’t always mean much in our daily lives. There is a very simple, technical definition for the term racist, but the odds are we all have a pretty personal opinion of what makes someone a “racist” and what doesn’t.

So at the end of the day, we all kind of make up our own, personal language. My “Brysenglish” is pretty similar to English, but I make edits as I go, and that Merriam Webster guy can kiss my ass, thank-you-very-much.

So if anyone disagrees and says I’m not an artist? Then I’m not! In your language, I’m not. And that’s cool with me.

But in my language, I am. Because this is how I define the word “artist” :

As living things, we have compulsions. As in, things that our bodies, and our “hearts,” tell us to do. Even if it doesn’t make sense, logically, we still feel compelled to do things. We feel pulled to do them. We aren’t sure why, and we aren’t sure where the feeling comes from. But we know we feel it.

We are constantly compelled to do something - at all times, always. Some of our compulsions make sense - like eating food. Everyone is pushing me in that direction anyway, so it doesn’t feel like I’m compelled to do that. But I am. There are other compulsions that I have that aren’t nearly as universal. Last night, at an open-mic, I told a story about when I was in middle-school, and I was masturbating (which was a practically constant pastime there, for a while), and I tried having a rape fantasy where I was raping a fellow male student.

Over the next few weeks, months, or maybe years, I’ll find a way to make that funny. Or maybe I won’t. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I felt compelled to acknowledge that. The voice inside me was saying to trust it - that for some reason, doing what felt right, was right. Even if every voice outside of me says that I shouldn’t. What good can come of me admitting that in a public forum?

Honestly? Lots of good, probably. Maybe some men don’t feel as ashamed of a similar thought, and so they don’t feel a need to be as hateful toward openly gay men in order to make up for their shame. Maybe me putting myself out there makes a woman feel less ashamed about a rape fantasy she’s had, and then she feels a little less ashamed if she ever does get raped, and a little more likely to report it.

I don’t know. Maybe there will be nothing but negative repercussions. Certainly, more likely, there will be short-term negatives that come from this blog post. I don’t exist on an island - my friends read these posts. So does my cousin, who looks up to me. My mom reads all these, for God’s sake. I’m not thrilled for the moment when she scrolls down and thinks “Well, that explains why he showered before and after school every day.”

And yet, last night, I felt compelled to be honest onstage. My existence was pulling me to be fully honest. And so I gave up the fight. And I give up the fight as I write this.

An artist is someone (or something) who spends their whole life fighting to stop fighting their compulsions. At times we fail, and at times we succeed. But we spend our whole lives fighting - to not fight. You are a perfect artist in the moment that you are fully yourself.

I consider myself an artist. If I don’t, who will?

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.

A Flurry of Upcoming Posts?

So it’s been a pretty good week down here in Austin, Texas. Nothing monumental - just a chance to get some sets in, to talk with Lucas and spend some time with him (and discuss how to best keep hair out of our eyes), and just to kind of talk a lot of things out with a lot of different people. It’s been a good week, though I feel very ready to go home to the woman I love and the home that I’m hoping will continue to start feeling more and more like home.

But it’s been a good week for revelations. When you’re at peace with yourself, you have a chance to say some pretty profound things, because there’s nothing you’re worried about not saying (you can also come off pretty arrogant to a lot of people...but oh well).

That’s where I find myself at the close of this week, and it feels great.

So I’m going to do what I want with this blog. Because that’s the point of life, in my opinion - to do whatever it is you can to try end up looking back at your time, and your choices, and be at peace with it all (which is also, by the way, the point of performance, as well).

I love writing, and I love writing out my thoughts. So that’s what I’m going to do, regardless of the consequences. Let’s get started with a blog on a related topic - a professional athlete named Rashard Mendenhall and his controversial tweets about Osama bin Laden’s death this week.

Yay!

The Beginnings of a Manifesto...

"Stand-up is 1 percent what you do onstage, 99 percent why you're doing it."

_____________________

As I've tried to evolve as a comic these past seven-plus years now, I'm always paranoid that I'm completely delusional, and that I'm not growing as a comic at all, and that I'm going to wake up in two weeks, or in three months, or in five years, and realize I'm pretty much the exact same as I was now. One of my greatest fears as a comic is becoming stagnant.

That's why it's pretty sweet when something proves I've grown a lot the past six months. That something happened tonight, as I was watching some bad comedy at an open-mic in Manhattan.

Now, let me be specific when I use the term "bad comedy." I don't mean people who are just starting doing stand-up, and so they don't know how to do it yet. I'm not talking about people a year or two in, who still don't really have their bearings onstage yet.

This was different. This wasn't people making bad attempts at doing stand-up. This was people doing stand-up comedy, but doing bad stand-up. These were comics totally comfortable onstage, who'd been doing it for years, really smooth, who were often getting great reactions from the crowd, but doing so with just terrible material.

Now, maybe you're a believer in the idea that a comic's only job is to be funny. Your job is to make the audience laugh, so shut up and do your job. The old "customer is always right" theory.

Here's a deal I'll make with anyone who believes that: Fine. You're right. Every time you get paid to do stand-up, your only job is to be funny. Cool. I'll give you that. But, if that's true, then you can never say that bullshit line that stand-up comics are different than everyone else. If you believe that first part, the second part is now completely out the window.

Why do some comics say that in the first place? Because we aren't like those suckers that have a 9-5 job, and have to answer to a boss, and who are just a part of the system. They don't think, they just do what they can to try to get that next paycheck. They're sheep, every last one of 'em. Not like us comics. We get it. We're wired different than everyone else.

If you want the "just make them laugh" argument, take it. But if that's your job, then you're no different than anyone at a desk job.

Maybe you're thinking I'm dead wrong, because you think stand-up is more fun than being an accountant. I would argue that your opinion of what's "fun" is subjective and therefore irrelevant. Either way, which job is more fun isn't the point I'm making. I'm simply pointing out that if you see stand-up as nothing more than a job to be done, and that money should be exchanged for your doing that job, and that people need a release sometimes, and they "just need to laugh," then your being a comic is simply fulfilling a role in our society, no different than an accountant doing someone's taxes, or a garbageman picking up garbage. You're no better, and no worse. Which is fine. But don't pretend we're more than what we are.

Personally though, I believe that stand-up can - and should - do more than that. And so if a comic is getting a laugh by encouraging ignorance - even if everyone in the crowd loves it - that's bad comedy. In fact, in my opinion, that is the worst comedy.

I think that's what's been so fascinating about New York. Is how many people here have it so spectacularly wrong. People have it this wrong in other spots, of course. But nowhere else do they say the wrong thing so loudly. Nowhere else are wrong comics so convinced they're right. In fact, that's the only way it could be - if they weren't so sure, they wouldn't have moved here in the first place.

It's hard to even describe. For a lot of comics here, it's as if one time they saw a great comic that had confidence, and they thought the confidence was what made them great, not the great comedy that gave that comic his or her confidence. There are an astounding amount of comics here that put that cart before the horse. To study the lack of self-awareness a lot of these comics have - the long-term delusion it takes to believe that against all odds, they've somehow been undeservedly skipped over and remain an unrecognized and under-appreciated genius - is legitimately fascinating.

Which brings us all the way back to the beginning, which is how I know that I am growing away from that, and headed in the right direction, for me, as a comic. How do I know?

Because tonight, when I saw that ignorant stand-up, it made me sad. I got really bummed out.

Which is new for me. In the past, I would have gotten angry. It would have pissed me off to see comedy done so poorly, because I'd feel like I could do better. And I'd feel like my stand-up deserved to be appreciated more than their stand-up.

I would be 100 percent sure that my stand-up was way better! But in making that claim, I didn't realize what I was admitting: that what they and I were doing was essentially the same. Maybe I thought my jokes were more clever, maybe I thought they had more substance...but my anger showed that I was competing for the same thing that those bad comics were, and I took offense that I might be screwed over if they got something and I didn't. I was, after all, an unrecognized and under-appreciated genius.

But tonight, watching the art form that I love be completely trivialized by hack bits about blacks and Indians and women being needy - all by comics utterly convinced of their own brilliance - I just got kind of bummed out. And I don't totally understand why yet. Maybe because I don't feel like my comedy is its own separate thing anymore. My stand-up is part of a collective. My comedy is a part of what makes up stand-up comedy as a whole. Which might seem like it ties me down to everyone else's work too, but also with that belief comes the realization that I don't have to beat anyone else or do something better than anyone else. The goal is not "Be what the audience wants you to be onstage." The goal is "Be what you want to be onstage." Which of course means that the only obstacle to my success is myself. There is no competition.

That. That's it. That's what made me sad. So many comics up here, so many comics I saw tonight - they all thought it was a competition. It was like they were all trying to win a trophy they've never seen but just assume exists. They think we're all fighting against each other to be the funniest, when really, the search is for each of us to find the funniest us that we can be. I think that lack of perspective is what bummed me out, and so I sat there, a little hunched over in my chair, listening to jokes I'd heard before that made points I'd heard before, watching comics not making themselves vulnerable in any way, and wondering if they'd ever have the balls to ask themselves what they actually think is funny.

Over-thinking Shit in New York

As I sit at home on this Thursday night, having chosen not to go out to any shows tonight, I figure I might as well write out some of my thoughts about this ongoing New York experiment of ours.

Here's how living in New York can mess with you:

You don't realize it until you're here, but everything in New York makes it feel like the stakes have been raised. If I took a night off back in Austin or DC, all I was missing was an open-mic. Maybe you miss a good talk with Herbie Gill, or a funny story about Jake Flores, but it was nothing that wouldn't be there the next night, too.

In New York, it feels like every night you take off, the next day you're two more weeks behind. You skip one night, and you missed Ted Alexandro showing up and doing a set at the show you were gonna do. Rory Scovel and Kurt Braunohler showed up and did time. "I could have networked with them!" "They could have seen me perform and I could have gotten in with them!"

Every night I miss here feels like a lost opportunity. An opportunity I'll never get again.

Everything that happens in New York now was happening back when I was down in Austin, of course. But there, it didn't feel like I was missing it, because I couldn't have been there. So there's no guilt. But now that I'm here, everything I miss is something that I could have seen. Paradoxically, making the move to New York so that I can do more with my stand-up career often makes me feel like I'm doing 100 times less. So it's just really, really easy to get discouraged when you live here. You could be doing comedy-related stuff 24/7 up here, and you still feel like you're failing.

So at some point, I just kind of have to make peace with the idea of living my own life here. I can't live a hundred lives, so there's going to be a lot that I never get to do up here. I'm going to miss out on a lot of amazing stuff. I'm going to be on that "better" show the night Lorne Michaels comes to an open-mic looking for talent, I'm going to be on the road the night CK randomly stops by The Creek and the Cave, I'm going to stay in with my girl the night before Mike DeStefano dies...

You can lose your mind thinking about everything you didn't do that you could

have. But at some point, that becomes counter-productive, and you start not doing stuff because you're too busy feeling shitty for stuff you didn't do before.

In that way, I could feel bad for getting up seven times in about four months, from Thanksgiving until March. But there's no point. I had some great sets while I was in Austin for SXSW the past two weeks, I'm madly in love with what I'm doing onstage right now, and the past is the past no matter what.

So if you ever move up to New York, you'll probably have a phase where you panic because it feels like you're missing so much. You are, but that's fine. You can't do everything you're jealous of other people for doing. Deal with it, and find your own life up here. And if you're not up here yet, don't be jealous of me or anyone else here. Find your own life, and live that one.

There are people reading this that think they're jealous of my comedy career. I'm sitting in my apartment tonight, drinking a glass of juice. I have no shows tonight. If you're jealous of me, you're jealous of how at peace I am with my life, not with anything relating to stand-up. Don't confuse the two and chase the latter. It's the former that matters.

Brooklyn Returns

I'm not sure how this pattern works, but I've noticed it several times in my life.

1. You move somewhere new.

Result: It's weird, you're not comfortable, and everything feels like a struggle.

2. You go away.

Result: You're happy while you're away, but at some point, part of you wants to go back.

3. You come back to the new place the second time.

Result: Everything slows down a little. It makes a little more sense. You don't feel as overwhelmed.

That was my experience in college. My first semester, I was completely miserable. I hated it. I survived until the holidays of my freshmen year. I went home and got a chance to catch my breath. And then when I went back in January, for some reason, everything kind of came together.

I had a similar experience when I moved to Austin a few years ago. I came down at the beginning of December, but bounced around for the first few months, coming home for the holidays and then going back to DC for Obama's inauguration (which feels like about 40 years ago now...has it really only been 26 months?). When I got back and really settled in, things started to click, and I felt like my life was actually my own life again.

Now, though I just returned to Brooklyn last night, I am already getting signs that the pattern may be repeating itself. I did seven sets in the first two months that I lived here. That number will seem shockingly low to some, but to me, looking back, it feels right. The first few months up here had so little to do with comedy. The new surroundings, the new lifestyle (living with my partner for the first time), lingering illness, and even the actual move itself combined to make the past few months a time where all I could hope to do is survive. Now, this second first time up here, I feel like life and everything around me may slow down enough that I can add comedy to my life's equation, and it won't overwhelm the system.

Things seem to be breaking that way. Before I left for the airport yesterday, I had gotten two e-mails asking me to do shows in New York once I got back. The couple of New York comics I met and hung out with during SXSW make me feel like I have a much more connected web of familiar faces in the scene up here. And my time away reminded me that I have friends and fellow comics from other cities that are rooting for me, that look up to me, and that are in a sense up here with me, even if they aren't physically here.

No sexy ending to this post. But I'm glad I'm back in Brooklyn. I'm looking forward to looking forward, if that makes sense.