They Can’t All Be Classics...

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

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

So clearly, it’s a flawed system.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New York Struggles, Part 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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