Don't Waste Your Misery

As some of you know, I’ve been going on a reading binge this year to combat all the doom that comes out of my phone. 

The most satisfying reads I’ve had this year so far is the Hannibal Lecter series by Thomas Harris. 

It’s made me think a lot about monsters.

One trait all monsters share is they feed on other’s misery. 

The moth in silence of the lambs is a central plot line because it is about metamorphosis. But in the book they go into greater detail about why the moth was important, certain types of moths apparently eat tears. 

The heroine Clarice Starking reflects on how the killer was this thing in the dark that ate tears. I guess when you hear about people benefiting from suffering, it is always the bad guy.

But I’ve started to think a lot about that and how if you’re careful, I think there’s a way for the protagonist to benefit from misery.

Lately I’ve been going through some challenging times.

As a man, I think I am conditioned to not talk about bad things as they happen. It seems unmanly and worse, There’s some deep fear that by showing a flank, it will somehow attract more bad. 

But I think that’s just paranoia. 

And no matter how tough my times are other people have it much worse. All the problems I have on the sliding scale of pain are solvable and my parents are alive and I don’t have cancer and I have eaten three meals today and plan to do so tomorrow.

But that doesn’t mean that my concerns or miseries such as they are are not valid or real. 

Pain as many people point out makes you selfish. All you think about is what caused it and you usually come up with very bad answers.

I have a friend that every time he gets sick, he just ruminates on it for a long time and then he comes up with a very outlandish reason for why. 

I think it’s the Protestant in him that wants to punish himself and ignore germ theory.

But case in point, you do your worst thinking when you are suffering.

So I guess the question I have distilled from all that is simply:  what can you do with the suffering? 

What good is your misery?

For me, I’ve come to realize that misery like many negative emotions however unwelcome they are, is a type of fuel. 

Maybe the only good thing about it is that it is a type of fuel.

I have come to accept this, and even though none of my problems were solved overnight it has made things easier. I’m basically in a life position where I need to work very very hard for a short period of time to make some things happen. 

The work I’m doing I am neither skilled at or prepared for and I still have all my other obligations like family and my job, etc..

You cannot out ruminate your misery. 

You cannot out depression your misery. 

You cannot out self loathing your misery. 

You cannot out blame your misery.

But you can out work it.

You can out strategize it. 

You can stop it from stealing your rest. 

You can refuse to allow it to make you hate yourself.

All this to say, I’ve never been more single-minded in my entire life than I am right now and things are very, very slowly going the right direction for that I’m really happy. To borrow another thing from fiction, and the dune series they were the suits in the desert, where the sweat that they produce is filtrated and process back to water that they can drink. And even though that’s disgusting, there’s something to that.

So if you are miserable, the good news is that sometimes misery is simply a black sign pointing you to what you need to work on.

It is not a stop sign. It is a green light in a different shade.

At the end, sometimes its the misery that brings you into a type of future you otherwise would not have had access to.

I read about a famous bull rider who after 8 years of being unstoppable suffered a horrible career ending injury. A fall from a bull broke his neck. The man bought the bull, and now it lives a peaceful life in his field where they are both retired.

Maybe misery isnt something we beat, its something we survive, then in a long long time, we walk together in the sunshine.

New York is Forever

One day, you will wake up, and you will miss all of this.

Whatever the “this” is, that’s for you to learn.

It could be anything.

It may be your joint health, it may be your mother’s voice, it may be your talent, it may be strange enough, your problems.

13 years ago I was announcing on Facebook I was playing my last gig at Tjili Pop in Copenhagen, before my schedule move back to America.

13 years later I find myself sitting in Astoria Park, listening to a country band that my fiancé and I stumbled across as we plan yet another move, this time back to Charleston.

I have done a lot of thinking about my life in New York. 

Why I came, why I am leaving.

I came to New York to get away, to disappear, to become something else.

I also came because of comedy.

NYC represents the height of the upstream that a little salmon can swim to, braving all the waterfalls, bears and bringer shows.

When I look back at the texture of New York, it has punctuated my life at 4 different times, like 4 gospels.

 When I was 15, my mom lived up here. I would come visit it. I hated it.

Not her, just the city. I didn’t get it. It was confusing to get around, no one looked you in the eye, it made me feel like nothing.

Then at 27 I ended up back in New York briefly where I fell in love. I remember riding around the subway with this girl, I remember the fabric of her thrifted blouse, I remember feeling foolish because she had an iPhone and I didn’t and was useless with the directions. I remember feeling connected and significant, and strong even though the odds were bad.

I remember coming at 37, older wiser, heavier in all ways. The city was freezing. It was still covid. Masks on, people sitting on benches in 17 degree weather outside of Blue Bottle because it wasn’t safe to drink it in a café.

I remember going to a series of dog shit open mics. I remember being late to everything. I remember running my business remotely for the first time. I remember finding one of the best parts of my time in NYC at the judo gym KBI with all my friends there.

I remember writing a lot, trying very hard, volumes of failure. Little fireflies of success.

New York City is an amplifier. Everything you do is not made better or worse, it is made louder.

One time I got booked on a coffee shop show and the whole show sucked, I then proceeded to suck, and I was so depressed I laid in bed all day.

A year later, I did a set at a club I was working my way into, had a good set, after the show a couple pulled me aside and asked to follow me so they could see me again. It felt big. Walking home the buildings themselves made the moment feel even more important.

I’m now 41, and the last cycle of my NYC life truly started about 2 years ago when my then gf now fiancé moved up. It was a big, big, big deal. I had not lived with a woman in 14 years.

What’s more, we saved and scrimped and sold everything to afford to move into a gorgeous “I’m doing good” apartment. No more manic roommates, no more shit bird landlords.

It was a huge change. My life started to take on a new shape, one built around other people’s rhythms and delights.  Some of it felt like a sacrifice. The math of being an artist makes less sense when you are not alone. If I have no one to come home to, of course I will come support your 11 p.m. Brooklyn show. If I do have someone to come home to, I’m not reading your text.

But even though parts of me fell off, new parts grew in their place.

I feel like this is the chapter where I became a man.

Besides all the things I think I did well here, and the things I feel deep cringe for because I didn’t live up to my own ideal, what I am thinking about most today on my last day in NYC is this:

I think about all the people that have been nice to me.

Judy let me crash in her house for like a month. Heather took me to a cool Mediterranean breakfast, Shintaro gave me countless opportunities to get better and make money, Derek fixed one of my jokes, Michael and Tanner let me cry about mics, Greg showed me how to dominate the sleeve, Cam and Jam came out for a show when I needed them, Boris and a flood of other New Yorkers came and did my show in Charleston and encouraged me, there’s a full deck of cards in my mind of the people that made my life sweeter here.

To all those people mentioned and not mentioned, thank you thank you thank you.

I’ve thought a lot about what it means to live somewhere different, what matters and what doesn’t matter, and I think I have distilled it down to one aim:

The goal is to collect good memories for the long winter of the future, and to be a good memory for others.

I hope in some small way I have done just that.

The Oubliette

Last year I quiet quitted doing stand up.
 I had done it for 9 years.

Started in a small scene where two mics a week was the max, and ended in NYC. A humble grain in the city’s salt shaker of talent.
When people ask me if I still do comedy, I give them the worst answer possible:

a long honest one.

But I guess I feel tender about it.

One thing I’ve learned about artistic pursuits:
Everyone wants to make it
By law of averages almost all can’t
There’s no dignified way to stop

Some people crash out of comedy. They didn’t have the social know-how to make friends or read a room, they piss off the wrong person and get ostracized or leave.

Some people gracefully enter it as a hobby, then gracefully put it down like drums or Krav Maga.

I stopped because ultimately I didn’t find what I was looking for, or maybe it didn’t find what it was looking for in me.

What amazes me as I get old is the layers of desire.

No matter who you are reading this, the things to you that matter, if you drill deep enough down into them, you eventually get into a gaseous subconscious reservoir.

Somewhere in that cave is the answer to the riddle.

For me it went something like this

Why am I doing comedy/what am I looking g for?

Well it’s fun and always wanted to try it
Deeper
Well I think I always realized I had a few funny ideas and wanted to try it
Deeper
I feel like I bombed out of music and was kind of at the right place right time for a creative pivot, one in which words were more important than all the mechanics of music at which I was less skilled
Deeper
I needed a way to suck out the poison of my bizarre upbringing, zealous and at times toxic religious phase of life, failed marriage, family deaths, pick a tragedy
Deeper
The comedy helped me make sense of the pain and shrink it which was an invaluable thing to learn
Deeper
Even though I was 30 something, I liked to perform and making people laugh was a thrill
Deeper
Being busy with shows felt like success, and I made some true incredible 1 in a million friendships in it
Deeper
Maybe I could become skilled at this
Deeper
I am in the city of dreams having the least funny and least successful years of my life
Deeper
I am improving
Deeper
I have been changed for the better by my efforts and my environment, but I don’t think I have whatever this thing wants
Deeper
I think what I wanted at long last was to be in demand.
Deeper
I want to be taken serious
Deepest
I want to be desired.

Wow what an embarrassing thing to write.

I wish I could lock up the notes app on my phone like a little girls journal with heart shaped lock.

I guess every pursuit is this bizarre seven layer burrito.

One of the movie scenes I can’t stop thinking about lately is Forrest Gump in his running phase.
He runs across the country, he sees the sunrise over mountains and valleys and oceans, then one day, he just goes home. The thing that powered the running evaporated.

Post comedy, I feel a lot of things. Not all of them bummers.

When I stopped believing in Jesus, one of the things that surprised me the most was this:
I felt immense freedom from the pressure to read the Bible and pray.
That Christian inescapable guilt to have devotional or quiet time or whatever you call it.
It felt like getting out of eternal homework and I loved it.

I feel a similar way about comedy “grind”. Hitting the mics, writing my jokes, the ever present feelings of inadequacy and futility of effort.

It’s been fun to beat my swords into a plowshares so to speak,, then beat my microphone into a Chase Sapphire business reward credit card on which I will earn points for upcoming vacations.

But it has left some kind of void.

And if I’m honest, I grieved it in silence all year.  My heart has felt like the Ladson fair ground in January long after the fair rolls out. It’s cleaner, quieter, purposeless.

Comedy in my home town I realize now was my golden era. It felt like pick up basket ball. It was amateur, it was physical, it was messy, it was a fucking blast.

Comedy in my time in NYC felt like working on the floor of the New York stock exchange but only if zero dollars were being traded for all the stress and yelling.

Anyone who doesn’t know comedy will think my time in standup was pretty successful. I got to open for some big names, I got booked at some clubs, I made people I admire laugh a few times.
People that know comedy know that opening for people is bullshit, many clubs are bullshit, and most niceties are also you guessed it.

From the ages of 23 to 28 I lived in Copenhagen, Denmark.

It’s a long story.

While there, I learned Danish. I’m 41 now, I still speak it.
In all my time in America and elsewhere, it has never once come in handy.
It’s like an elaborate sculpture carved out of butter.
It took ages to make, and it has no purpose.

I think that’s how I feel about comedy. IM still funny. I make my girlfriend laugh, I make my mom laugh, I make the guys in my gym laugh, every now and then I’ll make a complete stranger laugh.

But it’s a sculpture I built and I don’t know who I built it for.

For all the people that showed me love doing it, I feel that love forever. I almost feel a guilt there too. Like a crossfitter that doesn’t even kip their pullups.

For the people in my life who no matter what I achieved acted like what I was doing was morally wrong or embarrassing I feel a relief. Maybe they were right all along who fucking knows.

Trying is, in all pursuits, hilarious and humiliating.

It hurts to give a fuck.

My life in some ways is way better. I’m physically more healthy, I’m relationally more healthy, I’ve never been better at my job, and last year I paid off about 90k in various debts and taxes.

But if I am talking to myself, I know I miss it. I miss having a creative anything. Making money rules, i grew up in so much financial uncertainty and at times humiliating poverty that making money will always be a driving factor.
But I feel like I’ve lost something.

In more barbaric times, there was a torture/death sentence  called the oubliette. It was the lowest point of a prison, sometimes a deep pit, sometimes a hole small enough to just stand but not sit.  The only way out was rescue or death, usually standing on the remains of whatever unlucky soul died before you.

As edgey and sad as that sounds, I feel like this. Whoever I am now becoming is on the bones of who I was. Maybe this is always the way. The ground you are standing on is the past.

The term oubliette apparently comes the French word to forget. A forgotten room.

I hope I don’t forget.

I hope who I was can improve who I am now and will one day be.

I’m tired of being embarrassed for what I didn’t do perfect.

I think i will let the critic die in the dark

He never laughed once anyway

I'm turning 40 and everything is allright

Whats worse: to desparately try to look a certain way or achieve something by a landmark birthday, or to feel like you need to in the first place?

Welcome to the thoughts I think while I, 39 year old man, do chin ups in my building’s basement gym.

I’ve never been weird about aging or birthdays. I appreciate life. My sister died at 3, brother at 34, I understand that just being here is sheer luck that I did nothing to deserve and that luck should be respected.

But landmark birthdays kinda get me. When I turned 30, I laughed about it. I went to the fair with my mom and step dad, I ate fried oreos, I took pictures with a stuffed doll that was a banana with a rasta hat on. Ha ha ha. he he he.

Then about a week later, it hit me.

This dark awareness. I still to this day do not understand what it was. I think its the same feeling a climber gets when they cognitively understand the spatial distance between them and the next jagged rock hundreds of feet below. The awareness of space.

Thats what it was.

The understanding that I was climbing on my own. And for sure I could do better. At 30 I was. I had started my teaching business, I was playing music, I was single, etc. But there was also this awareness that I could do worse. Much worse. Things could go infinitely bad for me.

The thing that snapped me out of it was a friend. I don’t know how it happened, but my long time friend and bjj training partner Brent Greene invited me out for pizza at Evo. I don’t remember a thing he said, but somehow, he made me understand that things were going to be ok. It made me feel like my great swooning worry was almost comical. I think about that a lot.

The fear is real, but the humor that makes it ok is just as real.

I have had weird feelings about being 40. In my voice, in my head, I do not feel that age. I think I sound much younger. I don’t mean that in a complimentary way. More akin to that feeling when your mom makes you call the pizza place to order for the first time and you realize that you are a boy in a world of men, and even the lowest of the men know something that you don’t. Tenderfooted. I feel like that sometimes still.

But simultaneously I feel old. I have done a lot of things. I have cringed a lot of cringes. I have many things I wish I could have been slightly better for. Tried just a little harder, loved more, allowed myself to be loved more.

I am currently in physical therapy for my knee, and I hate it. I’m proud of myself for doing it, but I hate it. I hate the movements, I hate the way they feel, I hate the reason I am there. I hate the way I look walking to the dumb bell or the mat. But all of this is a simple thing, a rejection of what is. I feel like I look old, and it kills me.

Its funny, all the things people feel old about i dont. I don’t really give a fuck about my hair. But the posture I have walking, unforgiveable haha.

When I am too keyed up before bed, I think about death. I think about my parents, I think about people I have known, I think about the awful truth that it does end. This has haunted me a lot of the time since i moved to nyc.

One day, I researched “thinking about death before bed”. The results I found made me laugh out loud. Apparently, this line of thinking can be traced to people who have trouble with a nightly routine. The LEAST emo or interesting answer.

That is still so funny to me.

Its not some answer from the universe, its not some grave portent of the future, its go the fuck to sleep you ADHD asshole lol.

I am in a good place. I live in a beautiful apartment and I don’t care if that sounds like I am bragging. I have mostly lived in ugly sad places in nyc. Living somewhere nice is an accomplishment. I have a girlfriend, and somehow, the act of being in a relationship has done something to me.

It hit me this weekend. I went to the Poconos with my good friend Boris to do a show, and I was honestly a bit uneasy about the show. I haven’t been “grinding” with comedy. I basically took 2.5 months off from comedy when we moved to this new place. But my set went about as good as I could expect, and more importantly, all my thinking about it was correct. I had problems with certain jokes before the show, I made little tweaks, and they paid off. I had weird feelings before, I thought my way through them, and I was right.

The feeling I have is like a fever that has been burning on my brain has passed. I attribute it all to being in a very normal, very stable relationship. I have a lot less to prove, and I need a lot less. I realize how many flaws I have that are easy to hide when you are on the run, and tougher to hide when someone sees that you drink zero water and scroll too much or whatever.

Im grateful for what I have, and I think I’m lucky.

I think what I am experiencing is like some kind of awakening of my own voice. My own awareness.

When I was first losing my religion (I don’t mean that in a fun way), I felt like my mind was being torn in half. It hurt. My memory was bad, I was tired all the time. But what emerged out of that cognitive earthquake is what i called the glacier voice. This deeper knowing. This no country for old man serial killer logic that just paces inside you. Telling you stuff that you don’t want to hear sometimes, but other times serving you.

I have to some extent always wanted a method. A rule to follow. As you age, you try on many other people’s forms. It takes a lot of time for some of us to find our own form to be. And thats ok.

I still have regrets, I have ghosts, I have what ifs. I wonder how my fate would have been altered by small decisions. But I am also so grateful that today, I get to make a new set of decisions be them ever so humble, and I look forward to seeing how they blossom. And I look forward to seeing how I blossom.

My friend Esben was talking about women one time, and he said something beautiful. We were talking about a girl we knew with a streak of gray in her hair. And he said he loved that most, at the sign of decay. And I think I am going to give that to myself. I can’t love only one half of my life. Its all beautiful and lucky and worthy of my appreciation. I hope whoever you are, you can do the same service to yourself.

the art of nothing

I moved to nyc…again. 

The more you move to nyc the fewer times you can talk about it on social media haha.

But honestly, it is childish to think in absolutes.  Anything worth doing is worth taking multiple attempts at.

I feel kind of listless.  A word I only know in context of other words.  I am living with someone now.  That is a huge adjustment.   I have a big boy apartment and a big boy lease and big boy bills.

But I’m handling things, it never feels like enough but I have plenty.

I’ve only heard of maslow’s hierarchy of needs in conversation, I don’t know shit about it.  But from what podcast bro’s have told me it is a simple design.  The bottom of the platform is about safety, food, shelter, things like that, then further up is things like meaningful work and pleasure. 

I guess its not uncommon to move back down on the pyramid, depending on whats going on. 

I think that’s how I feel.  When you move to nyc to do some kind of artistic thing, everyone expects content.  They expect product.

But the content is built on a platform of security (either from parents, a rich partner, good job, or from someone who has scaled their lifestyle to zero).  If the security is challenged, its very hard to think about being creative.

Why do I feel the need to explain my experience?

Theres several ways to do that.  Sometimes we explain out of discovery, but the lowest form is the explanation out of the need to be seen in a better light.

I wonder often why I can’t relax in times when I want to relax. 

I think the answer is simple. 

I haven’t done enough of the meaningful things.

Why haven’t I done so?

I went to a museum today.  Museums have such strange atmosphere.  They have that somber quality of a graveyard, but that aspirational quality of a church.  In that quiet walking I remember that I love creating stuff.  That I too want to stand in that stream and make my little waves. 

But then I wake up, and people start messaging me.  I watch my mandatory 19 hours of reels, I have old grudges to settle, I have people to please, I need to work out so. I won’t be fat, this friend needs something from me, I should meditate.

Its very hard to do anything.

A man needs a rule. 

I think that’s why when I was younger I understood the call some people feel to join a monastery.  The world is so confusing, human choice is infinite and confusing.  Having an external rule is the most simple of wishes. 

Its hard to return.

Its hard to circle back to the thing you were talking about within yourself.

But I have to believe that the space makes the next thing even more beautiful.  Some times the prettiest songs are the ones with the most distance between the notes. 

I was born to understand repetition.  Repetition is power.  Show me how to make one brick, and I will build a tower.  But not everything good can be replicated.  You can try, but some days the brick does not appear out of the mud. 

That alone is why I don’t try.  The fear that I will be alone with the labor and reward-less.

When I was a musician, I was so confident.  I was so sure.  I had spent so much time over a guitar, alone on a piano in a empty church.  If you put me in a room with an instrument, either I was coming out with something, or I wasn’t coming out. 

Nothing else works like that creatively for me.  Everything else comes out accidentally. 

But I guess, the accidents are attracted to the work. 

I admire anyone that creates anything.  Even people I don’t like.  If I see a creation, I know you scaled a wall that lives in everyone and you brought something back.  If I could hope for anything for myself for this new season its that.  That I embrace the art of nothing, the willingness to work with the invisible even if it stays invisible. 

The work is all you have, the results have their own volition. 

Infinite Slice

I have been thinking about writing this post for three months, which hilariously invalidates all the advice I am about to attempt to share of what I have learned lately.

If you are like me, you live in a perennial merry go round of being pleased and disgusted with your work, your appearance, your accomplishments etc.

Everyone I know has some part of their life that goes up and down like the stock market.

And everyone I know that isn’t like that is either enlightened at a level I can’t achieve or they are full of shit.

To be human is to be constantly ascending or descending, it’s what makes us normal, a variable beat is so human even our hearts speed up and slow down.

I just completed a big work task not that long ago and its times like that that my brain wanders the most.  The natural up and down rhythm of my personality goes into double time.  I love what I’m doing, I hate it.  I see the value, the value is an illusion etc.  I’m sure you know it.

But what I have come back to is a simple awareness, it’s so stupid I can’t believe I have to write it, but I do because even I need to hear it.

When you’re doing a hard task, a challenge beyond yourself,

Break

It

Down.

Sometimes, the first step in construction is ironically deconstruction.

I’ll never forget my first time competing in Jiu Jitsu.  I had recently lost my brother and marriage and bjj was a new endeavor.  It was a tool I was using to face death, and find some kind of peace on the other side.  If that sounds dramatic I don’t fucking care.  I had to take my grief somewhere, this was as good a place as any.

In my first match, I drew this shaved head danish guy that would go on to win the whole tournament and get his blue belt shortly thereafter.  I really didn’t have a shot.  But I started well against him, and somehow against all odds ended up on top in a position called half guard.  Basically I was half way to scoring on him but of course he knew that too.

My next step in getting control of this bastard was getting an underhook.  My coach was screaming at me to get the underhook.  All the other coaches said it too, everyone is screaming at me to get the underhook.

Here’s the problem, I have no idea what an underhook is.  They may as well have been speaking a different language.

I ended up losing, but I learned something valuable that I later applied to my own kids classes.

You can only expect from someone, or yourself, what you already understand.  If you don’t understand it yet, you can’t expect it..yet.

When I taught/teach kids or adults, I take great delight in the process of simplifying an idea to its most raw ingredients.  This brings the foreign into the realm of understanding and thus something we can control.

Example, If I could go back and coach myself, I would have shouted for me to get the underhook too just like my coach. 

But after the third time of yelling it and seeing me not do it, I would have come to three conclusions

1.      I was too overwhelmed to interpret the advice in the heat of the moment

2.     I was prideful and didn’t want to listen (not true in my case but can be)

3.     I don’t know what the fuck an underhook is or why I need it and need a simpler step.

So if yelling for this move wasn’t working, my next prompt would be to say “take your right arm and put it under his arm pit and lean on him with your body, which in simple form is an underhook. 

I think its important that whether you are doing something you are good at, or something that is beyond you, some times your overwhelm is directly proportional to your lack of creating a simpler step for yourself.

For example, I know that right now I need to switch a bank account on a listing I manage.  I’ve needed to do it for a month.  But I HATE dealing with this one sight I would have to use, and just the thought makes me want to punch drywall Kyle style. 

But would it be so wrong if I made a goal to open the website?  Open it, do nothing, then close it and scratch it off the list for the day (with the goal to open it, make one change the next day?).

A lot of times our lack of progress is because we want to do things at the pace that it can in theory if the moon is right if the best dude in the world is doing it pace.  But bad news, you are not them, you’ll likely never be them, and if you don’t recognize that and start somewhere you’ll definitely never be them.

Right now I am out of shape.  Its very hard on my ego.  Whats worse, I’m in a phase of life in which I just don’t have a lot of extra energy to do things that would keep my shit together.  I’m living in my home town for a few weeks as I help get my girlfriend and pets moved to nyc for a move up here.  Honestly its not the time for vanity.  But does that excuse me from everything?  Nope.  So at the advice of my buddy Greg I downloaded a running plan and have been following it.

Guess what, its not that hard.  Its not something that would make a motivational Instagram story.  I’m half embarrassed by my progress. 

But on a deeper level, I know I’m taking action on something that matters in a way that I can keep up.

If you listen to motivational speakers, one thing they talk a lot about is “taking massive action”.  That’s true, no denying it.  But the counter point is this:

 take sustainable action. 

You going to the gym and maxing out your deadlift one day is useless.  You doing body weight squats throughout your day consistently and with humility will get you farther faster and healthier.

Every result is the product of a habit.  In America, we all watch the results, we LOVE results, we are drunk on results.  But the habits is something that no one likes to see.  Because a habit means I am accountable to do something. 

When I think about hard tasks that I still need to do, a part of me gets mad.  I hate being bad at stuff, I hate waiting, etc.  but I think back to that cartoon where someone is cutting up a ham and they cut  a slice so thin that its transparent.

If life is forcing you to eat something you don’t like but have to, its better to take a thin slice then none.  And if that is too big, give yourself permission to cut it smaller. 

Smaller and bigger go on for infinity. 

Use that to your advantage. 

purge your meaningless suffering

I went to buy some new jeans the other day. I buy clothes like an old mining prospector that lives in the mountains and doesn’t come down but once a year to the general store for supplies. I don’t know why I am this way. It hurts to do chores like that for me. I don’t mean that in some cliche guys dont shop way. I feel bad in the store, I feel bad in the mirror, I feel bad in the shoe store. I feel like a video game character standing on lava.

I think I didn’t have very good models of self care growing up. My dad taught me the value of training, and my mom taught me the importance of caring for others, but that silent discipline of kindess pointed to the self I never learned.

That missing skill becomes more and more obvious as I age. Its a type of carelessness i am trying to do away with now. Funny enough, we often learn how to care for ourselves better from learning to care for others. I am in a very happy relationship now, and my partner cares for me. Not just by saying nice things but by a daily drip of actions that make my life better. She cares for me like a horse lol. Give me the oats, brush me down, give him the medicine when hes sick. Its a type of kindness that is rooted in her much more developed sense of self care than me.

This is important and here is why:

when I dont care for myself in simple ways, I suffer.

Life is suffering. Love can involve suffering, success of any stripe or in any field is a sure way to encounter suffering. But if suffering is so much a guarantee, then why am I in such a hurry to add more to my life?

When I was a little kid, I used to share a room with my brother Jonathan who was 2 years older. I was top bunk and he was bottom bunk. Before bed time, turning off the light was a constant source of contention. No one wants to get out of bed to switch a light off so we would fight. I remember he would always say “I can sleep with it on” and that was his trump card because I couldn’t. I would storm down that weird ladder that all bunk beds to turn it off.

When you encounter people, everyone has struck a deal with life that you may not be aware of, even though you have done the same. The deal is simple, where will you hurt and for what cause?

Suffering is part of most bargains. Pay this price, and receive this good thing. But I think everyone has folds of their life where they are paying a price and receiving nothing, or even hurting themselves. Like my brother as a kid, you shouldn’t learn to sleep with the light on. Its bad for you. Or like me as an adult. I need to learn to shop for myself even if I have to shop online and stay home.

The reason is, not shopping hurts more. As bad as I felt in the store that day, it feels worse to wake up and hate what your wearing. Maybe your body has changed, the season is colder or warmer etc. before long you realized how much discomfort youve added to your daily life by not doing a simple thing.

I think most creative types are operating at a net negative when it comes to how they use their energy. Most use it on so many dumb things that its kinda amazing anyone gets anything done at all.

But what if you sanded down all the rough edges from your experience? What if you took one gram of uneeded pressure off your back? I helped out in a kids class the other day. For fun, I let them all try to do chin ups and I assisted them if needed. Some kids are a long way from doing a single one. And other kids, were literally right there, so close.

Guess what, the kid who completely cant and the kid who almost could but came up short looked a lot similar in how they reacted. Sometimes all that matters is getting over the bar.

But what I tried to teach them that day and I guess what I am reminding myself and maybe you is this: sometimes you are just a couple good decisions away from a life that you know you could have. You have to purge. Its almost always something you are allowing that is hurting you. Suffering for a cause is noble. Suffering and receiving nothing is the life of a serf. Even if you don’t feel positive right now, the first way forward is to stop engaging in things that make it worse.

Hyper criticism as a form of laziness

The higher your standards are, the more you hurt.

Standards are a form of expectations, and the hardest expectations to dissapoint are the ones you have for yourself.

No one is who they truly want to be.

At least not that I know of. I can’t imagine being exactly what you want to be. I think its too fleeting. Its like being perfectly happy. Happy is like one of those weird trick shot videos. You try, and you get close, and the journey is part of what brings happiness, and the brief achievement is only the top of the wave.

When you don’t get what you are aiming at, the most unhelpful reaction is to be overly critical. Self awareness is a gift, being able to unpack your choices is helpful. But one thing I often slip into after failures is a form of hyper self criticism. That absolute self disgust married with a pessimism that often roots me to the floor and saps my energy.

What I have recently discovered is this: hyper self criticism is a form of laziness.

I love those videos of regular people making one of those half time shots that wins them a new car. But that is not how life is. Life is not one attempt, it is a series of attempts. Very few are the final one.

What I am realizing is that if you only attempt your goal one time, yes, you should be very sad. You should hate yourself, you are bad, you never were gonna make it or whatever sad shit you say to yourself where no one can hear you.

But but but, if this is one of many attempts, hundreds, thousands, then the only question is when will you have the humilty and good sense to try again.

Needing your early attempts to succeed famously or you’ll fall into despair is a clear sign that you secretly hope you wont have to try that hard. We all need encouragement along the way, but your desire for aclaim has to match your work ethic. If not you are building a feedback loop that will only result in misery.

Trying again is the virtue. Trying again is the antiseptic that cleans the wound of that deep unhelpful introspection. You can bury your critic alive in the volume of your attempts.

I like many of you are a critical lazy bitch. Depending on the day, depending on the mood, depending on what is happening. But the only way and I mean the only way to cure this, is to try again. Make something. Write something. Make another call. Perform another repetition. In repetition, informed with the insight of the past, we can do anything.

few

I had a busy day yesterday.  Worked hard on my business, did a show, watched Lemony Snickets on my couch then fell asleep.  This morning I woke up, and a weird thought experiment played out for me while I laid in bed, I pictured my funeral. 

I know this isn’t unique, everyone wonders who would show up, who wouldn’t, I think it’s a trick the mind does to evaluate life. 

But it was very real, like a dream not a nightmare.  It was in a beautiful large drawing room.  I recognized people, I knew what they were wearing, and I could see the way they carried their grief.  Silently, or shaking, who they sat with.

If I died right now, nothing would make sense.  I don’t feel like the pieces have aligned, but I accept that.  But it makes me want to reach that catharsis before the end.  I’ve always heard that when you die the brain floods with chemicals, like a parachute of catharsis, helping you understand.  I hope that’s true, it sounds beautiful.  I want to understand.

I think I have always felt old.  I’m 38, I’ll be 39 next month, I’m sitting in a loud ass starbucks in Astoria.  And I think I just now realized for the first time why I have always felt old, worry. 

Different reasons for it at different ages, but worry slows the mind and speeds it up at the same time.  “Fear is the mind killer”, but it doesn’t kill it all at once, it kills it in steps. 

I guess the hinge of what I’m trying to say is this:  most of the people I worry about, either those I want to like me or those I fear hate me, wouldn’t even come to my funeral.  Me not existing wouldn’t darken their day, so why should I let their perceived opinion get to me?  I shouldn’t. 

I know its very middle school creative writing class to think about your own funeral, but I think evaluating the end can simplify your priorities. 

Much to my embarrassment, my mind is still full of Christian music lyrics from my religious days.  That being said, theres one that sticks in my mind today.

“There are very few important things”

I have such a hard time with this.  I am so priority blind.  Everything seems urgent to me all the time.  I have always wanted to be so many different things.  But still, there are very few important things. 

My sincerest hope for you and for me is those few things are found, why you still have the power to search.  Don’t wait. 

something is always wrong

Its not your ability to produce in perfect circumstances that matters. It has never been that, it will never be that. What counts is what you create in imperfection. There is always something wrong. This is why its important to eliminate what distractions we can, because life will supply plenty on its own accord.

There is a myth around time management/life style/money.

The myth is this:

if you had more time, you’d finally do that little thing you’re too afraid to do now.

If you just didn’t have to work 9-5, if you just didn’t have to take care of the kids, or get up so early etc.. those are all real things. They deserve your attention, and they definitely require energy. But to think that if you didn’t have that going on that you would immediately have the discipline to write your screenplay is a siren song.

It has never been true.

This is what people who are too afraid to try now console themselves with.

The dream is somewhere out there, behind an electric fence that only others have the key to. This is a dream killer.

I really believe that whatever you are doing now, is a fair approximation of what you would be doing if everything was “perfect” (even though we have already established that doesn’t exist).

I don’t know about you , but if this is correct, thats bad news lol. I am not living like I would like. I am not creating enough, I am seldom releasing new things into the world, I am most often acting like other people have the keys to my productivity.

This brings me to another myth about getting things done. This is the myth:

that you, a human, can remove all impurities.

At the end of the blog I’m going to share a song that I wrote.

10

fucking

years

ago.

Its a recording I did recently in one take on my couch.

I’m sharing it because its pretty and as a reminder to myself of how wastful and arrogant it is to sit on all your little golden eggs. Simultaneously worshipping them and also terrified to let others see them out of fear of rejection or worse, fear of being seen as average.

Now I do love a long creative process, I believe in it. Like Wine, or kimchi, some projects need years. But most of the projects I haven’t released were because I was afraid. There was something off in the vocals. This lyric could have been better. That chord was buzzy. This friend in my head that is judgmental would think me pretentious. All these circle shaped thoughts, are me thinking that its possible to remove all the imperfections. This is once again a lie.

You can never scrub the floor enough.

You should try hard to make them look good. You should be skilled in that.

But at the end of the day floors are made for walking on.

Your art, whatever it is, is dead until it hits the ears and eyes of others.

If you feel burdened, its because you have held on to too many things. Once you release a project, its funny how quickly you feel a disconnection from the work. I love that feeling. But I am haunted by every song or joke or business idea I was too scared to release because my pride wouldn’t let me accept that something is always wrong, and I have to have humility enough to recognize that.

Enjoy this old song, and let it serve as a reminder that you can still make things that matter to both you and others even if they are not perfect.

judgement muscle

The other day, I was at an open mic. Guy on stage was performing and boy did it suck. I don’t mean maybe this joke didn’t land but heres a new one coming, i mean start to finish, 5 minutes of boring sympathetic embarrassment pain in a silent room. There is no comic who hasn’t lived through that, but watching it never gets easier. As I was sitting there, I sent a text to my friend next to me “hey, what the fuck is this”.

He replied “I saw this guy crush at a club with these same jokes recently.”

It gave me a lot to think about. Its not news to me that comedy is subjective, I’ve never been more aware of that in my entire life. Comedy in new york is the weirdest mix of great ideas, good ideas, and hot snakes in the toilet turds.

But I guess what struck me is that I can choose how I react to someone else’s perceived failure. If you do comedy, its probably because you care. If watching someone do poorly or be mediocre bothers you, its probably because you care. But caring too much about things you can’t control is a form of useless judgement.

The thing I’ve realized is I judge others with the intensity that I judge myself. So in some weird cosmic way, the way to be less critical of myself is to be less critical of others.

Judgement is a muscle, and the more I use it the stronger it grows. Its not wrong to make distinctions. Having discriminating taste, having high standards, all of that is good. But I’m realizing that in times when I see someone else suck, or lets face it every time I see myself suck, I can simply choose to take a less impassioned approach. As if its happening to someone else.

Why does this matter? Its matters because when you are judging, you are not doing anything else. You are not problem solving, you are not editing, you are not asking questions. To judge something, yourself or others is to be stuck in the past. Judging is to continue to react to an old story.

What I am trying to practice now when I see something I don’t like in others or in myself, is I treat it like a conversation at a party that I am bored by or a food that a friend likes but doesn’t appeal to me.

This week I did two mics. One I had a great set at, felt funny and other comics were nice to me. The other mic, I felt like an old fraud. Like I couldn’t staple to jokes together and everyone I have ever met knows how intrinsically bad I am but are too nice to say.

The funny thing, in both sets I’m sure I made mistakes. In both sets I ad libbed stuff that in the playback sounds superfluous in my ears. In both sets I probably had some that liked what I was doing and others who didn’t care for it. But me, with my extreme outcome oriented brain left one feeling like a hero and the other feeling like sidewalk gum.

I do comedy because I need to. I have something to say, I don’t know why I cant just shut up. Life would be easier if I could. I think a lot of people in my life would be happier if I didn’t, but I know I wouldn’t. So thats why I am here. Writing my little jokes, trying to be nice to people, trying to be diligent. In some way I am always half embarrassed to do comedy. Feels like being a web cam model or a magician who’s tricks don’t always turn out.

I love making a room full of people feel good. There is no bad day that crushing a set cant make a good day.

But most of the time that feeling isn’t there. Much of the time it feels like putting one wrinkly dollar bills into a picky vending machine. But the good days make the bad days invisible.

Growing up religious, I’ve heard the bible used to justify everything good and bad. Something many a religious asshole says when they get caught being an asshole is “judge not lest you be judged”. Its douchebag 101.

I don’t think that having no opinions is healthy. I guess the answer is to have your standards and opinions, but you don’t have to let them dictate how you feel. About others or yourself. I think ceviche is disgusting. But I don’t need to dwell on you eating it or that one time I tried. I can just order something else.

barking up the right tree

Happy New Year friend. Whoever you are, I hope you give yourself a chance to separate from the old dread old and embrace the new. I hope that for myself as well.

I rang in the new year sick as fuck. Covid, flu, who knows. I’ve been isolating so hasn’t mattered, plus testing lines are crazy long.

Anytime I get sick, I go on a psychedelic journey, but like, if psychedelics were designed by someone who hated you. When you do acid, they say it fills your brain with serotonin and helps you see connections between things in your life.

When I’m sick, its opposite acid. I dig up every choice I have ever made, every thought I’ve ever thought. I try hard to block it out, to sleep, watch netflix, but its tough. Its like trying to sleep late in a room with no blinds.

I don’t know if this is normal or common or healthy, I just know it is.

Its funny to not be drinking, but wake up on new years feeling hungover and thoughtful.

Mostly what I feel this morning is grateful. I’m grateful to not be as sick, but also to get some release from that end of the year dread. I think big markers of time put pressure on the human brain. I want to do this or that by the end of the year, or be this or that. The implication is simple: if I don’t, I failed.

Today I am reflecting on how i use my energy. How I decide what things to obsess on what to let go. I think I could use some adjustment in this field.

Recently, I had a bad guest at my air bnb. They claimed they heard a gun shot in my neighborhood and wanted a full refund and when they didn’t get that they left a 1 star review. I tried to get the review taken down because it violates multiple review standards but was denied.

My normal instinct in a moment like this is to go kamikaze. I feel i have been wronged, so I will spend any amount of time to fight and get what I think is mine.

This is a weird part of me. The rest of my life, I’m a painfully easy going person. So why this weird turn when things don’t go well or when i feel like I am wronged?

I don’t know. I’m guessing its because I think I’m nice, so I deserve to be treated well. But what I’m realizing is this obsession with getting what you deserve or whatever is often a trap, and your efforts would be better spent elsewhere.

I was on the phone with Air bnb when i got the bad news of this review, and I could feel that obsession rising. Then I had a different thought: what if I took all this steam and did something good for me instead of fighting a losing battle?

i have never cross posted my listings on VRBO, which would over time lead to more money and an increase in my business.

What if every time I am getting drawn into a losing battle, I could retain my fighting spirit but choose the theater of war so to speak?

This year what I hope for more than anything is to not let myself fall into little quick sands like this.

All of this, no surprise, comes back to the wisdom I have found in the writing of Steven Pressfield. When we run from our true work, the worst possible outcomes bloom. When we sit down to do our work however, power concentrates around us.

Cohen and goal setting

I love artist stories. Legends about the trials people went through to bring their art into the world. One of my favorite is Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah. To clarify, what I don’t want to hear is more college acapella groups cover it. Snobbery aside, we all know the song is beautiful but to me the back story makes it even more so.

Cohen was one of the best poets in Canada, for whatever thats worth. He knew he wanted more success and so he started writing songs… to make money..lol. I wouldn’t have believed this I didn’t read his biogrophy. He knew he had a talent, and he knew his talent had reached its zenith in the confines of poetry so he expanded.

Even early on his songs were artistically successful, people took him serious, he had a record deal etc.. but like many careers do, his faltered. Cohen recounts how a guy at his label said to him “Leonard, we know you’re great, we just don’t know if you’re any good”.

As he gathered songs for what would be his album, Various Positions, Cohen had this song Hallelujah. To Cohen, the hallelujah is when you have cried and wept and worked and come to an end of yourself and you are alone in front of the mystery and all you can do is accept it.

Like all big ideas, this one was difficult to capture. There is a famous story of how incredible his re-writing process was. He would fill an entire composition notebook by hand with versions of the song. He wrote over 100 verses.

At the end of this Herculean effort, his label told him not only was it not good enough to be the single, that it shouldn’t be on the album.

Obviously, time and culture sided with Cohen and the song became what some consider the greatest of all time.

That mental image of him filling a notebook has been staying with me lately. I’ve filled countless notebooks, but I’m not sure if I have ever taken one idea, and polished it with that kind of brutal self effacing effort.

I just turned 38, and the year is ending, and times like this make me thoughtful.

Younger Joseph would rush to form outlandish goals, and knowing my need to prove myself, would get pretty goddamn close to many of them.

Older me has a slightly more nuanced approach.

Today I’m thinking about when is anything ever enough?

If I make the goal to be good at judo, how could I ever know? Good at what? The entire sport? Best in the world? better than I was yesterday? Setting goals are hard for one lightning rod point:

people don’t think hard enough about how deep they want to go.

My current belief is there is a spectrum of goals based on how much you care.

there is the hate fuck on one end, and the eternal on the other.

What do I mean by hate fucking a goal? One of the first reactions to the pain of realizing you are incompetent is to try and become super-competent. For me in my twenties, realizing I sucked at Danish, I told myself I was going to become impressively good at Danish. And I did. Then I found myself in this fancy course learning Danish for college study writing essays about climate change in Danish and feeling fucking miserable because I went too deep. That was more of a hate fuck goal.

On the other end is pursuits that I call the eternal. Things that are a lifelong study. For me, that manifests in creating things with words in any format, martial arts, performance, businesses, etc.. lots of stuff.

This is the kind of goal awareness that lets you have the fortitude to push through setbacks. Cohen could finish a masterpiece like that because no matter what anyone said, writing was who he was, it was his holy of holies, and it might not be ready today but the forget never cooled. You can’t stop a person like that.

Whoever you are, there is some kind of eternity that you are supposed to pursue, there is some kind of notebook that needs your hand and ink and words.

As I’m setting goals for myself, I’m trying to remember that not everything can be equally important. Thats the world view of the fool. The wise make heuristics of value and live that way.

I hope you hate fuck what you need to get done and find those obsessions that deserve your all.

Redundancy

One of the reasons I know I need to reduce my doom scrolling is simple: 

It’s not that I’m consuming too much new info, but worse, I’m consuming the same info over and over.

If it were positive insightful things that would be great, most of it is not. As an artist, as an amateur comic trying to be a pro, redundancy wounds my mind. It always has and I suspect always will. If you are a creative type you probably already know what I mean.

It’s one thing to have a favorite song, comfort movie etc.. It’s another thing to willingly allow your brain to stand in the river of gray flavorless unoriginal noise that constitutes most of social media. Worn out memes, movie quotes, tik tok trends that need to fade into the sunset, or even worse negative redundancy. People making the same vicious arguments, dunking over straw men and owning this or that group. 

That shit is making you stupid. 

I’m not the joke police, I’m very far from the most original thinker in any room, and I know for a fact that I have bad taste in movies. But if you are in the business of idea generation, you have to protect your self. Novel for novelty’s sake is not the way, but commonality for commonality’s sake isn’t either.

Here are some examples of things we all say on social media that are so well worn that they are meaningless: 

It is what it is 

I said what I said

God Joseph Coker is so sexy 

Etc 

You get it.

Any time I hit a wall with writing, I realize it’s probably because I’ve fallen into a bad habit of allowing my media intake to be redundant well worn bullshit. And my writing time to shrink.  It’s the worse possible trade. It’s like skipping the gym so you can focus on smoking. 

Your mind is a mine.  The best things are seldom at the top. And the more you dig the more you have to dig.This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be spontaneous. I love stream of consciousness in most art forms.

But it’s one thing to be pulling on that mysterious rope that all writers do, and it’s another thing to lazily bang blocks together and wonder why the world hasn’t anointed us as king. I think there is room for cheesy, and every major act has some. But using it on purpose, as a creative decision is not the same thing as doing it because you refuse to slow down and draw from a deeper well.

I have always and will always love Bruce Springsteen. To me he is a master at growing flowers in mental deserts. Cars, driving, angst, family tension, nothing that original there.  But he has this ability to lead with the common, then apply one pure drop of pure unique beauty to it like putting perfume on a horse.  My constant example is his song Independence Day.  If you’ve never heard it, it’s about the tension of a father son relationship amplified by the trappings of a small town.

“There’s a darkness in this town that got the best of us

There’s a darkness in this house that got us too”

So far, yawn

“But they can’t touch me now

And you can’t touch me now

They ain’t gonna do to me

What I watched them do to you”

That one line, in my ear weighs 100 pounds.  It’s a universal truth. We see the hurt our parents suffer, and sometimes inflict, and we think about what we will allow and not allow.

They ain’t gonna do to me what I watched them do to you. 

I’ve always read that writers should read, and I try to consume books though I mostly listen to them these days. I think part of the reason is that when you experience a master, what you are really experiencing is someone who took great pains to take the elevator all the way down, so one day maybe, they could take the crowd all the way up.

Part of the hero’s journey is bringing back a treasure for the community. The thing about treasure is people can always tell when it’s fake. 

Part of my job as a comic isn’t to only write great jokes. 

It’s to only settle for great ones. 

It may not be today, shit it may not be this decade, but I am here to turn on my little flash light and hammer til I see a glint in the dark.

mastery and skill

Wherever you’re going, especially anywhere good, life is going to squeeze you.

A good life is usually one that requires more from you over time. The good news is your capacity grows alongside the inflation of demand.

I’ve done Jiu Jitsu for a long time now, but I’ve recently hit my first year in judo. It’s funny to be a big brother in one class, then go off the mats, change from my old brown belt to my green belt and now I’m little brother again.

There is no one more wasteful than a beginner. Every class is a doubling of their working knowledge, and without a good guide, it’s easy to draw wrong conclusions, take things personal, get discouraged, develop bad habits, vendettas, and fall prey to all manner of scams.

It’s a vulnerable thing to learn.

It’s an acknowledgement of sorts. I’m missing something that I want and I need your help.

I am eternally an impatient man. I remember working in a church in Denmark struggling to learn Danish. I would see a blue haired old Dane, and I remember looking at the back of their head and realizing the thing I am learning painfully slow was an effortless expression for them. I wish I could have their ability like buying an old tv. Of course that not how it works, but that pipe dream is part of it. There’s no sweeter dream than an effortless acquisition.

Today I’m thinking about how as life presses you, as you change, you start to recognize gaps. Skills you need that you are missing. God knows I have mine. Some have dogged me my whole life.

Routines, having difficult conversations/advocating for myself, saving money, organization etc Some skill gaps are things I’m just now seeing. Taking writing more serious, stop being modest when it’s out of fear of rejection, the value of organizing small things, etc.

But the good news is that the definition of a skill, at least to me, is a behavior that I can duplicate. I can do fuck all about the reality that you are 10 years younger than me or more explosive, but I can do hundreds of hours of repetitions and research and study on how to stop or limit the danger of your best throw. It’s a waste of time for me to worry that another comic is more likable or has some kind of star quality about them when I have plenty of dead spots in my jokes that need editing.

Skill is hard earned and never an accident. Not so much in combat sports, but in subjective art forms, anybody can do good once. I’ve seen people get up for the first time in their life and murder on stage. But skill is being able to do it every time, more or less, under various circumstances that are not favorable both internally and externally.

How funny are you when you are under money pressure? How funny are you when you feel like it’s never going to work out? How funny are you after a room full of people made it clear that they don’t think you’re funny at all and it’s the day after and you’re still upset about it?

Skill is the difference between getting laid and getting married to someone you truly love. Anybody can get laid one time, that’s just how the world is. But to get married takes a lot of steps. And then once you do get married, there’s a whole separate conversation of what it means to live with this other person. Their demands, their interruptions, etc..

Every person I know that is master at something has incredibly high standards that at times can suck the joy out of being good. It’s wild to see. I guess the bad news is that the gap you feel between what you have and what you want is never going to go away. As you get better and more talented it will shrink, but it will most likely never close. Part of mastery is learning to live with imperfection.

the fear of perceived vice

I can’t think of a single meaningful thing that I’ve ever tried to do or be, that wasn’t dogged by some kind of well intentioned but unhelpful fear. For me, one of the most common is what I call the fear of perceived vice.

Here is what I mean: when I was in my early 20’s, for no reason, I became obsessed with blues harmonica. Much to my then wife’s chagrin, it was all I listened to or thought about. I was playing 2-3 hours a day, googling how to customize harmonicas like pro’s. I remember I used to walk to the train stop where we lived in Karlslunde, and i would listen to Sonny Boy Williamson II the whole way and play my harp, trying to glean every little detail from the early blues masters. I was a maniac about it.

In retrospect, what I should have done, is just start a blues band. Fully embrace the obsession.

Instead, it just kinda bled into all the other stuff I did. I fronted a singer songwriter/rock band at the time so I would play harp with them, I would play in church worship services sometimes, etc.

But I think I avoided the band idea because even though I was pretty good, I knew I wasn’t some kind of blues harp god. I knew my voice was more clean toned and not the growly old man voice we normally hear in blues. I didn’t want other people to think that I thought I was better than I was.

The fear of what I thought I would look like ultimately made me look like nothing.

Because I was so worried about looking like I had some kind of vice, I missed an entire opportunity to develop a skill and a virtue.

This has never truly gone away for me.

Lately, when I am in a comedy writing funk, some times I will play my little travel guitar and walk around the house. I will tell my jokes over the guitar. Something about it seems to make the boredom of brainstorming a little more fun. I was telling this to a fellow comic and they asked if had ever considered playing guitar on stage in a comedy context. I told them I had, but I was worried that people would perceive it as lazy or whatever. I don’t really want to be a guitar comic, there are plenty of shitty ones and only a few good ones, but the fact that I think I can’t even try is just garden variety fear of vice bullshit.

Even now, like right fucking now, as I write this, part of me wants to throw it away. I just wrote a blog Sunday, is that too much? Something about what I am writing sounds like advice, who the fuck am I to offer it? I don’t want you the reader to think I am guilty of ________________.

All this type of thinking, is the air bag of insecurity deploying before there’s actually is any impact.

The truth is, I have people in my life that no matter what, are just thoroughly unimpressed with me. They think I am bad or so much worse, corny haha.

Other people (very few) treat me like I am some kind of undiscovered genius who is a day away from stardom at any point.

The probability that either is completely accurate is very low. Like you, I’m probably a little bit of a genius, and. I am without a doubt a little bit corny or hack or whatever worst case scenario feeling.

It’s fascinating to me to see how simply a fear is outlined on paper, how silly it looks, but I don’t take them lightly because I know I have let them shut me down in the past.

What a waste of time to let the fear of looking like some specific type of sinner stops you from your own miracle.

Give what you have to give, let others worry about what it looks like.

Alternate Endings

When I was 5, my family took a trip to Hawaii. I was very excited. I had no idea what the fuck Hawaii was but everyone else seemed pumped so I was too.

My dad, a life long karate teacher was going to be doing some training there with the figure head of the school, Shihan Hirano. Shihan Hirano was an old Japanese karate badass that had moved to Hawaii in the 60’s and built a karate empire that eventually reached all the way to my little corner of the south. I was looking forward to meeting him.

In my kid mind, I just assumed that we were going to hike up the side profile of a mountain, and of course Shihan would be in a little hut, wearing long robes that covered his hands, long white beard, and he would be approximiately 1000 years old and waiting on us.

Imagine my shock when this important meeting happened not on cartoon Mt. Fuji but in a shopping mall karate school, and they hadn’t even turned the lights on.

I met Shihan, he was not wearing robes and he wasn’t ancient. He was probably in his late 40’s, big smile, little bit of a paunch, and most jarring of all, was wearing shorts and flip flops like a regular guy.

I think this was the first time in my life that I recall the reality of a thing and the preconception of a thing not aligning.

I wish there was a word for this phenomena. Maybe there is, in one of those dorky word a day vocab builder books.

To me, this type of mild shock is so ingrained into life, it must have been there from the beginning of time. The first creatures that crawled out of the ocean were probably shocked by land. They probably just expected more ocean, or predators, or in their wildest dreams, other creatures like them with big ole tittles.

As common as this is, as many times as I have experienced this, it is never not a surprise. As I have gotten older, I try to train my mind to anticipate it, but its harder than it sounds.

The future is a conversation happening nearby that you can only hear through the wall.

One of my favorite jokes is from a long time friend and comics Hunter Gardener. Hunter has a super chipper tone of voice and he does a bit about being invited to hear a showcase of local bands. in the bit he says “so it turns out..most bands..are bad”

Its such a silly and simple line but I think about this all the time.

Many times the inconsistencies between what we thought and what we became or what we thought and what we experience are bad.

But they aren’t always. The bad ones are the ones that are easiest to understand.

The trickiest ones are the times where its not bad, its just a different form of good, but not the good you wanted.

How many versions of you got lost along the way in the pursuit of who you are now.

I don’t know if I believe in the multiverse theory, because I think life, and the billions of decisions included in it is its own multiverse.

There is a version of me that grew up with both parents, took over the family karate school, and lived a very stable if not way less interesting life. Theres. a version of me that is still married, still in the church, still leading worship. There is a version of me that made the national team in karate and saw the world competing. There is. aversion of me that moved back to Denmark to pursue a woman and it worked or it imploded, there is a me that wrote the right song at the right time for the right producer and everything changed, there is a me with different brain wiring that would be happy to live and die in Charleston and feel grateful for everything I had there and never want more than the love I had.

And now, most improbable of all, there is a version of me living in nyc, pursuing comedy albeit haphazardly.

What does it mean, what will it mean, who is watching, and how will I feel when I get where I am going.

Age and time and loss has a corraling affect. It bottlenecks you. Sometimes thats wisdom. Sometimes thats dissapointment in a wig.

The older you get, life squeezes you. the gravity is harder and the air is thinner. It gets harder to remember why you came in the first place.

What do you want?

How do you want to feel when you get it?

What feelings do you hope to take with you forever?

I think I came here to learn the answers to these self imposed questions.

Sadness/Math

I have never in my life had an affinity for math. When I was in second grade, I got so frustrated trying to learn fractions that I cried, and i haven’t stopped crying since. Doesn’t help that I was educated in a state in which every school I ever went to had trailer classrooms. Kinda obvious that education was not a big budget item for SC, so maybe I wasn’t the only one bad at math.

If I dig deeper into it, why I have always been at odds with it, its because I’m bad at objectivity. I have always not understood concrete yes or no things. This theme has shown up in my life to this day.

Growing up in karate, there are two major things all karate students learn besides basics, and that is kata and kumite. Kumite is sparring. It’s messy, tricky, and very real. The consequences are immediate, but you can make mistakes and recover.

Kata is the preset forms. It’s like ice skating. I don’t mean that as a joke, ice skating is hard as hell. You have to land exactly in stances, you have to move through the pattern exactly. If you make even a small mistake, you lose.

Moving to Denmark, I soon learned how bad I was at bureaucracy. Everything in Denmark is so well organized, compared to the south at least. There is a line for everything, a process, a form you have to fill out. If you do the right steps you’re golden, but if not, you are absolutely mercilessly fucked. I think I struggled with that kind of objectivity not unlike any young person does.

Some part of me runs from the concrete.

The way I have gotten by in life is through the intangibles. Maybe it’s my spiritual side, maybe its invisible social skills, maybe its ADHD on its best behavior, I cant say.

I don’t think about this much, but the other day I had a memory come back to me of leading worship in Denmark.

Long time readers will know I have a complicated relationship to my religious past, but it wasn’t all gloom or negatives. I think I was able to find parts of me in the church.

I remember leading worship on a weekend evening service. The lights were dimmed, it was mostly in English since it was an international service. I had picked out my songs completely by feel. And I lead the service that way. Then something happened.

At some point the music kinda broke loose, the spirit in the room changed, and it felt like we were not just strangers standing on hard floors with our eyes closed, but we entered this peace. This magic bubble in which everything important was closer somehow. That happened to me or dare I say through me many times back then. I would just catch a wave.

I have felt a similar wave elsewhere. When I was a songwriter, I always knew I had this one thing: if you put me in a room, no matter how rowdy, I could make people hear me. You might not like what I’m doing, but I know how to focus the space.

I felt this when I was teaching kids. There were just some days where despite my talent, I was teaching past myself and creating a moment.

And every now and then, I know how to liberate the room.

Even now in comedy, that is the high I have moved to New York to chase. That feeling of changing the environment with the power of your ideas. Of making near things far and far things near. That to me is art.

The problem with this kind of etherial temparment, is its is a jealous mistress. You have to spend time in your gift, with your gift, and every step you walk away it walks away too.

Even worse, you have to live in the muddy tracks of every day life. Some times I feel like my life is a civil war between trying to make enough money to be a success, and trying to make enough art to give my life meaning. When people quit art to make money and have security I completely understand. And when people give up on financial solvency to be an artist, I completely understand that too. To borrow the bible, you can’t serve both God and mammon.

The dark side of having soft skills in a hard world, is that you are probably very sensitive. When you are the right type of sensitive, you are often picking up signals that can overwhelm you and are hard to interpret. Maybe its from your own deep unknowable heart, maybe its from the environment. You are a little lovely radio, toggling between channels. Sensitive people suffer in a unique way that I don’t think I really put my finger on til I moved.

Ironically, this is where math can be the antidote to the overwhelm.

Part of the overwhelm for sensitive types and artists is the lack of objectivity. It’s very hard to know what is real sometimes in life. My feelings are bigger than my metrics.

This is why, in hard times, I do what I am doing now. I start taking measurements of how things are going.

I write down my goals sure, but beyond that, I go deep. I write down how many throws I practice in judo, I write down daily how many dollars my business is making, I write down how many mics I have gone, I write down how many jokes I have that I feel are working for me.

Data data data

Somehow, this knowledge gives my heart a budget overview. It calms the deep seated fear of not progressing, it makes me grateful, and it shows me that I may just be a few reps or a couple thousands reps from something I really want.

If you are anything like me, and are having a confusing year, I encourage you to try this. Make a scoreboard of everything you care about. Sometimes you forgot about the odds you have been up against. Some times you are closer than you think. But its very hard to know without those numbers.

Keep your radio tuned, but keep your numbers too.

jonah and the whale

The story of Jonah in the old testament is one of the strangest. 

A prophet is told to go warn the city of Nineveh so it doesn’t get destroyed. Instead of going, he runs the complete other way.  He boards a ship to sail as far away as possible.  A storm arises and threatens the ship, the superstitious sailors know that someone has brought a curse on them.  Emo Jonah knows its him, volunteers to be thrown overboard to appease the waves.  They toss him overboard, and he gets swallowed by a great fish, a whale. 

He spends three days and nights in the dark of this beast.  He cries out to god, the whale spews him out onto a beach shore, and finally Jonah relents and goes to the city to save them from desctruction.

Lately, feels like New York kinda ate me.  Being here is right, I know that, but still.  I feel like I am only now crawling out of the asshole of this monolith and remembering myself and my reasons.

Right here, right now, confidence as a concept to me seems like an optical illusion. It is all a game of comparison of you to the object.

I am bigger than the task, the task is bigger than me.  I am smarter than the problem, the problem is a maze.  I am strong enough to climb, the wall is too smooth or steep.  

Jonah is to me the archetype of the artist. He has this reluctant connection to something greater than himself, that is for the benefit of others.  Jonah is for most of the story, an unhappy person. Unmotivated, judgemental, suicidal, kind of a dick. But even people with all those dark clouds around them are still called.

The one thing I’m contemplating lately, and probably forever is that if you feel compelled to do something, you will be a miserable self pitying fuck until you do.  You will live a shadow version of yourself, filled with misadventure instead of adventure. I’m convinced that people that are constantly in trouble, conflict, or other noise are actually brilliant minds, but using their own light to shine into their eyes instead of into the dark path ahead. I have known those types and I have been those types.

Nothing taste as good as skinny feels or as I tweeted to zero likes once “nothing taste as good as the pain pill I discovered in my wallet feels”.

I guess at some point, you have to turn your face towards the city, you have to ask for help in the dark, you have to stand on a beach humiliated and covered in seaweed, 1000 miles from where you could have been.  But the only virtue is this: starting again.  And again. And again.  100 times, 1000 times.  We are all birds in a high wind, there is no straight line, there is only a direction. 

Whether you are sleeping in the stomach or in the skyline, I wish you all the new starts. 

examine your fears

Yesterday, while reading a book, I realized something about myself that has alluded me for years.

In the moment, I was reading a new wonderful book Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price. And I was thinking about why I haven’t lifted weights in two years. For a grappler, lifting is pretty much mandatory. If you have even the slightest competition desire, you have to, and as we age lifting is a great way to keep the body strong and injury free.

But man, I just. don’t. wanna.

Two years ago when I was prepping for Masters Worlds, I got a strength coach and it was amazing. I loved seeing my body respond to the training, and I was proud at the fear I overcame from my back injuries to lift.

But the underside of that training was a lot of misery. And not events typical misery of exercise. It wasn’t being sore, or having to be alone, or eat different, this is what I hated the most: the moment I would be pushing myself in a lift, there was a voice in my head that said “you don’t like this, you’re not really interested in struggle”. I’m voicing the fear poorly, but it wasn’t a passing “oh I’m not good at this”, it was a supreme court decision on the fact that I’m a soft boiled pussy of a man. A lazy man, that has always been lazy, will never get his head above the bar of success, and his future kids will inherit this frailty.

I know that sounds dramatic, but I swear thats how I felt and feel.

So to recap, the mystery of why ole Joey Cokes doesn’t go to Planet Fitness has been officially solved haha.

But seriously, reading this book has made me face one of my own deepest fears, that I am lazy. In a country who’s ethos was shaped by Pilgrims, being lazy is literally considered a sin. Sloth. And even though I do think laziness does exist, I think that much of laziness is not moral failing, it is context that you haven’t addressed.

For example, when I am beating someone’s ass in grappling, I never for one second think “this is because I am generationally determined to win, I am mentally tougher than them, and I have the heart of a lion”. Usually my thought is “ah, he doesn’t realize that he’s making a mistake with his arm positioning” etc.

But when I lose, its the other way. Its the summary judgement. Because in some way, it is connected to this deep seated fear of being lazy.

The irony is that the fear of being lazy or seeming lazy has greatly affected my productivity.

I still haven’t signed up for the gym. I know for a fact there are some things in comedy I haven’t done because my fear of being lazy is adding complications to my calculations.

Its so fucking stupid when you write it out.

But in my heart it makes so much sense.

For me, the way forward is:

1. recognizing something that the author points out: sometimes when you are being “lazy”, it isn’t because you don’t care, its because you care so much that it paralyzes you. You must break the task down, the more it matters.

2. understanding that doing nothing is an acceptable use of time.

3. sometimes being “lazy” is you misunderstanding yourself and your context.

All the worlds I am worship at the altar of grinding. Air BnB, comedy, grappling. Everyone talks about this shit non stop. But you wouldn’t call a horse lazy if it couldn’t run 18 hours a day through a desert. You would recognize that every animal has a limit to what its muscle and mind can endure before it needs rest and comfort. You are no worse and no better.

So examine your fears, if you can, if you have the time, you may be delightfully shocked by what you learn about yourself.