don't waste your pain

The nature of life is brutality and beauty pushing against each other like a sumo wrestling match.

This past weekend in my business, I had some shit hit the skids in the way that was both frustrating and embarrassing. I take a lot of pride in what I do, I care about every detail. so when things fall apart, I feel like I am falling apart too.

Part of my work is trying to make people happy. As a comic, as an air bnb host, its a game of making other people’s brains feel good in exchange for laughs or money or 5 stars reviews. Its very subjective. Sometimes in that process, things just go bad. Sometimes I make mistakes. Sometimes people just simply don’t like you.

When things go poorly, shit even when they don’t go perfect, we experience pain signals. Pain is a communication from your body, your mind, the world, that something significant is happening.

The interesting thing is that the significance is open to interpretation. Like a sad opera sang in a foreign language. We get some of the theme, but we never really know what it means.

After living through a lot of shit lately, one of the things I’m reminded of is to not waste your pain.

Don’t let the hurt go by without letting it help. Not everything can be reframed, and I despise when people tell me to look on the bright side. But, just like recycling, most things can be reconstituted, reused, repurposed.

So air bnb guest who tore me a new one about the house not being clean, I can use this. Relationships that go weird, I can use this. Reactions I did or didn’t get, I can use this.

The amateur artist needs these types of reactions to motivate themselves to do anything. That is not what I am prescribing. But a pro-chef knows that even bones have a value. Marrow, stocks, the most useless by-products of our hurt can serve our future.

I have never liked Cold Play. Not when they were hot, and not really now that everyone likes to use them as an example of generic white taste. But that song Lights has a line that I think about regularly.

“tears stream/ down your face/ I promise you I’ll learn from my mistakes”

That to me is the exact formula I am speaking on.

____+_____= I promise you I’ll learn from my mistakes

When I think about women I have loved, when I think about young Joseph writing songs but never getting what he wanted, when I think about circumstances that seemed so promising that disintegrated, and the even the thought of them is a pain signal to never try again, I think to myself that line. I PROMISE. I promise I will learn. I will do better, I will not waste your pain, I will not waste my own.

Don’t tell anyone I quoted Cold Play in my blog or they won’t book me on their dumpster show thx

internet self defense

The other day, somebody said something shitty to me on the internet.

I’m pretty sure this person secretly wants to do comedy, and those are the people who act the weirdest around comics. They either overdo it, or they try to tear you down. My guess is that me doing something I like reminds them that they could too, and instead of trying, they need me to be beneath them so I don’t loom over them. Or maybe they just fucking hate me, their reasons are unknowable to me.

Its times like that I encounter that familiar moment where you are weighing the worth of responding. I love roast comedy, and I have plenty to say, and like most comics I can tell what you don’t like about yourself in seconds.

But I’ve been thinking a lot about the benefit of conflict. When is it worth it, and when it is not. What I have decided is that it is almost never worth it to defend yourself.

If you know anything about martial arts, you know that their is an entire industry based on self defense, and most of it is hot ineffective dangerous garbage.

Thats kind of how I feel about digital conflict.

Its funny to me, if I dropped my phone in the river that day this person said some silly shit to me, I would have never known. The hurt is only real if I decide to pick it up and interact with. And in the right light, its clear that it says more about their hurt and what they think of themselves than it does anything about me.

But if you are like me, you want to be liked, and you want to be loved, and you want to be adored for your genius. What is the opposite of all these things? Its being misunderstood.

But misunderstanding is a two man job. If I don’t want to play, then you have a problem, we don’t have anything.

Making yourself understood is a tough business, and for artists I don’t even know if its worth it.

Making art and being understood are not the same thing, not even close.

Every artist that you like is someone who was willing to be ridiculed. They did not set out to make themselves targets or to target anyone, they were just honoring some inner directive, that is holy to me.

I think about Prince being super short and dressing like a vampire going to prom, and looking fucking amazing the whole time. What did it cost him to dress like that, he must have known that most of what he was presenting would not be liked by most, but then in time would be loved by all. Beautiful

So much of internet culture is about conflict. I just got over being sick, and I spent most of my time in a nest of trash and blankets watching an endless scroll of stupid videos online. I talked about this in a previous post, about taking a versus fast. About not watching anything that is about people getting PWNED or DEMOLISHED or whatever the fuck. But the truth is our brains are wired to look for stimulation, and fighting is stimulating.

Its not wrong to fight, but fighting for the wrong thing is shameful. Also long term, when I die, I don’t want to go to the grave knowing that when I had the choice, I chose to lash out over nothing. And I promise you, even though it doesn’t feel like it to me, the internet is nothing. All that matters is you and me.

Every man has a sewer that runs through the city of his heart, its a necessary function of a metropolis. But if the sewer runs lose it will poison and ruin everything. Its not wrong to have that in you, its only wrong when you use it against people.

I’m not a saint, I take almost sexual delight in dunking on shit heads at comedy shows who try to ruin the show, but I’m willing to bet that 99% of conflict is distraction. You are trying so hard to not look at yourself and change, that you are willing to fight anyone and everyone.

To whatever degree you succumb to this, you will never be happy. Fight your own wars, build your own kingdom. You don’t have to make anyone small so you can be big. The truth is we are all small and we are all infinite in our own way.

Certainty

Imagine yourself at a baseball game, or at Coney Island, any context where eating a hotdog in 2021 isn’t weird.

Now imagine, the hot dog never ends. You keep chewing, and it never diminishes, just bread and ketchup forever. At some point, the simple pleasure would turn to curiosity, then horror or boredom. Now you can’t even stand hot dogs.

I’m in NYC starting the long process of doing open mics, meeting people, constantly questioning myself, and trying to slowly build what could be considered a career.

Its exciting and its not easy.

I worked really hard to get here. I have bided my time for 8 years. As I’ve recounted plenty of times on this blog, I used to be a musician. The original plan ten years ago was to throw everything into music. Then Berklee fell through because of student loans and then touring died before it started because I can’t stand not being self sufficient.

So I worked and waited, and built an escape plan. Now I am here, and like all plot turns, the goal is never quite what you thought it would be.

The other night, I was driving home from what felt like my best mic set to date. It was 95% comics, but there was a small crowd of normal people, and I made them laugh most of the time. It felt so good.

I’ve been asking myself a lot of why questions in New York. At first it was too much, then I had some big sea changes in my life and now I don’t quite feel so manic and racing. I’m settling into whatever the fuck this season of life is about to be.

But driving home from what felt like a bright spot, a very simple thought stuck with me.

Things ending is what makes things good.

As certainty addicted beings in an uncertain world, the concept of forever is our heroin.

Its the highest high our minds can conceive of. So we attach it to important things. We vow it at weddings, we promise it to the faithful in heaven, we scare people with it with hell or punishments.

The only certainty is no certainty.

This is sad to me some days, and other days beautiful. I wrote a long time ago that everyone is moving away from you. Some time, some day. You have no choice but to learn to be ok with yourself and be grateful for the cameo people play.

But once you accept this premise, it can be freeing.

Permanence is like water. The right amount is fundamental to being alive, too much makes you drown.

We do have to have some bedrocks. I need to know that I have friends that love me no matter what, I need to have certain unquestioned self concepts like I am more or less a good person, I am strong minded, I am good at things.

But doing better, growing in any direction usually involves accepting chaos. Old folks home are very quiet, kindergartens are fucking chaos. Because everything is new.

I hope that whoever you are, that the end doesn’t scare you, but motivates you to fully release whatever you have to give. I hope that for me too.

holding zero

Like a lot of other dum dums, I participated in the whole AMC GME stock craze. Not a crazy amount, but enough to be excited to watch it go up and down. I was late to the game so I bought a couple shares of AMC, and then like clockwork, it immediately went directly into the toilet. LOL, jokes on me. And before you say its on its way up, cool bro. I waited for it to go up enough that I wouldn’t be mad, sold it, then bought bitcoin instead. Whew. All is well that ends well, or well”ish”.

One of the most uncomfortable feelings I felt during this, is the constant need to research the probability of it going back up. Incessant youtube streams and articles, all built around this singular hope that my little idiot misadventure wouldnt be a waste.

This gave me a lot to think about, and rang a whole string of bells.

When I was religious, I believed in the power of prayer with a capital “P”.

I believed people could be healed and things in life could change if you asked in the right way and often enough. That sounds positive, until you watch a couple desperate prayers go unanswered.

I rememver working in the church in Denmark. There was a woman on staff, and she was kind. Then a terrible day came and she found out that she had cancer. I remember one morning the daily staff prayer was going to be dedicated to praying for her healing.

We gathered in the chapel. She sat on a chair in the middle and we all gently laid our hands on her and took turns praying for God to touch her.

For a reversal of the inevitable, for intervention. Then we said amen, and went to the kitchen area. I was filled with the strangest feeling melancholy. I had fervently prayed, and yet when we concluded, I could feel that it had not happened. If you are reading this as a non Christian you would say of course, but to me at that time it was not so obvious.

That morning, instead of the typical boot black coffee and dry cookies, we had a nice spread of hipster bakery croissants and bread and cheese. Everyone was in high spirits like we had just accomplished something and I just could not understand how they couldn’t hear what I was hearing, which was silence.

Maybe this was the beginning of me feeling the inescapable gravity of the real world. The death of magic. But It wasn’t long before we all gathered again, the same people and many others to attend her funeral.

This was my first Danish funeral. Your first of anything new in a different country will always stand out. The longer you live somewhere, you keep thinking you have plumbed the bottom of the differences but you never do.

We had the service, then we went to the church yard and I saw her headstone, and it was literally a stone, with one side polished flat, with her name and dates carved in. People I knew crying openly.

Later on in life as I fell out of God, one of the biggest reliefs was to not have to believe in things I couldn’t influence or control. One sure route to anxiety and obsession is to try to influence the un-influencable.

But what makes someone hold on? To a shitty stock, or a religious practice that can’t work, or anything?

I think part of the psychology is the sunk cost fallacy.

I heard it explained best by my buddy Jeremy. Say you bought a $100 ticket for a band you were excited to see. Day of the concert, you get invited to a day trip with your favorite friend. Which do you choose? The natural fear is to think “well I don’t want to waste that $100 bucks”.

But the truth is, that $100 dollars is gone. It can never come back, and it doesn’t exist anymore. You have a much simpler choice, go to a free concert, or go on a trip.

When we tease apart the time we have invested in something, it makes it a lot easier to evaluate its true worth.

I see people make this mistake all the time. They are bound to things that are working at cross purposes to their happiness.

I call it holding zero.

And when you are holding zero, its hard to recognize that all your energy, all the things you learned, all the media you consumed, all the prayers you said, all your wishes, were wasted, or at least not fruitful in the way you hoped.

The human instinct is to see that waste and want to redeem it somehow. But somehow the way you redeem something is you let it go. You let it’s loss be the light to a new gain.

Whoever you are, reading this, I hope that whatever zero’s you are holding, whether they be relationships that need to end, thought patterns, or even ill informed money choices, whatever is working against you, I hope you stop trying to save it and build a new thing for yourself. Love y’all.

over learning

I like resolutions and I think its corny to mock them. My love for them is built on a simple two-part understanding: its hard to change, and I’ll take any opportunity to practice it.

If you are anything like me though, this is where the resolutions you dreamed up are starting to hit their first stiff winds. You wanted to learn french, you are going to learn bjj, you are going to read more, whatever virtue you are trying to create starts to wobble in late January.

Discipline is crucial, but to me, the other enemy of change isn’t just laziness.

Its information overload.

We as modern people love courses. We love the concept that we can sit in a room long enough, move our way through a course and then walk out irrevacably changed and clear eyed. This is a fantasy.

To this end, we aim to consume large amounts of info and do it as fast as we can. Guilty as charged.

Last year, I wanted to learn everything I could about Air B&B. I am already skilled at it, but there are huge opportunities to hosts in that industry so I wanted to sharpen the saw.

I started buying courses, watching 5-10 youtube videos a day, making notes…and over time I realized I had made myself miserable.

If you have ever worked in a coffee shop or kitchen you know what its like to get more tickets than you have time. Knowledge is those tickets. They call them orders, you are compelled to finish them. That compulsion leads to stress and the most common thing in the world is to do a half ass job to to quit all together.

In short, you need to develop a new respect for information. Knowledge has often been characterized in art as a flame. I think that is helpful. A flame is at the heart of some of the best experiences a man can have. It can also destroy a forest. To me, the way to fight over learning is simple, with practice.

Practice is the hearth you build around knowledge. It gives it form, it gives it purpose, and it gives it limits. Knowledge without action leads to anxiety. Action without knowledge however, even though a bad idea, can you get you further than the opposite. Whatever you are trying to do different or better this year, try this ratio:

1 part “hmmm thats interesting : 1 part “well here goes..”

As I’m writing this, I am taking a break from reading a book. Its a book about writing short. I came to NYC to get funnier, and one talent all funny new york comics seem to have is they get to the point fast. I’m trash at that. So here I am reading. But as I felt my face tighten from reading beyond my level of practice, I knew I needed to come write, and practice writing short, and keep the 1 to 1 ratio for myself.

Too much knowledge isn’t the enemy, not enough practice is.

Good luck y’all, theres magic in the year for you and me.

heaven and hell are circles

Today I made the move from a Bronx air bnb to my good friend Judy’s apartment where I will be crashing short term til I find a room or cheap apartment.  This place, even though I have only been here twice, is special to me.  I have had remarkable milestones staying in this apartment..  One time I found love, another time I found music again after a long self imposed drought. 

Life is filled with patterns, some happen to us and some we drum out ourselves. Part of intelligence is recognizing the good ones and maintaining them and interrupting the bad ones. Today I’m reminded that heaven and hell are circles. In Dante’s inferno (which I actually read please give me my diploma now), hell is a series of circles that move downward. A series of circles with a direction is a spiral. Spirals are not ambivalent forces, they go up or they go down.

I am at the age where I have seen good things go forever, and I’ve been lucky enough to see some good things come back. There is a repetition to bad habits. A predictable cycle. But good can also move in a circle.

I feel fortunate to be at the third lap around this circle and to stop here for a second and admire this monument of a space. I hope this is an upward spiral but who can say. And I hope whatever good you have seen in the past is a couple turns around from you in your life.

close your eyes

I am in New York, going into the wilderness of a new future. It was very emotional to leave. Lots of people I care about that I have to say goodbye to, lots of things I was never able to quite reach that I have to drop for now too. But today I feel relief.

I am not a meditation guy, I am a restless leg syndrome in human form. But the first day I was here I had a very simple experience that brought me a lot of comfort. I was taking a long shower (which is the only length of shower I am interested). On the trip up here, first by plane then the never ending hand offs of public transport, I felt exposed. I carried about 80 pounds of rolling luggage through the city looking like the prototype of a mark or at least feeling like one. But mostly I felt vulnerable.

As I sat in the shower, the thought came to me “a lot could go wrong here, but a lot could go right”. And for me, today, this week, that is enough.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to notice, but closing your eyes in meditation is a profound thing in and of itself. When we die, things go black. Maybe there is a light after that, maybe the TV just turns off forever. No one can say. But closing your eyes, even for a few seconds is a rehearsal of death. And because of that, it is the great scale on which all decisions can be weighed accurately. Evaluating things in the dark of death makes them make simpler. In times like that, being shitty to people for petty reasons doesn’t sit well. Being afraid to pursue things because you don’t want to humiliate yourself is unforgivable. When you close your eyes you realize that just being able to open them back up is a gift that should never get old for us.

I came to New York because I am curious about myself and the world, and I have to know. I have to know what will happen if I focus and apply myself. What I find out is beyond my control, but the finding out is in my control and thats why I am here. A lot of futures got sacrificed to be here, and I am going to honor them all by bringing my best. Whatever that adds up to is irrelevant. Whenever I close my eyes and can’t open them again one day, I will be smiling.

can you ever really leave something behind

I watched a documentary on Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. In his era, China was broken apart in warring provinces. He was the first to unite the country and even gave it it’s name. In the process of unifying China, he left a path of destruction. He killed prisoners of war and ran his kingdom with the paranoia and power so common in powerful and flawed men.

Later in life, he became obsessed with death. I guess like so many people who fight their way to the improbable top of anything, the thought of descending again is unbearable, even if its in the most natural of ways. One line from the documentary really stung me though.

His obsession with death was in part because he knew he had sent so many people into the afterlife, and he was afraid they meant him ill. And if there is a Chinese afterlife or any after life where revenge exists, I bet they did.

But I guess what stuck with me is the way he plots relationships on his timeline. Often when people die, we think of them behind us, memories. Maybe for the pious, we think they left us behind. But the feeling is that of a past that can never be revived.

So its an interesting thought that what was once your past that you can never get back, could become your future that you cannot access or control right now. And it makes me think this:

can you really ever leave something behind?

I have leaving on my mind right now. I’m trying desperately to unstick myself from my time in Charleston. Its not a feeling of drowning, its a feeling of getting stuck on the starting block after the gun has been fired. My restlessness knows no bounds.

And yet, I know, covid willing, whenever I wake up for the first time in a new bed in NYC, I will miss all of this. And I will miss who I was here, and I will grieve for what I was to people and what they were to me and the knowledge that it will never fit again.

All the wars we fight with ourselves and each other, all the dopamine days, and the side sleeping nights, they don’t go silently into the blur of the past. They sometimes launch into the future.

I guess that as I get older I’m concerned with death in my own way, but more realizing that I don’t want to leave things poorly. That fear of retribution that Huang felt, I feel it too.

But whether you leave things well or poorly, you will, one day, leave things. Its an inevitably. To me thats why I really really try to keep a short leash on my bullshit. Its a constant exercise in failure but I do try.

I’d love an afterlife. I’d love a second chance or maybe to wish for more wishes. But on paper this is a one fight contract.

If you dear reader, or like me, you are a man or woman that is full of dead ends. We meander from home and we disappoint ourselves. We waste time, and have our time wasted. We are fools gold for some people. It all adds up like dog years.

My hope for you and for me is that whatever and whoever you encounter in the future or the even less knowable future future, that you can give and be given mercy. Extended to others and extended to yourself.

thank you, good night

Yesterday I heard the terrible news that David Lee Nelson passed away. David was an actor, a writer, a comic, and just a sharp witted and funny friend. This is the second death our scene has experienced in a year. First the untimely passing of Scott Frank, the bedrock of the Cutty’s comedy shows and mic and now David.

My normal response to death is gratitude. I don’t do this instead of mouning, I do it in concert.

I try to find what I received from this person, and put it at the top of the lonely christmas tree of my grief and memory. We lose people, everyone is moving away from you all the time, its a cold comfortless fact. But I try to honor those who I’ve lost by carrying some part of them into the future.

But losing friends from comedy is a particular type of loss. Comedy to me is in part the triumph of light over dark. It is the talent of making the unbearable bearable through perspective.

Laughing, when you think about it, is an improbable action.

Most people seldom ever laugh day to day. They laugh at about the rate that they cry. Not so often. So to take upon yourself the task of making someone laugh is a noble and difficult job.

Laughter makes the world better, in spite of itself.

I have hippy friends who call themselves “light workers”. To me, comedians are light workers. They throw the pie in their own face for the sake of the crowd, and the crowd realizes in time that maybe there was some pie on their face this whole time and they never realized. Comedy is the best contagion in the world.

Losing a comedian friend feels like watching some of that light die. I hate it. I don’t and will never understand.

Its like forgetting a joke you once wrote, something that created joy that will never do so again.

I wasn’t best friends with David or anything, but he was a friend to our scene and he was a part of my coming of age in comedy and I wanted to share a story about the time I did know him to honor his memory.

Thanks to David, I had one of the best sets of my life.

He hosted a show in a tiny tiny wine bar, like 15 seats. He asked me to host or do time. I could tell right from the jump it was going to be a good set. The crowd was having fun, then came one of the most special and hilarious moments in my career. There was a constant stream of tourists walking by the window of the wine bar. When they would look in and see a room full of people watching a guy talking into a mic, they were curious. Finally, an older couple stopped and looked like they were going to come in.

I told the crowd, “man, wouldn’t it be funny if when they came in we all bowed our heads and acted like this was some kind of weird church meeting”. Everyone laughed.

Then as if on cue, couple walked in.

I told the crowd “ok everyone please bow your head and close your eyes as we give thanks” without skipping a beat the little crowd did it, then we all started laughing.

It was such a ridiculous moment, but one that fueled my confidence. David told me I was funny and coming from him that was something to hold on to. In this world, as we scale the wall of our desires, we often times have our foot hold in the hands of a friend that boost us up, and that night David boosted me up and I’ll never forget him for that.

There is no other way to leave this off then with some of his stand up. Thank you David, may you find rest. Good night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4Hwa-ft4D8

mood

from the song “everything goes to hell” by the one and only Tom Waits

why be sweet why be careful why be kind?

a man has only one thing on his mind

why say politely why go lightly why say please?

they only want to get you on your knees

Theres a few things that I never could believe

a woman when she weeps

a merchant when he swears

a thief who says he’ll pay

a lawyer when he cares

a snake when he’s sleeping

a drunkard when he prays

I don’t believe you go to heaven when you’re good

and everything goes to hell anyways

Laissez-faire mi amor ce la vie

shall i return to shore or swim back out to sea?

the world don’t care what the sailor does in town

its hanging in the windows by the pound

there are a few things that I never did believe oh

a woman when she weeps

a merchant when he swears

a thief who says he’ll pay

a lawyer when he cares

a snake when he’s sleeping

a drunkard when he prays

I don’t believe you go to heaven when you’re good

and everything goes to hell anyways

i only wanna hear you purr and hear you moan

you got another man that brings the money home

i don’t want dishes in the sink

don’t ask me what i feel or what i think

theres a few things that i never could believe

a woman when she weeps

a merchant when he swears

a thief who says he’ll pay

a lawyer when he cares

a snake when he’s sleeping

a drunkard when he prays

I don’t believe you go to heaven when you’re good

and everything goes to hell anyways

versus fast

When I’m unhappy, which seems to be a lot during covid, I find this embarrassing habit in me. I seek out conflict. Not with other people, in that regard I’m extremely conflict averse. But I seek out conflict in the media I consume. I’ve always been a huge consumer of youtube. All. kinds. of. shit. Everything from biographies about obscure history, to women’s Mongolian judo, to absolute garbage reality tv fights shit.

But one thing I’ve noticed is that so much of the world and media is moving towards conflict for entertainment. Some of that is just how the brain works. Nobody wants to watch a show about people moving into a new house and everything goes fine. But if theres a ghost in the house? Awesome.

But I want to draw a distinction between fictional conflict and the true conflict.

Fictional conflict to me has some kind of value. But most of the real world conflict based media we consume is just trash. WATCH THIS PERSON GET EXPOSED< WATCH THIS PERSON GET HUMBLED WATCH THIS PERSON DESTROY THIS OR THAT.

Those are the kind of youtube headlines that sell right now. And as I write that out, I realize it smacks of an audience that is simultaneously out of control and feels powerless.

When I am unhappy, at the very moment I need positive voices the most, I am most inclined to listen to assholes, know it alls, and bullies.

I don’t have enough insight to understand why I do this, or what benefit I get from it. Maybe its simple escapism, maybe seeing someone else suffer or fight back makes you feel strong, maybe it just fires up the adrenaline.

But I do believe that long term, as a life style, its not good for you.

Which is weird, because generally I don’t mind heat. In comedy, I secretly relish being heckled. I train combat sports. There is a part of me that is always aware that people in life will misbehave, and you need to be ready.

But I think theres a difference between the occasional dust up, and the saturation of your brain with squabbles with no winner or loser, just noise and low grade unkindness.

One of my ambitions for the rest of my life is to live in a kinder world. And I think that starts with me. Being kind doesn’t mean being a pussy, but it also means that if you have a choice, to choose the good.

I saw a saying on the back of a dumpster today and it said “no one became wise by accident”. Ditto.

So for a while, I am endeavoring to avoid all media that is based on making one side bad so the other side can be good. I’m still gonna watch tv and movies and shit, but just going to limit myself from the sad slow motion bar fight of most media and news these days. I’m calling it a versus fast.

We need to fight, but fight the right battles.

Big love to all of y’all.

pros and cons of fishbowls

*house keeping note: I’m not on social media at all right now. If you want to interact with me, you can comment on this post on the website and I will respond of course. Thank you to all of you who take the time to read and engage with me on these things, I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

Hows your post rapture tribulation going? Good? Yeah me neither.

Man, every week in 2020 is a roller coaster that keeps going faster and faster no matter how much i throw up in protest. Thats part of the reason I deactivated my Facebook and Instagram recently.

I am myself a roller coaster. Some days it feels like things are decelerating toward a resolution, other days i can tell I’m being dragged up a hill to only be sent down the other side at a hurling speed.

Its a hard age to keep your bearings.

Long time readers of the blog know that I am in Charleston right now, but kinda under protest. I was moving to NYC to do BJJ and comedy before covid, but got marooned here temporarily.

Planning to move then being stuck has given me so much time to think. Too much time to think, but I’m hoping to return to writing as a way to make sense of it myself.

One thing I’ve been pondering is the environments we end up in, and the environments we choose for ourselves.

Sometimes we make a conscious decision, I am going to the gym. Other times, the tides just kinda pulled us there, I am at a jam band concert jk.

When people say fish bowl in reference to an area, its almost always in a negative context.

But a fish bowl has advantages.

If you are in a fishbowl, the amount of things that can eat you has been greatly reduced. The environment has a comforting regularity. Sure its smaller than you would like,

but sometimes small feels good.

Theres no shame in admitting that.

Fish bowls operate on a schedule. The pellets drop down at 7 a.m. and sometime in the afternoon, and theres usually extra. Water gets cleaned every other wednesday. Everyone knows you here. You have a purpose, you have notoriety, you are often the only type of fish like yourself that the neighbors have seen.

In a fish bowl, you are being cared for, and in this fucked up life, thats kinda nice and depending on the time of life, necessary.

The only thing that can ruin the experience of a fish bowl is thinking too much about it.

Who put me here? Wtf is up with this fake ass little castle? Why do we only get pellets?

Every fish in the bowl, somehow, someway, knows there is an ocean.

Its an inescapable instinct.

The greater, the danger, the abyss, the bliss, the rebirth, the cloud of witnesses, the darkness, the reward, the vastness.

I don’t think theres a way to be happy without swimming in those waters once in your life.

To extend the metaphor, I don’t think every person is built for the ocean. The ocean is a dangerous place. It is the alternate reality of the fish bowl. There is no schedule, there is no caretaker, there is no mercy. There is just you, and what you can bring forth out of the darkness. And I think when you are in a fragile state or have something to take care of, the fish bowl makes a lot of sense.

But despite my own aforementioned set backs, I know in my heart I am made for the ocean. I want the big swim, I want the expanse. I want to extend who I am.

Whoever you are, if you are hiding behind plastic seaweed or admiring the waves, I hope you find the secrets you are swimming for. I hope you get to be exactly what you always knew you could be, but were too afraid to say out loud. I hope you find a way. I hope you take yourself seriously, and trust that there is room for you in this world, and if there isn’t, you will create that room.

Love to anyone who sees this. No matter who you are. I hope you find it.

you can't hurt just one person

Yesterday was unprecedented. Thousands showed up to peacfully protest the murder of George Floyd.

As the night went on, the protests evolved into low grade chaos. Conflict with police, smashing windows, burning shit, looting, luckily very little violence compared to how it could have been.

Today the city is hungover. Everyone in their own thoughts, opinions as different as the people that live here.

Side bar, I’ve always thought Charleston was riding too high on the hog with how we responded to the Emmanuel shooting. Everyone thought that we were so much more peaceful compared to how the people of Ferguson responded to Michael Brown. I always thought that they were apples and oranges. Only a mad man would try to defend Dylan Roof. But thats the problem, when the details are more fuzzy as in the Michael Brown case, white culture is a tough sell.

Anyways, something I’ve thought about for a long time is simply this: you can’t hurt just one person.

Every decision we make in this life echoes. Sometimes no one is around to hear those echoes, and thank god. But often they do.

And I don’t just mean the obvious of the people around a victim of injustice. The family of George Floyd for example. That goes without saying. But somewhere, across the country from him, a mother has now 1% less belief that her black son will be given a fair shake in life. Somewhere the cortisol levels are higher because of one piece of shit cop.

But it goes in all directions. Everything we do is subject to this rule. Protestors that destroy the businesses of black members of the community etc..

Humanity is not a bunch of ones and twos, we are a web. And when something hits the furthest side of the web, the whole thing moves, because the whole thing is fragile. We are all holding each other, even the ones we hate or view as our enemy.

Two of the strongest forces in the world are cause and effect and compound interest.

Cause and effect is interesting, because if you have ever been around children for more than 5 seconds, you will see how cause and effect is the main highway of their conflicts. He did this, so I did that. She did that, so I did this, and now we are both crying. Its a runaway train, i’d say 90% of people I know, including me are very unskilled at how to have the metacognition to step out of the ping pong match and examine what is happening.

Compound interest was one of the great mysteries of the world according to Einstein. Once again, its not just 1+1, its 1+1, over time equals a million.

Injustices compound, violence compounds, and before you know it the end result is unwinable situation. Brutality.

If you ever want to hate your country, watch that tv show the first 48. Its mostly young people killing each other over stupid shit, and communities that don’t want to turn them in because its culturally reinforced. Its sad and unwinnalble, and the best you can do is punish the guilty.

But if you could lift your head above these evil trees, and examine the whole forest, or dig down deep and see where the roots are being nurtured, you would have a shot at helping.

I’m not a politics guy. Religion burned out all desire to assemble in groups for me forever. I have no idea what can help anyone.

I think dismissing people’s grievances because some people smashed a target is too easy and mentally lazy. I think paying cops like they are teachers and barely training them is stupid and unfair. I think snitches get stitches is stupid, whether its in a poor area or a precinct.

I don’t know how to help. This is also about class war. No one smashes libraries or poor areas. They smash the high streets, because those are the streets least available to them and for some the place that has the nicest stuff. I think looting is stupid and anyone who tries to defend the morality of it is too.

But I do know that if someone started killing comics in my town, and no one gave a fuck, I’d hit a point where I’d be willing to throw a brick in a window really quick.

I don’t know, and I’m suspicious of all easy answers

As always, to me, everything always comes back to kids. If you want to fight the system, the highest yield on the investment of your time is to learn to work with kids.

Start now, change the destiny of the generation that is coming up right now. Go read to kids, teach entrepreneurship, listen to people, donate money, share skills and resources, tell people in your circle to shut the fuck up if they are being ignorant, reach your hand as far as you can.

I love you all and hope we find the light. dum spiro spero. The motto of our state. While I breath I hope

On Gurus

i’ve been thinking about this every day lately.

I listen to youtube sun up to sun down to make the manual labor easier on my add brain, mostly history documentaries or interviews. Anything to give my mind somewhere to go while I am not aloud to leave.

At the start of every video and I mean every video, is someone trying to sell me a course. How to flip houses, how to make millions with an Amazon store, or the my favorite, the ones claiming they can help me explode my social life.

The internet is drowning in people like this. Experts. Or people claiming to be. If you took all of their pitches, all of their promises, all of their ad budgets and boiled it down like a soup stock you would end up with this premise:

someone with knowledge saying they can help you also attain knowledge.

The first thing any person who is trying to better themselves learns is that they need new information. Its step one. It roughly parallels step 1 and 2 from Alcoholics Anonymous, admitting there is a higher power. Admitting that the problem you are facing is bigger than your current capacity.

In 2020, people talk about power dynamics a lot. I think its a very helpful lens to see the world through. But power dynamics always come down to a very simple format:

the one who has more and the one who has less.

Why would anyone every want to be in a situation where they have less power?

Many evils come from being the person with less power. If a robber ties you up in your house, you have less power. If a billion dollar company steals your info and sells it, you are the one with less power. If you are a constituent who votes for a corrupt politician, you have less power.

But power dynamics are like money. They only turn evil when they touch skin. They are a mirror in which great men and women help others and bad men and women ruin lives.

To answer the rhetorical question, the reason you would ever choose to be the lesser in a power dynamic is you are exchanging something now, for something later. I will give you my time, you will give me the skill of speaking spanish. I will listen to you, you will make me a dancer. or whatever.

I love to learn. Its one of the rare human gifts that no one can take from you. From the day you are born to the day you die, you can learn. The lessons may not always be pleasant and you can often be mistaken, but learning is the process of adjusting from mistakes.

But we all need a model, and thats where gurus come into our lives.

Gurus are important. I feel the need to add when I say that world I don’t mean it with an eye roll. Of course there are many charlatans and abusers in every field, but desiring to lead others is a noble thing, and honestly we all have something to share.

We need people to follow. And my nature is to seek out experts. I love learning from people who don’t visit the subject, but live in it. Whether its comedy, jiu jitsu, real estate, psychology, magic, whatever the fuck. If you dedicate your life to something, I’ll listen, even if I disagree.

I guess the thing I’ve been thinking about is the smart way to have a guru. Its tougher than you think.

Most people react to gurus in one of the following ways.

think having a coach is beneath them- people like this are often pretty smart. But their lack of humilty will stop them from being anything other than talented novices.

nonstarters- these are the people that recognize the value of a mentor but have every reason legally allowed to avoid learning from one.

zealots- these are the types that are so hungry for growth they make themselves programmable by their leader. If the leader is a good person, then they are lucky. If the leader has bad ethics, watch out.

the part timer- this is the person who shows up for all the pictures but has no substance.

the observant- this to me is the one to be.

The observant is the student who knows quality. They didn’t end up with their coach by accident, and they don’t stay out of convenience or leave for the same reasons. They bring principles to their learning. But they also bring their palette. They know when the coach is off base, or speaking past themselves. Its hard to be someone like this. No one wants to gain say an authority figure in their life. But even as you make yourself open to persuasion and molding from a guru or coach, its important that you always observe.

Its unfair to task any man or woman with knowing everything, even if they claim they do.

I guess thats another point, there is too much to know, and even the smartest man in the room and can be fooled.

In the process of having gurus, you need to be your own. Being your own coach means you study. You observe, you make distinctions, you study trends, you watch people’s behavior in and out of their expertise. Don’t be so stupid as to think that just because someone is an expert at one thing that they know better all around.

I’m a great kids jiu jitsu coach, i don’t know a god damn thing about cyber security or wifi routers.

I guess if I had to land this plane I’d say you should find a mentor, but you should never take your eye of them either. Like someone you don’t fully trust making change. They will probably do you right, but if not you need to be smart enough and brave enough to catch it and speak up.

looking down looking up

As this drags on, the need to feel good grows. So many of the things that I/we use to self regulate our brain chemistry are now gone. Group exercise, friends, dine in anything. It sucks.

i’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and asking others what they are doing to feel good/better.

And in my own experience, I’ve only found two things recently that really soothe me and bring some kind of hope.

I call it looking down and looking up.

Looking down.

I have always hated when people say “hey mannnnnnnn other people have it way worse mannnnnnnn” knowing that other people are suffering has never eased my suffering, and honestly I think it would be creepy if it did. I hate gratitude tricks. I know it is a choice, a discipline, but I hate trying to game the system like that though other people’s bad experience.

But

Lately I’ve been finding a weird type of solidarity and release of tension and strength from documentaries about past world calamities, namely the black death and the dust bowl.

Both were times of unimaginable hardship, social upheaval. The last became first and the first became last. Everyone was vulnerable. Times like this have always appealed to my ADD hard to function in normalcy brain.

But knowing that other people have lived through something and came out the other side is vey encouraging.

The stories are gripping.

There was a story about the dust storms looming in the distance like a moving mountain, and once they hit you couldn’t see the light of your front porch unless you were on it.

There was a story of the pope’s physician Guy de Chauliac who was one of the few who contracted the plague and survived. According to the story, he removed all of the terrible tumors that grew from the plague, cutting them off his body himself as his friends had long abandoned him to die.

Looking down into the well of what can happen to other fellow humans, does give some kind of perspective. The feeling I get isn’t that I’m glad I’m not them, its more that I can find a way to be brave in the throes of my own much smaller calamity as these people had to be brave.

Looking up

As you guys that follow me know, now that i’m no longer a teacher, 100% of my income comes from air bnb which has been a disaster of late.

First the disaster of the travel industry being frozen, and the second compounded disaster of how Air bnb has abandoned hosts. For perspective, in March, I had 6k in bookings gross. In April, I have 100 dollars in bookings. Outragous loss, everyone is scrambling and terrified.

The only thing that has given me peace is to look at what I can do. Many hosts are starting to take the approach of building their own sites for their properties where people can book from the host, its called direct booking.

As I started working on mine (stay tuned, I’ll share when its done), I had to come up with a brand.

I settled on hyggebnbs. If you aren’t familiar with the word hygge, its a Danish word/ideal that is difficult to translate that means the feeling of comfort/safety you feel in a house or with friends or over a meal where everything is in order. Like a candlit dinner with friends, popcorn and movie by a fire, etc.

As a concept, hygge has become pretty popular, maybe even a little played out. But I’ve decided that since it comes from my own extensive time in Denmark, its not disingenuous to use it.

Anways, Ive been working on ways to carry the branding forward, and one fun idea I had was to name each property after someone who meant a lot to me in Denmark. The Esben after one of my favorite musical companions and friends, the Andreas after my great friend and boss etc..

As simple as an idea as this is, this thought got me through some rough days.

To me this is looking up. When there is no light at the end of the tunnel, sometimes you have to manufacture your own light, become a lantern in your own brain until you get back to the surface.

I hope hope hope that whoever you are, you can find a way to look down at what has been, and up at what could be, and in the mean time find some modicum of peace, and even joy. God knows we need good news, even if we have to be the source of it ourselves.

Love all of y’all.

ghost chores

My favorite movie of all time is The Shining. It is many things, but at its heart it is a multi layered multi generational ghost story.

There are two opposite spectrums of behavior for ghosts in tv/film: the evil spirit that cannot find (or does not) desire rest, and on the other end, the harmless ghost who for all eternity is carrying out or attempting to carry out a task it did when it was a live.

In the lore of ghost stories, ghosts attach to places, they attach to people, they attach to things that shouldn’t have been, they attach to things that once were, they attach to loss, they attach to the vulnerable, etc..

A ghost is a note that hangs in the air and doesn’t resolve.

A ghost is something that won’t let go.

A ghost is a pattern.

The reasons are varied, but the connection is the one unifying principle.

I think a lot about patterns and self deception lately. I have friends who have constructed a track that they spend days years and god forbid lives driving around in. I don’t know why they do it. I am sure others can see mine too.

One of my good friends has for as long as I have known him, had a room he is “making progress” on cleaning. When I was first getting to know him, I just assumed it was some boring chore that he didn’t want to tackle.

But this room has followed him through four moves, and two relationships. Almost a decade later, he is still “making progress”.

It hurts me to see stuff like that. And I would bet my house that this mysterious room will never clean.

And the reason is simple: if the room were to ever be finished, he would stare at the empty floor and be forced to confront what he has run from this whole time, himself. Self knowledge. Letting go. The complexity of the world.

The track he has built is a closed circuit, there is no helping someone out of one.

I wish I was strong or clever enough to pull people out of their dead loops of behavior. I hate help, but I recognize the need for it and therefore I love giving it to others. I know what its like to be helplessly tangled.

But in order to do so, you have to let go. You have to move towards the light. Maybe that light is a death, but mostly its an awareness. Its a recognition that things didn’t go like you wanted them to and its time to stop. Its input. Its laying down of arms.

Until you come out of these ghost chores, you can never be yourself. You will forever be using your best energy and years on rocky soil. The track never gets longer, it gets deeper.

My hope for you and me is that all the dead things find rest, so the living things can be at peace too.

Apocalypse Etiquette

“how among neighbours was scarce found any that shewed

fellow-feeling for another, how kinsfolk held aloof, and never met, or but
rarely; enough that this sore affliction entered so deep into the minds of
men and women, that in the horror thereof brother was forsaken by brother,
nephew by uncle, brother by sister, and oftentimes husband by wife; nay,
what is more, and scarcely to be believed, fathers and mothers were found to
abandon their own children, untended, unvisited, to their fate, as if they
had been strangers. Wherefore the sick of both sexes, whose number could not
be estimated, were left without resource but in the charity of friends (and
few such there were), or the interest of servants, who were hardly to be had
at high rates and on unseemly terms, and being, moreover, one and all men
and women of gross understanding, and for the most part unused to such
offices, concerned themselves no farther than to supply the immediate and
expressed wants of the sick, and to watch them die; in which service they
themselves not seldom perished with their gains”

- 14th century author Giovani Boccaccio’s who lived through the plague of the 1340’s

This is a surreal time. The movie plots we watch have escaped and found their way in our every day life. Supply shortages, a pandemic, death, mistrust, greed, poverty, and the overwhelming question of when will this end.

Everyone has a theory, nobody really knows, and thats the scary part. This could be 18 months or done in a month.

The timing is something we can’t control (outside of social isolation which all of you fucking assholes better be doing, the sooner you stop the sooner we can start again) I digress.

Whats interesting is to look back into history and see how other people have handled times like this. As bad as this is, it has nothing on the black plague. Anywhere from 30-90% of the population dead depending on where you live. So many bodies that they buried them in hastily dug trenches, and you couldn’t walk past a church yard because of the smell.

Something worth noting is that even though this was 700 years ago, there are weird overtones and similarities in the narrative and the conclusions people have drawn.

People believed the plague came from the east, people believe it was a curse from god (I don’t think anyone thinks that about what we’re going through but I’ve seen a couple comments about how this is from mother nature etc..), every matter of wives tale and false cure and amulet and miracle worker.

But its the uncertainty, the one thing we all share and the one thing we can’t avoid.

In times like this, the real enemy we all face is the one we live with every day. Our own cruelty and selfishness. I think humanity as a whole is kinda dumb. We make decisions that are against our best interests all the live long day. And its never more obvious than in times like this.

But now is a time to turn over a new leaf. To treat yourself, the people around you, and the world with kindness and humility and to have something to look back on and be proud of one day.

Here is my list of apocalypse etiquitte, or, how not to be a prick when everyone you know is terrified.

1. Now is not the time to pick a fight with people in your life - holy shit. We all have sore points in relationships with people we love, but for all we know we could be headed towards a depression, its not the time to settle some old score. Circle the wagons.

2. Recognize that most people have an electrical current of anxiety running through them so be more gentle than you have to be.

3. Reach out to people- not physically of course. But check on people. send text messages. settle petty squabbles.

4. Do whatever it takes to keep making money- so much of the anxiety and stress related to this is based on peoples fear around the economy. And rightfully so, me too. But at the end of the day this is not the time to live off savings or debt. Go get a job, any job. Humble yourself. I lived through a recession in europe when it was extremely difficult to find work. I was trying at the time to become a garbage man. But the economy being bad forced everyone in skilled labor jobs to take a step down and so even being a garbage man was out of reach. You may have to do something that is humbling. But be a delivery person, rake leaves, baby sit, sell pics of your feet or titties online, whatever. If you feel more secure your relationships are probably going to be much easier to navigate.

5. Keep an eye out for the vulnerable- in my experience, people have one type of charity they support and are almost blind to others. For example, there is quite an uproar about servers and bartenders losing their job and there should be, shit is scary and you should support those people. But I have seen 0.0 posts about the cleaning staff of hotels, people working entry level jobs in tourism that are now fucked etc.. my point is to expand the scope of your empathy. Everyone is going to need a little help before this is all said and done.

6. If you can, cover some ground towards your goals- long time readers of the blog know that I grieve forward. I try to honor the losses in my life with gains. You don’t have to become a master of the violin in your seclusion, but you can take this time as an opportunity to become a different you that you like a little bit more.

This shit is wild, and the only thing I know for sure is that we are going to need each other. I love you all.

kindess in the age of panic

I have an embarrassing fascination with Black Friday, mostly the fights. Not because I ever want to see someone get hurt, quite the opposite. But because there is some part of me that has an undying suspicion of my fellow humans. I know that our polite society is just a series of agreements, a system of pulleys and levers. And if any one of them goes, it turns out that under it all we are just scared spiritually inclined monkeys looking for shelter, fighting for resources and wondering what that sound was.

If this sounds bleak, thats not my intent. To me, its the one universal law. Our priorities are not that far from each other, though they take radically different forms and routes. I do not have kids, but I have heard so many friends talk about the effect it has on you. Once you have a child, you are forever aware that thats how we all start out at. Your douce bag ex boyfriend, the inpatient person behind you in traffic, the man in jail. At one time, they were batting a thousand. Perfect innocence touched down on dirt with no idea of the shuffling of cards that would one day be their context.

When you know that some of what people do is because of what has been done to them, it makes you have more empathy for what people do by choice. Because, we somehow know, that at times, we don’t do that many things by choice. We are all mashing buttons, soloing over a song we don’t know that well. Running on instincts half the time, trying to override them the other.

This week has been a fucking spectacle and a curiosity.

Everyone is afraid, that is understandable. Their reactions are the part that are hard to fathom. WTF is up with all the toilet paper hoarding? It makes no sense. At least the hand sanitizer stuff does, but even that is crazy.

I have long suspected that people with baseline anxiety use times like this as a lightning rod. They then can make some large action (like buying toilet paper) to soothe their anxiety. But from the outside observer, the action is out of proportion. And they would be right.

But the fear we all feel is not that this is happening, its that nothing can stop this from happening again at another time. I think most of us know that we won’t die of corona virus. But the real deeper fear is that if this was the new black plague, we live in such a fragile society that the whole thing can implode. The entire world of ropes of pulleys and levers comes crashing down and we are faced with ourselves and our prime objectives.

In the face of that fear, most people decide to devolve first. They fight, they hoard resources etc..

and its all understandable

but if you want to do better, if you want to be proud of yourself when you remember this time, be brave and be kind.

One of the best feelings in life is when people tell you a story about yourself, especially when its a good one. I love it when someone tells me something nice I did that I completely forgot about. Not because I’m an egomaniac, but because I am at times afraid that the scale of altruism and ambition is tipping the wrong way at times.

My goal in this panic, is simple: don’t be the reason that someone loses hope.

If I manage that, the rest is gravy.

Keep your chin up everyone.

money problems

last year, on paper, I made more money than I ever made. Im proud of that. Its worlds less than some, more than others, but in the game I play with myself, it was a win. I also spent more, risked more, borrowed more, worked more, have less cash than ever and still have a big ole fat tax bill to pay so trust me, this is not a victory lap.

Right now, I’m entering a cluster of life altering decisions. I’m closing my business, the classes will go on but the entity I built is moving beyond me. I’m moving to the most competitive hardest city in the world, NYC. I’m entering a phase of life that I have been pining for for years. I want to be an artist before I die, and though I have been this whole time, the concentration level has always been undermined by the need to build a life simultaneously. On top of all that, I am making some big changes with the properties I own.

I currently own a house and a duplex in my neighborhood on one lot of land, and I own a fixer upper house that if you follow me on IG, you’ve seen me and an army of friends resurrect from the depths of neglect.

My plan is to sell that house so I can have less debt, then re-invest in bigger things. I had built it to be an air bnb property, but I realized that I want less to manage when I move. I also fully plan on legally separating my house from the duplex, selling the house, and owning the duplex, with any luck, out right.

Cool plan right? Exciting right? ooh la la. Air bnb la la. But underneath all this is me, in my head, constantly calculating how I will figure this all out.

The last six months have been the most insane in my life. For good reasons and bad. I went to the masters world championships, I bought a wholesale house, my school got accused of racism, I had someone try to turn my whole community against me (unsuccessfully because thankfully people can spot a lie), I’ve had a couple people fuck me on some money things, I’ve had to learn and struggle, and sleep in a house with a leak in the roof a la Outkast ms Jackson music video. Its been a time.

At all times, I’ve been trapped in this sooty Dickinsian factory in my mind. Its my worse fear, and I have lived it every day for months now. That fear is of being poor.

I grew up in a very economically uncertain household. When i was very little, the family was doing well. House in the suburbs, family dinners, new bicycles.

Then divorce changed the landscape, and nothing was familiar. I was the poor kid overnight. I remember food stamps, a brief time in government projects, being the charity case.

I used to dream of money as a kid. I would find money, I would find a childhood wallet I left.

I knew that somehow, some of the misery in the house was related, and I was aware enough to know that it was fixable. I just didn’t know how.

I was fascinated by lotteries and games of chance. One time my middle brother brought that up way later in life as a way to try and shame me, or make me seem like I don’t like to work. He just didn’t understand. I was trying in my child brain to do the work of a man. That of provision.

With my childhood, I was always destined to have an intense relationship to money. I see themes in my dad and late brother Bradley’s lives. Both of them charismatic men, but also like me, high stimulation seekers. There are risk takers and there are savers, and in our family we are like 99% on the risk side.

Even in my marriage money stuff dogged me. I was a young man, with no real skills outside of karate and music, and didn’t know how to make things happen. Then I was living in one of the most expensive cities in the world during a world wide recession with a terrified wife.

We never seemed to be able to get ahead. The church job paid just enough to pay our bills, not enough to do anything else. I worked in cafes in the weekend, but when we moved to the city, I couldn’t buy a job. I spoke fluent restaurant danish, but couldn’t get anything. My ex got hired every time she turned around. My self worth sank lower and lower into the well.

I tried to start a business teaching like I knew in America. At the time I thought I failed because it wasn’t a silver bullet that saved the day. Now as an older man, I understand that I was doing fine, it was just unreasonable to expect that to snap together so fast. Somehow I’m still embarrassed by that, can’t let it go.

That phase of my life came to a close, I got accepted to Berklee, and I thought this was the new start I wanted so desperately. I was going to get to be an artist. Then amazingly and disappointingly, I couldn’t get student loans.

Once again the idea of who I think I am, or could be, was being hamstrung by money.

I settled in Charleston because I knew that for the rest of my life, I was gonna be the guy that buys the drinks, not the guy that needs drinks bought for him. I have always wanted to be that, but just didn’t know how to make it happen.

So I climbed and climbed and climbed and was patient. I invested in my life here, and it started to produce. I remember having a terrible back injury, living in my mom’s house with no car and a house that was in foreclosure saying my goals to myself in my mom’s shower. “my back is strong and healthy from therapy and yoga, I have 0 pain. My business is making $8,333. a month, etc…”

I said them even though they sounded like self deception. I said them even though there was no evidence that any of them could one day be real. I said them even though I felt like a fucking old loser fraud who was going to lose everything.

I said them and they became my creed.

Then they happened. and they weren’t gods anymore they were just intangibles.

Now I’m in a new shower. And I feel like a loser and a fraud on a higher level. I am aware of the imposter syndrome, and I am also aware that it may never go away.

I don’t know why I have written all of this today. I’m writing myself to find some kind of key to take with me. I guess if I had to land the plane on firm ground it would be here:

Goals are intangible things. Once you achieve them, they are still intangible. If you have ever had a big number hit your bank account, there is a rush, then after a while, you realize its just a number.

Its hard for me to feel this now because I’m stressed and need to make some shit happen financially, but the bad new is intangible too. The negatives are also, just numbers on a screen.

I think the irony is that in order for me to have the certainty I have craved my entire life, I have to live in the fear of what happens if I don’t make it happen.

I’m on the verge of doing better than I ever have in my entire life, and I’m fucking terrified that it won't happen and I’m terrified of being disappointed. But I have to eat that like a Pac Man to get where I want.

Regardless, I hope that whoever you are reading this, your money life is doing good, and if it isn’t, you summon yourself to change it because you absolutely can. Even if it doesn’t feel that way.

btw I changed my mind I'm moving to NYC now

Yeah, so I changed my mind.

But first, happy new year to you. Whoever you are. I mean it. Thank you for reading this blog, and for all the love you guys have given me over the year. This blog constantly surprises me. I’m amazed anyone vibes with it. Its my public/private journal, and I’m always inspired by the feedback I get.

But yes, I’m scrapping Chicago and moving to New York instead.

It dawned on me about a week ago that the real reason I was moving to Chicago was partially because I was afraid. New York is the heart of the craft, the snake pit, the place where there are thousands of comics, many of them mediocre, but hundreds of them straight up killers. I was afraid to find out that I am by comparison mediocre too.

But then I realized that I’m too old to be afraid, and I’m too old for ramps. Time is the only capital we have and its short sighted to play the video game on anything less than hard mode.

I am not moving to NYC because I am so good, I am moving there because the comics there are so good, and I am hoping to draft off of their skill and be better myself.

Like I have said from the beginning, I need downward pressure. I need a pace horse in my life.

I also have more working comic friends in New York who I can watch and learn from.

Added bonus, some of the best Jiu Jitsu in the world is located in NYC. I’m excited to learn and test my skills there too.

So if any of you guys know something I could do for work up there or a room to rent or whatever, holler. I’m wide open and looking in all directions.

Very excited.

If it is too hard or doesn’t feel right, I can always go back to the idea of Chicago. I’m certain Chicago has some outstanding pro’s and I bet I could learn a lot there too.

But everyone I know in Chicago is like a 26 year old girl doing improv having the time of their lives. Everyone I know in new york are battle hardened comics that are having cool experiences and getting better.

Anyways, we will see.