I'm Out. Drops the Mic. & a Critique Involving How Life is Improv (whaaaaat? I am so original)

**I found this in my drafts just now, and I can't believe I never posted it. Feel free to read it, and then read my thoughts on it at the end.**

"And, that's my time. Thanks, guys. You've been a great audience. Sincerely."

I twisted the microphone back into it's holder. The audience still clapping. It was a lazy clap though, like they felt they had to do it. I've been in those audiences, been the person who just did not want to keep being there.

This has been my fear for so long, I don't even know how to quantify it. I mean, I suppose I could say for the last 27 years. Or, I could say for the past 7, or I could say, for as long as I knew what stand up was — imagining all the while that talking is difficult. Talking in front of strangers is difficult. Talking. Difficult. Frozen.

BUT. That's not how it is at all. Man, if only I knew. There was one time about two years ago now where I was at a birthday for a friend, well, the birthday of a friend's boyfriend and we were all comedy people, doing improv in Chicago for the last four years, whataever, some standups, some writers, some actors, all jokesters. Anyway, there was a microphone you could use to roast the birthday boy.

I've always been a rather funny person, I guess. I make people laugh in conversation and tend to be opinionated about things that have no bearing on anything. I hold fast to my ideals even if it means that I stick with the wrong thing because I thought it was something else and then I realized I was wrong but don't want to admit it.

Basically. I am a one woman show wherever I go.

Stand up just makes it such that no one can interrupt me when I'm going on my verbal expeditions. Taking a crowd of people with me on my journey from learning how to play a guitar, numb fingers and all to why firemen have the easiest job on the planet.

If people do interrupt me, there's a special name for them (heckler) and they get thrown out! If only this happened in my real life when people are being real dicks.


**It would be nice if people would stop interrupting my verbal expeditions. What a great phrase, Bridge. But in all seriousness -- I think why I didn't publish this is perhaps I had the fear that I then would be accountable to becoming a standup, and not just a standup, but a good standup, a female standup, always held to a different higher standard, because god forbid, we have a female Dane Cook.

I chalk it up to this feeling: if I missed a mic I couldn't call myself a standup anymore. Some arbitrary rule I made myself follow. Throughout my life, and I'm sure most of us do this, I've had nearly one-billion irrational fears. Because I grew up competitive, and have a brother who one could say was a natural athlete, it escaped me that practice was necessary for most everyone. And the truth was, my brother was given a ball when he was a baby, so he'd actually been practicing his whole life, so scratch that, practice as necessary for everyone. My brother just never lost interest in his thing. And, what happens to most of us, I'm learning, is we lose interest in that first thing. It happens in improv all the time. You could say most people's lives are rather rough improv shows, that we trudge through hoping somehow it will all tie together, everything will make sense in the end because we remembered our suggestion.

We remembered, "Ball," and we can trick ourselves into thinking we were going to get back there all the time. That there is some invisible hand guiding us home, and maybe there is. I like to think so.

My goal at the present moment is to not just cut myself some slack with my purpose in being alive, but to remind myself I'm just making all of this up as I go along. I've never done this before. I've never done today before. Have you? How can I possibly know what I don't know? And when I strike gold, when I have those little victories that makeup a life, when I remember something I did learn, and I then put it into practice, that's a gift, it's not the rule.

We're just doing a bad improv show most of the time, and it's fine. We just made it up. Just do as much as you can with what you have, and it's pretty tough to regret those choices. It's sort of nice to think of life this way.

That said, I don't do standup, but I should again because it was fun, and man, some of my Twitter jokes get a lot of favs. I see you, favs. Thanks!**

c.s. lewis, wordsmith

been reading a lot as of late. re-reading one of my dearest books: a severe mercy. reminded me of my once passionate love of all things c.s. lewis. so, in reading some of his work, and came across this beautiful quote:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

it sparked in me real joy. and real frustration. because real vulnerability is not something that comes easily, to me or anyone else. but vulnerability begets vulnerability. like all things worthy in life, it's a chicken versus the egg scenario. a catch 22.

and just like my chosen career path as an actor, writer, creative -- there is a catch 22.
and just like with all relationships -- there is a catch 22.

tired bones

My feet hurt, do yours?

We danced for a long, long time

But we love to dance

Full Episode HERE

"This is an American problem. Everyone is involved...You can't fix something until you admit that it's broken."

I can't say anything that hasn't already been said, but I can agree.

Our government is corroded from the inside out. Everything is affected by everything else. We can't have actual change until everything is addressed. We have a problem with the people who are charged to serve and protect; we have a problem with communities (both those who are physically more affected and those who turn a blind eye); we have a problem with family dynamics; we have a problem with schools/education; we have a problem with drugs, violence, rape violence, and guns. 

It's a problem that as a whole, we are a country so broken that pulling the trigger equates to just a regular walk in the park. It's cops killing citizens — it's citizens killing other citizens — it's politicians killing citizens. We have a problem with respecting life. 

So, I agree.

raison d'être.

College feels like a million miles away. It feels so far that it nearly feels like it didn't happen, or barely happened. I don't remember it. I didn't drink heavily. I didn't party hard. Sometimes I'm shocked by the amount of "doing" that I just didn't. I went to class; I auditioned for one play (and got so embarrassed by forgetting my monologue that I dropped out of the theater school entirely); I wrote for the Daily Iowan; I hosted a weekly radio show for three years on KRUI 89.7. I  called it "The Early Morning Airstrike."

Higher education — it's supposed to be this time of self-discovery, learning, adventure, finding out what you're good at, trying things — but I don't really think I did those overarching things. I was busy doing this and then that, creating friendships that when looked at closely these days aren't all that close (at least not anymore). Both of my college roommates ended up in Los Angeles post graduation, yet we seldom get together. It's no ones specific fault. We just lead different lives, have different interests, different priorities. We're different, after all. When I really think about it, it's unbelievable that we've made it this far because we are so different.

This time last year, I was just ending a sub-chapter back in a University setting. I was behind a desk, working in an office, watching students linger outside classrooms, skateboard past signs that say "No Skateboarding," and wear business suits as an assignment — And now a full year after that, I'm left wondering, where did it all go? Even if you're in the same decade, it's unbelievable how different a 20-year-old is from a 29-year-old. The incremental change each day of those 365 days from 29 to 30 hits you the day before your birthday. It isn't incremental at all. And now that keep hitting these painful numbers, it feels like I've somehow moved further away from something rather than toward something else. I don't think I'll ever feel my age again. Maybe when I'm 80. By then my hips, knees and eyes won't let me skip past the truth like they do now.

I'm not old. I'm not. I'm really not. But, I feel old. I feel left behind. I have this overwhelming sense that my life is passing me by. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Like I didn't just waste a couple decades. It seems that for most people their job is where they find their satisfaction, their reason to be, "raison d'être." And as a performer, it's tough to know that my career is somewhat in the hands of others. Yes, I can create my work — I can write for myself — I can join teams and perform shows, and so on, and on, and on; I can do all of these things, and that is amazing. But what does it matter if no one sees it. If no one thinks it's good enough to pay for. Where is my worth? I have so much control, but what is control anyway?

Google defines it as "the power to influence or direct people's behavior or the course of events." But this is only a half definition to me. Control can direct, sure, but when you're out of control there is also a direction, and it's not always down. The relationship between control and success is a lie.

I have so much less "control" than I think. I can do what I can to direct the course of my life, but life will do what it wants, and other people in their lives are doing the same, and my life will intersect with theirs, and there will be "right time and right place," and then the less popular, but more common, "wrong time and wrong place," followed by the confusing, "wrong time and right place," and then of course, the ever frustrating "right time and wrong place." If we're looking at life as a Punnett Square based on life situations: Time and Place as the main variables — "right time and right place" accounts for just 25 percent of what life hands you, the rest, darlings, is unfortunately 75 percent the mismatching of everything else. We cannot control time. So inevitably control is for nothing.

If I want to make any money at my creative craft, that alleged control I love to have so much, goes to the birds. Others write my paycheck. It's incredibly tough.

Where does that leave me?

It leaves time as the constant variable that won't allow itself to be controlled.

Willows

I like them when they fall down
like weeping willows
They’re crisp and together at the same time
as being
wispy, faint, there and then gone

Crackle down the barrel
of a gun
But not a gun gun.
A finger lost
A holiday to remember

I like them when they fall down
like bodies
like Tina Turner’s 80s hair
like everything and then nothing.

Happy Birthday America
You did it.

That Moment When...

This post is in response/coordinates with moments ago when I made a joke Tweet that started with the familiarly annoying "When you..." which is like those garbage sentences that read, "That moment when..." It's the start to a Tweet in which I read it and then just want to punch a person (Read: My mirror if it didn't cut my fingers up. They are delicate so that would be bad, so I don't and never have.)

Anyway, the Internet, gees.