Living a Life Outside of Stand Up

Life is meant to be lived, not performed. This is a mantra I have had to remind myself of for the past decade, as I navigate through the comedy scene that is my life. On one hand, we want all the gigs and all the opportunities. On the other hand, we still yearn for a life with family, friends and hobbies. The two are mutually exclusive, when you do the math. As I climbed up the comedy ladder, I started to notice the comics who broke through to true headliner status, but never made the money to really embrace their talent, faced the same issues, stifled by a career that required 2-3 nights of performing and 2 days of travel bookending their trips. Fly out on Wednesday or Thursday. Perform Friday through Sunday. Traveling home Monday. Showcase Tuesday to work out a bit and back at it. Or they perform in a string of one nighters, driving from city to city, budgeting out gas station stops. While all of this might be romanticized, it dilutes the actual "life" from life, lead to a less fulfilling comedy career and human experience as well. 

If You Don't Take Breaks You'll Break Down 
I see you on IG doing show after show and celebrating the wins. And I'm proud of you. But at some point you have to recharge, and it's not with booze, drugs, or a beach trip. There's an intellectual drought that takes place repeating jokes over and over again that starts to suck the personality out a human. I've noticed that many comics 10 years in seem disinterested in most conversations, mostly because the way they've communicated is one way, dominating the discussion - with a mic in their hand. Plus add applause and admiration to the one sided relationship, and suddenly talking to people that don't bow down to your every word or give you the allowance to "roast them" becomes a chore. 
It's important to have actual hobbies that feed into you that create existential value. Whether that's volunteer work, coaching, writing, or gardening, you need to separate yourself from stand up and look at the world from another perspective. If you feed your soul with shows and then edit clips to post and use the algorithm to validate your very essence, you'll just end up using the supplements of life instead of the primary materials. 

The vicious cycles can be explained like this: Right before my heart failure in July 2021 I was using energy drinks to get up each morning, sleep aid to go to sleep, and my body was functioning but dying. Literally. At some point I had to use water to hydrate and rejuvenate and get off the ZzzQuill. When I was talking to friends my age, they told me they were doing the same thing. Participating in a vicious cycle of survival isn't living. Just because we were all on the same plan didn't make it healthy. Just like how we all repeat the same formulas to gain followers and get gigs, the end game without intellectual and spiritual development creates a tiring experience. 

Read, Write, See a Movie, and Exercise
The world is filled with so much creation, art, and beauty. And none of it can be found in a dark, damp, comedy room. While many might feel anxious going out into the world, there needs to be a way to develop interests and hobbies that become the metaphors and maps for navigating regular life. 

Just reading about the history of particular topic or industry can create fresh perspectives. Studying comedy to be better at comedy just makes you copycat other comedy. Studying the way Ray Kroc or Walt Disney built an empire might inspire you to make more of your own resources. 

Writing jokes for a few hours might feel therapeutic, but writing a short story or script with a beginning, middle, and end will give a feeling of accomplishment. The problem with stand up is there is no "end game." It's just go, go, go without much time to relax. You have to find hobbies to teach yourself patience and new experiences. Mini circle of life experiences. 

When I was a wrestling coach I encouraged my wrestlers to stay away from the high school style in the spring and try Greco-Roman, grappling, and Olympic Freestyle to learn new positioning and not be afraid of throwing opponents. They improved their high school style by learning other techniques and strategies. They same goes for comedy. By focusing on other aspects of life, you'll learn to apply the same ideas and concepts to your comedy. 

The die hard, narrow minded, comic might find success faster, but grow more depressed later on. A life dedicated to mastering a joke and shaking a few strangers hands isn't really a life worth living. Spending years in green rooms with huge headliners, there was a sadness about them. When I asked them about life, it was always stories about flights or bookers. Nothing about movies, books, cars, sports, etc. And I realized there was no time. Being a successful comic is the ultimate Groundhog's Day. You tell the same jokes over and over again, living out the same patterns. That produces a certain death inside when there's no life outside of the grind and hustle. 

Final Thoughts 
One of the best films about the imprisonment of the man is The Shawshank Redemption. In that film the characters are beaten down by an unfair system, and it is in the little acts of enjoyment that the characters regain their humanity. Whether it's taring the roof, listening to Mozart, or building a library, the men reconnected to what made them feel free, even if still trapped in a world bound to destroy them. 

​Prison time is slow time, Red says; but so is comedy life. A lot of waiting for just a few minutes of release. So what you do to fill the unforgiving minutes is crucial to your mental health. In The Hobbit, Gandalf looks at Bilbo and whimsically notes, "You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are quite a little fellow in a wide world after all." It is a wide world, and it gets wider the more you expand with it too.