Saturday, September 01, 2007

There comes a time...

When you are passionate about something, there is always room for wearing yourself out.

I tend to get a little "overly obsessed" with everything in my life, which is really why I only focus on a few core things because I know that I will be able to devote enough time to each of them that the time spent will bring me worthwhile rewards. I just recently hit my one year anniversary for performing stand-up comedy. During those 365 days I grew so much as a person because I finally got sick and tired of not following a dream, and I feel that I'm well on my way with that journey. Recently I became somewhat discouraged when it came to this particular pursuit. I began to doubt myself in several horrible ways which only bred more doubt, so I decided to take a break. Coincidentally, once decided to take this "break", I got strep throat for two weeks. I couldn't talk anyway, so I guess it was for the best. However, when I become interested in something I tend to go a little too far when it comes to immersing myself inside that particular "thing".

In the case of stand-up comedy, I have posters, DVD's, countless albums (which take up nearly 18gb on my iPod!), so you can understand that everywhere I looked I was bombarded by something that reminded of the exactly what I trying to avoid. During the time that I was almost unable to speak, I did a lot of sleeping and general laying about in bed doing nothing. There were several comedy ideas that came into my head during those days, but I refused to write them down. I was protesting the creative process by simply letting the ideas occupy a space in brain for a short while, then simply letting them go. Instead of putting these ideas to good use I would simply calculate in my head all of the hours I spent driving to and from various spots around the state, and I how I could have spent that time to do something even more productive, more worthwhile.

It was when I started to feel better that I began to slowly re-introduce stand-up into my life. I started hitting the websites again, listening to my albums, I even made sure to have a pen and notebook on me at all times. I realized that this "break" was a long time coming, because I was seriously getting burnt out. From the time I woke up until my head hit the pillow I was writing, listening to or watching comedy in one way or another, and it just wore me out. Up until recently, I never really sat down for an extended period of time to write jokes, I would simply collect a ridiculous amount of ideas then develop them as I did anything else throughout the day. This is turning into a bit of a rant so I'll end it simply: you can have too much of a good thing, and there comes a time when you need to step back and look at what you're doing with your life. Now, when I take that step back, it makes me smile.