Saturday March 17th, 2012 – Fox Lake, IL
As much as I’d love to keep knocking back free birthday week meals from everyone, sooner or later I knew I’d have to knuckle down and haul myself back to work. I chose sooner, as in today. I didn’t mind at all. I like to work - at least on projects in which I have a passion. I have all kinds of those, and they keep me busy enough for six people. Those I don’t mind. They keep me going.
What loads me down and really sinks my canoe are all the things I have no desire to do. Those are the true buzz kills in life, yet they come up in some form or another every single day without fail. Sometimes it’s an annoying person or situation, other times a task. All of it is wasted time.
Today it was switching my flight arrangements for April 13-14 when I’ll be in Tucson at Laffs. I was scheduled there last summer as I was dealing with my diabetes diagnosis, and had to cancel on short notice. The booker was very understanding, and totally professional. I really was unable to fulfill my obligation, and thankfully he gave me another chance. That doesn’t always happen.
I’m a man of my word, and I said I’ll show up. I plan on it, but getting there is always a hassle. The last thing I care about is hunting down airline tickets online, but what choices do I have? My only other option is driving, but Chicago to Tucson with gas at over $4 a gallon would break me.
Gas prices are killing everyone, but some of us faster than others. I hadn’t flown in a while and WOW did ticket prices go up. The cheapest I was able to find for the days I need to go was about double what I expected to pay. That didn’t cut it, so I had to do some creative thrift management.
I was able to score a somewhat reasonably priced ticket on Southwest from Milwaukee, only it had a couple of stops and didn’t land in Tucson until 10:20pm. I had to bump it back to Thursday the 12th so I could make the Friday show, but that would cost a hotel room. Too bad, that was my only option. I bought the ticket a few days ago, thinking I was done. Wrong. There was a glitch.
The booker sent me an email telling me he had a one nighter on the Thursday and could use me if I could get to town earlier than 10:20. That meant I had to change my flight, which is always a hassle. It’s less of a hassle with Southwest, but it’s still a hassle. I just don’t enjoy stuff like that.
In a perfect world, I’d hire someone to take care of trivial minutia like that, but that isn’t going to happen in the near future. I’m a one man band, and that’s part of the job description whether I like it or not – and I don’t. It uses up valuable time I could be using to create products I can sell.
So now, I am flying out on Wednesday the 11th and landing at 10:20. I have the Thursday show added and then the Friday and Saturday is at Laffs. That’s a fun place, and I will tear the roof off. But then I’m stuck in town until Tuesday morning at 6am, as that’s the cheapest flight I found.
I will worry about where I’ll stay later. For now, this was the best flight deal I could get. It took way too long to get it all hashed out, and it’s for a gig that’s a month out. It took me way off grid for work I was doing today, and I feel like I wasted time. But I had to. Still think comedy’s easy? 
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