What Is It I Want?

Wednesday February 11th, 2009 - Lake Villa, IL

Self inflicted boot camp day two. So far so good. I made some good decisions today but they’re ones I should be making every day and don’t. Maybe this will help me finally take charge of my life like I always threaten to and then get sidetracked by fifty other things.

Those fifty other things are still out there but for at least the next month I want to avoid letting them take me out of my groove. I need to go out to L.A. and knock out a solid four and a half minute comedy set on March 10th. Period. I want to be in a positive mental and physical and even spiritual place when I get there. I want this to be the start of my career.

I’ve said it before and it’s true - I’ve had a job in show business my whole life but never a career. I’ve never done anything that builds to anything significant even though I’ve had a couple of times I thought something might pop. I’ve worked hard but never had that big break that’s necessary to launch someone into a career. Everyone needs to find that break.

The good thing is everyone starts where I did too. Some have more talent and others are luckier but everyone starts out as an unknown at some point. The Michael Jacksons of the world get recognized early and it’s a life long career even if he’s cooled off a lot by now.

The Willie Nelsons and Rodney Dangerfields of the world are exactly the opposite. I’m in their category and those guys struggled and fought a lot longer than they probably had to but that’s how it went for them. They made it later rather than sooner but they made it.

‘Making it’ is different depending on who is asked to define the term. For me making it would be having a significant number of the public know who I am and come see me at a live show. They could know me from television appearances or a radio show but I want a solid fan base of intelligent people who love comedy and I want to serve them all well.

I’d love to have financial security but only so I could be free to create more and give of myself more. My needs and wants are ridiculously low at this point and it wouldn’t take a whole lot to get me there in a hurry. After that I’d focus on giving away as much of what I had as possible so I could spread it around a little. The fun part of life for me is creating.

I want to have a career body of work to look back on that I can be proud of. I would like to have several more CD and/or DVD projects of quality standup comedy that makes my fans laugh and also is studied by comedians because it’s well done. That takes hard work.

I want to also keep on teaching classes and allow others to experience the thrill of being up there on that stage. That’s been one of the best things I’ve done and there’s no reason I need to stop any time soon. It keeps me around creativity and quality people and I love it.

It all starts with a successful TV credit. That puts me on a level I need to be to make the other things happen. Management would be nice too. I need to start thinking on a level of where I want to be and doing low paying seedy one nighters isn’t it. I want a career now.