Maybe this year...
Happy New Year to all who celebrate.
If you’ve been a subscriber to my mailing list, you’ll notice this is the first email coming from Substack rather than Tiny Letter. Tiny Letter is being discontinued (like all of Tiny Letter, not just mine. They’re just shutting down. A bit dramatic of TL in my opinion.)
So it’s Substack from here on out. Or at least until they shut down too.
I will also use the opportunity of switching to this platform to write more things — essays and short stories, maybe the occasional edgy think piece entitled something like “I’m done with limited series, give me seasons again!” or, “Maybe you’re not an introvert, you just hate your friends?” etc.
I’m looking forward to writing more and sharing it with you! I’m also looking forward to touring around the country this year. I’m coming to:
Albuquerque NM, Santa Fe NM, Hudson Valley NY, Annapolis MD, NYC, Long Island NY, Hartford CT, Ann Arbor MI, Louisville KY, Alameda CA, Wilkes-Barre PA, Cold Spring NY, Seattle WA, and more!
All tickets as they go on sale are available on my website.
I also have a couple of new sets out on YouTube for those who can’t catch a live show. The first is for Don’t Tell Comedy and it’s a fun 5 and a half minutes with my viola (I also reveal a BIG life update in the set and you can check it out here.)
The second is a bit of a weird relic. Back in May of 2021 I taped a set for Dry Bar Comedy (a squeaky clean comedy platform with no cursing or sex talk allowed) out in Provo, Utah, and they took years to post it but it’s finally out on YouTube. I hadn’t been doing a lot of stand-up leading up to the taping due to the pandemic and shows not happening. My muscle for remembering jokes was so atrophied and I was just so anxious about remembering what joke came next. I also feel I’m a pretty different comic now than I was then. But I like a lot of the jokes in the set, and it’s a good clean fun 20 minutes fit for the whole family, so you can watch it with your kids in the same room on full blast and you won’t have to worry about me suddenly joking about chicken sex or how my tits got bigger. I also recommend it for falling asleep to. Watch it here.
And if you’re still here and haven’t clicked over to YouTube, I have some thoughts:
As we begin a new year, it’s got me thinking about resolutions. Not which resolutions I want to make, but the actual act of making resolutions. It’s a hopeful act. An act sparked by an arbitrary marker of time passing. It’s the thought that maybe, just maybe, I could be a bit happier this year. Maybe this year will be the year I replace scrolling with flipping the pages of a novel. Maybe this year I’ll exhibit more kindness and compassion towards others. And maybe I’ll extend those feelings towards myself too, all while drinking a bit more water. And maybe I’ll move my body more, maybe even dance a little. Maybe I’ll find myself in more situations with good friends who make me laugh until I cry, as the rest of the world momentarily melts away. Maybe.
But, probably not!
(What if I just ended the piece right there? Haha. Don’t worry, I’m not that pessimistic.)
All kidding aside, there’s a good chance those “maybes” are actually “maybe nots,” because changing and forming new habits is extremely difficult! And that really sucks. But, if we bring more awareness to how difficult it is, maybe we’d be more compassionate towards ourselves when we ultimately fail (and self-compassion is even one of the resolutions! How about that?)
Maybe this year you won’t change much. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe you’re already pretty great. You’re probably a decent friend to at least a couple people, and maybe you’re okay at your job. Maybe you make people laugh at work and it’s okay if you never try stand-up. Maybe someone is secretly in love with you and you’d never think of it because you’re humble. Maybe trying to figure out how to optimize your life is fun and satisfying, even though you won’t ever succeed at optimization. Because optimizing isn’t human. We’re not robots. At least not yet.