Originally written and spoken: August 2019.
Growing up, I thought I would either win an oscar by age 19, or die by age 21. Neither of those things happened. Somewhere along the timeline, I took an interest in music. I heavily pursued learning the guitar and songwriting, and I would come to Nashville every summer for five years, until I graduated college and could move here in hopes of starting a career in the music industry.
Flash forward to 2016, I had been living in Nashville for a year at this point, and was working a day job and definitely not pursuing music anymore. I was making excuses as to why I wasn't playing open mics or trying to connect with the people I had met over the five years I had spent coming here. Usually they were excuses like, “I’m too tired” or “I don’t know where to start”. Which was all garbage.
One day, a coworker asked me, “If you could do anything else, what would you do?” and I said, “literally ANYTHING.” She then said, “well, maybe music isn’t the right path for you.”
At first, I was offended that someone would have the nerve to say my lack of ambition and work ethic towards something would prove I don’t care (she was right), but still, who has the nerve these days to say that.
A few days pass, and that same coworker and I had our lunch break at the same time, and she asked, “what would you do if you weren’t doing this?” I impulsively said, “I don’t know, comedy?” The American office was one of my favorite shows (still is), and I wanted to understand why some things were funny, and why others weren’t, and how to create that.
In a true Elle Woods moment, I had remembered that the boyfriend I broken up with before moving to Nashville was finishing up his masters in creative writing, and always had an interest in trying stand up. I thought he was the funniest person in the world, he thought I was just alright. That has sat with me for years.
The coworker and I finished up our lunches, and I kept thinking about my answer the rest of my shift. Not too long after, I decided to try to write some jokes, and to go to an open mic.
The first time I tried stand up, I knew I had found what I didn’t know I was looking for. The second I got off of the stage, I knew my life would be different forever, and that I finally understood the difference between really really liking something (music), and truly loving something (comedy). It felt like a missing piece of my soul finally was found.
With that, it was also terrifying. I took a long time between trying stand up for the first time, and doing it a second. Because I was scared. I knew this was it, but it terrified me. I still had my doubts and hesitations.
A week or so later, a friend of mine recommended this book to me, Sick in the Head by Judd Apatow. It is a collection of interviews that he has done with comedians over the years. I read it, and never felt more understood. My whole life I just thought I was so crazy (granted, the book is called “sick in the head”, so not too far off), but I didn’t realize there were other folks who thought about the world and life the same way I did.
Around the same time, I had been offered a full-time position in a 9-5 downtown, verses the grocery story job I had at the time. I had to make a decision on what I wanted to do with my professional and creative life. I chose to stay at my current job, and to give comedy a fair shot. I said I’d give it a year, and if I hated it or it wasn’t working out, I’d look for a new job or move somewhere else.
After that, I started going to pursue comedy full-steam ahead and I haven’t looked back since. It’s been the best and the most intense three years of my life, but mostly the best. It’s not been easy, Ive spent too much time sleeping in parking lots and dealing with racist and sexist comments than I’d ever care to. It’s not always easy, because most of the time, I am the only person who looks like I do on any show or in any scene. It has made for a lonely life sometimes, but the payoff is when I get other marginalized people who come up to me after shows and say, “thank you, it takes a lot to go up there and share about your life, and I appreciate it.” When in reality, I am so thankful for them.
I had a show in Atlanta a few months back, and I had to drive straight through after the show to get to work at 5am on time. I hadn’t slept at all, and I was grumbling about how tired I was. That same coworker asked me, “would you do anything different?” and I stopped and said, “absolutely not.”
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