Diffusing Passions

not super psyched about that anymore

Those of you who know me personally know that I love standup comedy. I was obsessed with it for two years. Every waking moment was spent writing jokes, trying to get booked on shows, and producing shows. I liked comedy because of how exhilarating it felt, to go up in front of a crowd and roll the dice to see if people liked my jokes. I would dream about performing at comedy clubs, the glorious 10k followers on Instagram, and having people come up to me on the train and ask for a selfie. I had a little taste of comedy success. A video doing semi-well (25k views) and performing in front of 300+ people. 

But life has recently gotten in the way of my passion. College is over, I’m getting on shows far smaller and less often, and I spend most of my time performing at open mics. My typical schedule is 3 mics a week, and the occasional show, but it’s not as fun as it used to be. I live in San Francisco, and the gravity of this city is pulling me in a different direction than stand-up comedy. Everyone around me seems to be building cool shit. SF is the center of the universe for technology and sometimes I feel like telling jokes on stage is a roundabout way of wasting time.

On Monday nights I go to the Edinburgh Castle Pub open mic in the Tenderloin. Zigzagging around the homeless people into a bar that faintly smells of urine. I walk upstairs into a room called the dungeon. Typically, 13 dudes are scattered in the room, all comics, and they go up one by one, tell their dick jokes, and leave. Going 12th is the most depressing; you’ve been sitting through 90 mins of dick jokes, and now you have to do your set in front of the one weird guy whose stage name is “Toothbrush”. 

I zigzag back around the homeless people get on the 49 Bus back home and scroll through X. A startup founder posted a stripe screenshot “10K Monthly Recurring Revenue”, says the caption. A few scrolls later, “Excited to announce our series A for our AI App”. And I can’t help but wonder, what the hell am I doing with my time?

The team at SLAM Ventures, a group I really admire, are building really cool products that lots of people use. My Co-Author Ajay has quit his job to build his own thing. I can't help but fantasize about the same path for myself. The time in the shower spent thinking of new jokes is now spent thinking up ideas for apps, websites, and projects I can spend my time on. 

I haven’t quit comedy by any means. But my passion for it has diffused to a much lower concentration. The biggest thing that has changed since college are my adult obligations. A combination of my parents and Uncle Sam financed my lifestyle through undergrad and grad school. But now, it’s my employer. I have a crippling anxiety that every second I spend out doing comedy is being used as a fair cause by my employer to replace me with a better, more focused, engineer. And San Francisco’s culture mandates that I spend more time on VS code than on stage.

As I was graduating from Berkeley, I couldn’t be happier. I was doing more comedy than ever, I had a nice job lined up, friends by my side, and no real financial responsibility. But things change, and as your attention gets split several different ways, you have less time to give to certain things. I told myself a lie when I walked across the stage and accepted my degree. I told myself that I could have it all. I’d work from 9-5, go do comedy, work on fun personal projects, and stay super fit. I couldn’t do it. Things started to slip through the cracks, specifically things that brought me joy: comedy and building stuff. Busy day at work? I’m definitely skipping the open mic. Got invited to a party? Well, that personal project is immediately put on the backburner. 

WW2 history is interesting and I recently was thinking about exactly why Germany lost.

Am I spread too thin? If Germany couldn’t fight a war on two fronts, I probably can’t do 2 things really well at once either… While Germany’s strategic blunder saved the world from autocracy, it got me thinking deeply about which front I want to divert my troops to.

Fighting a war on two fronts is an oversimplification of the thoughts racing through my mind. An important aspect of my situation isn’t captured by my WW2 analogy: the idea of geographic gravity. I was foolish to think that moving to San Francisco and joining a startup wouldn't affect my comedy. The gravity of the city pulled me in a different direction, despite my best intentions to stay loyal to my hobby. I must come to terms with the fact that getting good at one thing might lead to having less time to do something else.

I am going to Europe this winter to decompress, get some fresh air, and ponder a little more about what Hitler did wrong. I plan to pick a front, because I, unlike him, intend to win.