[Guys! Read this here on Elite Daily. Or, keep reading here for the original UNEDITED version. (Nothing XXX here - but their version is prettier because they are awesome editors and I am crazy.)]
DISCLAIMER: Mentally. I mentally abandoned law school. Apparently, Merriam-Webster defines abandonment as complete, permanent neglect. I am still a law student—so as an annoying cliché of one, I feel it is my duty to clarify this ambiguity.
Having to wear a
medical-grade eyepatch in elementary school really changes you. The eyepatch,
worn under perfectly circular glasses, transformed me from a cute toddler to a
post-Quidditch accident Harry Potter. Fun fact: turns out kids don’t want to
hang out with someone who looks like a fictional wizard that wasn’t even
created yet. I then threw myself into reading, writing, puzzles—anything that
didn’t require a second person. My appearance eventually changed, but my
hobbies didn’t. Just a couple years ago, I took the ultimate triathlon of
reading, writing, and puzzles—the LSAT.
“Wow, what a great story
about an ugly duckling who grew up to become the greatest lawyer of all time.”
–what I would be thinking at this point, and definitely what my mom still wants.
But no. I changed my life this summer. Seriously, I dramatically changed the
course of my life. I leased out my apartment, didn’t register for summer
classes, left my great job at a criminal defense firm, and got the hell out.
The summer before my last
year of law school will not go down in history books—or my diary—as the summer
before my last year of law school. This past summer will forever—or until a
crazy fan destroys my diary—be known as the summer I accidentally became a
famous* touring stand-up comedian.
*“Famous” as used by my dear
grandmother, convinced that my Facebook is a website someone made for me. I
didn’t correct her, because she is adorable and I am the worst.
A lot of people don’t
understand this. A lot of people have a problem with this. 99.2% of both groups
overlap. The other 0.8% is my parents, who—contrary to what DJ Jazzy Jeff and
The Fresh Prince stated—actually do understand, and have a problem regardless.
This is not the Venn diagram I want. What I want is for you to understand. What
I want is for you to know how a law student in Florida got to perform in Los
Angeles and New York City. What I want is for you to know what can happen when you
listen to the Dove chocolate wrappers and actually try to follow your
bliss—even if just for a summer.
Step 1: Be your own Made coach.
The first time I did
stand-up, everything fell into place. Kidding. I involuntarily blacked out from
nerves then ran off stage and voluntarily blacked out from alcohol. It wasn’t
until two years later, the beginning of my second year of law school, that I tried
again—and that was because a friend heard about my bad experience and signed me
up without asking—sorry, I meant “friend”. That second time wasn’t too much
better, but no one blacked out. Shortly after my set, the club manager
approached me to open for their headliner next month. What? I had only
performed a combined total of nine minutes. But, since I was suddenly a
professional comedian, I did not say this out loud and just nervously nodded.
Maybe the club was desperate.
Maybe they really needed a girl on stage. Or, maybe I just ignored those evil
voices in my head and started embracing the fact that I just may be on to
something. I had no idea what to do next, but as a child of the ‘90s, I knew
what I needed—a Made coach. Someone
to guide me, someone to whip me into shape, someone to force me to ask my crush
to prom—I needed someone. After quickly remembering that Made has long been lying in the cancelled-shows grave with That’s So Raven and Even Stevens (note to self: I now know where I want to be buried),
I realized I had to do it myself.
As my own new Made coach, I signed up for as many
shows as I could find. I wrote. I sent my video to any festival accepting
submissions. I wrote some more. The more I performed, the more I realized how
much I love it. My Made coach and I
had a long talk in the mirror about my goals, and we agreed that if I ever
wanted to do anything with comedy, I had to leave town. Great, I’ll move to New
York after graduation. I could go this summer, test it out… no. I’m not ready.
What about my job? What about summer classes? How the hell do I find a place to
stay for only two months? New York is overcrowded and I don’t even know what
the weather would be like. How would I pack?
Spoiler alert—you will never
reach a point where you exhale to yourself, “Okay. I’m ready.” There will
always be doubt. There will always be fear—you just have to face it and build
on it. Made episodes didn’t start
when the kid was mentally prepared—they started when the coach invaded his
cafeteria and forced him to get moving. The more I thought about spending the
summer in New York, the more terrified I was. This is going to cost a lot of
money that I don’t have. I can’t just risk the—new e-mail notification.
“Congratulations! Festival line-ups attached.” And just like that, whether I
was ready for it or not, the trip became real. Thanks, Made coach.
Step 2: Cry every day.
During my two-month trip, I
cried about thirty times. The plan was to do the festival in Los Angeles for
the first weekend of June, then head to New York for more performances and an
eight-week improv class at the legendary Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. I
booked the flights, found places to stay, then realized that this is seriously,
actually happening. I can’t back out now. This was the first time I cried.
At first, I took all my
crying as a sign that I shouldn’t be there. What the hell am I doing? I shouldn’t
have left my apartment; I shouldn’t have left my job. This is stupid. But then
it dawned on me—if I wanted to make the least stupid choice, I would’ve stayed
at home. This is extremely stupid. This is extremely hard, but it’s exactly
what I need to be doing. If you want to change your life, you have to force
yourself out of your comfort zone. So, yes, manly man in the back of the class:
technically, you don’t have to cry. But life outside of your comfort zone is
hard, and side effects may include tears.
After a good cry, wipe away
your tears with the same tissues Donald Trump uses—dollar bills. Seriously,
once I found a part-time job in New York, I stopped crying so much. It’s sad
how much we let jobs affect our identity, but screw it—I needed this. Finally,
I wasn’t an outsider anymore, or at least as much of one. I don’t want to tell
you where I worked out of respect for my employer. I will tell you that we sold
American apparel, but I won’t tell you anything else, because I’m so
respectful. One day, while hanging up leotards, my 19-year-old coworker asked
me why I was spending the summer in the city. He laughed at my response, “Ha! A
comedian. I knew something was off about you.”
Step 3: Coffee.
Coffee, tea, meth—however you
prefer to pump fuel into your lifeblood, be prepared to do so. Your time is
limited, so make it count. The more shows I did, the more people I met. The
more people I met, the more shows I kept booking. In fact, according to the
tally in my diary, I performed more times this summer than I had in my entire
life. Towards the end of my two months, I was doing five shows a week. This
hurt, literally. My body was wrecked with blisters, guarding insides wrecked by
too much cheap pizza. The last show of my trip was the night before my 7am
flight home, and I stayed up way too late having deep, drunken conversations
with my improv friends. We reminisced about our class, ate more pizza, and
joked about how we should just make a living dabbling in every career field—life
is too short to settle. On the flight back, I was in so much pain, but I
couldn’t stop smiling.
No one knows you as well as
you do. Repeat that. Repeat it again. People have told me that pursuing
stand-up is a waste of time. People have told me there is no way I can do this
as a career, but we hope your little vacation from reality was nice. Oh, I heard she wants to do stand-up comedy!
Aw! Good for her, it’s cute to have dreams before working for a firm renders
her soul incapable of dreaming! When you do something bold, people are
going to take notice. They will doubt you, question you, and analyze your
motives. The sad thing is—the vast majority of people who question you just
hope that your answers will somehow justify their own life decisions. Very few
people actually care. Depressing, I know—but once you accept that, you can do
anything. It’s liberating, really. No one knows you as well as you do. No one.
I am currently writing this
at my desk in my apartment, back at school. The same people who hated on my
escape to New York are now hating on my decision to come back. They think I
couldn’t handle the city. They think I chickened out. These people do not know
me as well as I do. No one does. People are going to judge you regardless, so
you might as well do whatever the hell you want. I may be sitting at the same
desk as last year, but I’m a completely different person from the 5’4” glob of
perpetual anxiety that sat here a year ago. I am no longer afraid of the city.
I am no longer afraid of the stage. I am no longer afraid of trying.