I Made Today be a Waste

I woke up late after being out till 4am at the hackathon. Went back to said hackathon hoping to catch some people, no one was there. I must have missed the schedule that said where the presentations were being held. So I was all alone.

Then I headed over to Endgames Productions practice, only to find out it was canceled. Apparently I suck at communication and instead of conveying that my weekends were booked, I communicated "I need a break from improv". So I was taken off the email list that would have told me practice was canceled.

Now it is hot and I can't sleep. At least the heat is outside of my control.

Noteworthy - Leaving Reply All

I left my first improv troupe, Reply All, on Tuesday. The funny parts are fun, but despite being low drama content, the off-stage stuff wasn't what I wanted from my improv troupe. I want some drive. I want a troupe that fights for gigs. I want a clear decision making process, not a weird mix of democracy and oligarchy. I want to feel valued when I have feedback and not ostracized. If I have an opinion, I want it to count more than a red vote in a blue state. If I don't have a voice, that's fine too, but I need to know where I stand, and I had none of that in Reply All. What kills me most about leaving is that they'll go on to be funny and they'll keep doing great shows without me. They may even pull it together and organize all the things I felt I was missing in the troupe. Who knows?!?! I do know that if I had stayed much longer I would have come to loathe practice and I would have been poison to the rest of the group.

Lame Blog is Lame

It's been almost a month since I last blogged. I've been to Chicago another time, and now I'm working on Groupon's API. What's an API? Well it's the glue that makes the app on your iPhone hook in to the website so you can buy stuff from your handheld. It's good work.

Comedy is also blowing up. I'm in a second group called Endgames Productions. We performed last Friday for the Hunter's Point Yacht Club here in SF. The Dickersons even got to see my comedy finally. My parents will get to see me perform this upcoming Thursday when my original troupe, Reply All, takes the stage. I find that I'm being funnier, like how I felt about myself back in high school.

In a lot of ways I feel like there's been a bit of a reboot to when I was 19. It doesn't make sense when I type it out, and the parts that do make sense you'd probably judge me harshly if I did tell you. It's almost like I get to rewind the years I spent fencing and make a different choice, or a different set of choices rather. I'm feeling less "behind", and more like I'm moving and I have ten more year of experience while being as fearless, confident, and charismatic as I was before a string of bad jobs and over commitment pulled those things away from my bones. I'm back to being the guy who can look in the mirror and tackle my goals like a seasoned pro.

Done With Travel for Now

I'm back from Chicago. I was out that way for a vacation with the Dickersons over the weekend and ended up getting asked to stay out there for a week at Groupon. Travel is fun, but it is good to be home. I've been missing a lot of practice with my improv troupe ReplyAll. I even missed our last show which makes me a sad panda. Right now I'm trying to man-up and convince myself I can direct an hour long show about air-travel. There's all kinds of comedy potential there, like the guy that grabbed a beer and bailed from the JetBlue plane via emergency slide.

I feel a lot of things lately. The biggest one is that I feel less lost. But it is still a somewhat scary feeling. Before it was like being in a completely dark room. Maybe the room is in Nirvana, or maybe it is in Detroit, you have no idea, so it is kind of OK. Now I've whittled a big enough hole to see where I am, and I'm a long way off from where I thought I was, but I've got a direction. The trick is that there's a strange forrest with talking trees and a fire swamp between me and that place, and I have no combat training for dealing with R.O.U.S.s.

What I mean is that I'm afraid to start because it means digging up the core of who I am and telling him to go f*** himself because he's getting in the way of who he wants to be. Like climbing a wall, sometimes you have to let go with more limbs than you'd like to get to the next hold. It is time that I stop changing things just to change them, and time that I root up and really commit to the next step - it's going to be a big one to get from here to there.

My friend from the airport

Guess he gave up waiting and opted for a stroll in the park

Latitude Dashboard at Last!!!

They fixed ir for me!!!!  Now I can see what the goog knows about my movements! How much time I spend at work, where I like to go in the city, where I take vacations. I cannot wait!

Listen Now Ya'll It's Sabotage

Self sabotage that is. I woke up this morning and realized that since I've left Indiana I've removed myself from every position of leadership/power that has been placed in front of me. I could have been what ever I wanted to be in fencing, but instead I sold my fencing gear. I could have stuck with glass blowing and become an instructor, but I bailed on that. I once had a group that was learning to fly kites for kite surfing, but I disbanded that group, same with Wine Wednesdays. These are things I made and as soon as they looked like they were going to take off I shut them down. I even stepped down form being an organizer for the Euchre Meetup. Now I can even feel myself pulling away from some of the improv I started. It's like I'm wired to abandon success.

It is ironic that I can embrace failure, but success I can't bear to hold on to.

I'm sorry Mr. Dino...

It seems your flight is delayed several million years, we're terribly
sorry for this inconvenience.

Old Stuff

Tonight I decided to dig through some of the stuff I have squandered away. Old stuff. Lots of cards, many from birthdays and Christmas. There's also a lot of photos. It's sort of my life summary to me in one foot cube. No one else would know what it means, not by itself. I know when things are out of order chronologically, and yet I don't ever try to organize it.

I found a really great card from the Dickersons back when I was living in Cincinnati and they were hundreds of miles apart. Matt bought the card, wrote a message in it, mailed it to Lauren, she wrote her own message in it, then sent it on to me. It's the cool fun stuff like that which makes them an awesome married couple.

It's funny-interesting to me to look at some of the pictures. Like when I was actin in A Midsummer Night's Dream and my mom had me pose next to Nick. I admired the hell out of Nick's acting ability and I remembered feeling like I didn't deserve to be in a picture with him. In hindsight, I was probably intimidating to him as well.

What stood out to me the most from all this history perusing was one thing: Anne and Anne understand me. Both Cyran and Radavich get who Will Read is at his core. Anne C's cards still make me laugh in the way that we first shared a double entendre about wood. Anne R helps me laugh at the embarrassing parts of life. They both get my love for dinosaurs. It gives me a sad when I think that I haven't seen either of them in a long time. Dear Anne & Anne, Seems like it's time for some travel. ~Will

It Feels Like That Thing

I'm setting up a new comedy show. It isn't really a troupe, maybe only a set number of shows. I don't know what it'll be. But I'm making it. And that feels good. Really good. Something to put my name to, something to own.