Gathering Speed

Slight tape delay on the year report, which was actually locked in and attached to the beginning of October. But I guess now’s s good a time as any to really go to work on the first year in Chicago considering the fact that for the first eight days of my time here the only items I had in my tiny closet of an apartment were a bed, a cable-less tv, and the box the tv came in (which split duties as a tv stand, table, and chair). Does this mean I’ll write a monumentous follow up in February to commemorate the year since buying a microwave? Probably not, because that appliance has been repossessed.

I’m actually writing this from the air, traveling from 80 degree Tampa to 59 degree Chicago. A lesser mind would make some kind of perspective or vantage point metaphor here, but I refuse to succumb to the pressure and will just say that I know what the deal is, regardless of my current altitude. Hacks… But I will say that getting out of the city and the life for a couple days does go a long way to providing some clarity on what your everyday life is like.

I might even go the opposite way of the last one of these and talk about more general things than I did before. I could go on and on and on about switching apartments, the ups-and-downs of figuring out how to do sketch comedy right away (I won’t call what I do improv…ever), the Three Oaks adventure, getting whacked in June (which was doing a February impression), getting total perspective in September, the dreams that flicker in and out but never seem to die, or the sense that everything is about to change. But I won’t.

Reflecting on where I was a year ago is easy, because I’ve followed almost the exact path I expected to. I didn’t plan on working (for food) as much as I am, and I didn’t plan on getting through the Conservatory as fast as I am or having a TourCo audition in three weeks. This has been without question the fastest year of my life. You’ve got the carrots dangling at the end of the tunnel and this suspicion that the weekly activities are propelling you towards them. I say suspicion and not faith because from my current place in the journey, there is way too much discomfort. Plus, faith is something you can’t see or hear or touch. People don’t have faith about winning the lottery, and those that do never win, participating in the most regressive tax in the world. How can these schmucks in Congress look me in the face and say that placing a bet on a football game online is unraveling the sweater of American morality (which you know is a turtleneck) and the scratch-offs that command a palpable percentage of the lowest-class’s income are a perfectly reasonable way to raise funds for public projects? What are you stoned? Why not be honest for a change and replace the Keno cards with full blown craps tables at the unemployment office? At least then the poor saps have a chance to win.

Sidetracked…whatever. Anyway, the reason time has moved so quickly is that everything has been for Sundays; I get up every morning and schlep downtown, busting my ass for a mismanaged company who has a customer service representative posing as an IT director. I spend 90% of my after-tax net on rent, food, and the gym (which just fills up the time even more). All for the shot to do the comedy thing. That’s what this whole thing has been about, I tell myself, just get to Sunday and then repeat. I guess this is what it’s like to be religious. When the only one day in Seven really seems to count, yeah, time’s going to move.

I took the LSAT in October 2003 and wrote my essays for UVA and Maryland in October 2004. In October 2005, I moved to Chicago and in 2006, I’ll audition for TourCo. They say no one gets in on their first shot, that you need substantial improv training to do sketch as well as you need to. My next shot will undoubtedly come after the Conservatory is over with, and who knows what I’ll be looking forward to on a weekly basis when that rolls around, or if I’ll abandon a fantastic city to join the battle in Los Angeles. The uncertainty never gets any easier, especially for someone who ate the same Chinese Food every morning in high school.

Here we are: one year in a landlocked city, secured only in uncertainty. My brother’s trying to buy a BMW, I’ve got a buddy going to Cambodia and Laos, another doing 80 well-compensated hours a week, and I just met a back surgeon doing four million a year that’s only nine years older than me. And here I am, about to get off a plane and hop in a cab, maybe pick up a sub along the way. I could be in my second year right now, going on interviews for six figures of comfort. Why the hell am I doing this instead?

I guess I’m suspicious.