Thursday, March 21

stand up

I bought some nail polish recently without looking at the label. When I got home I noticed the title "Call Your Mother." So I did.

Can you tell I'm working on my standup routine? And no, not all my jokes are that bad.

Springtime has come, which means one never knows if it's gonna be 70 degrees or 40 on any given day--it's enough to make a girl insane. So I can go mad or I can write comedy. Though often the two go hand-in-hand.

But seriously, folks, I discovered that I can create a station for standup comedy on Pandora and there's no stopping me now. My favorite line so far comes from Mitch Hedberg: "I'm tired of following my dreams. I'm just gonna ask 'em where they're headed and hook up with 'em there." Ah, the sanity in madness.

I've been getting this question a lot lately: "So, what are you up to these days?," often followed by "Are you working?," then after my unsatisfactory answer, "What are you going to do with your life?" It's amazing how obsessed people are with this.

I, too, was obsessed with this quest for a long time. But it has lately occurred to me that whatever I'm going to do with my life, I'm already doing. It's really too late to decide.

I just forget sometimes that, as an artist, it's a little harder to provide acceptable answers to this question. I make coffee in the morning and then spend time outside with my dog. I take care of pressing paperwork that's piled up on my desk. This week, I finally put some paint on a blank canvas that had been sitting in my room for months. I write. I cook. That's what I do. And that's just fine with me.

Perhaps the cyclical nature of this existence doesn't satisfy the more linear mindset. I can change to a different current mid stream, if not to a different horse, but that's just the next step in a life that I am just trying to live to the fullest every day.

Spring is a season that often inspires change as the natural world pulses with new activity. But that doesn't mean nothing was happening in the dormant months, or that you weren't doing anything before you decided to do the next thing.

So, if you can today, stop following your dreams. Just stand up and consider what you are doing right now. This is your life.

OneArmGirl