Living a Dream

Baby, don't hurt me . Sorry about that. This entry should really fall under the "makes you wonder" category and thus the other blog, but it's something that I've been thinking about since moving to Chicago, so it stays here - as this is the Chicago/entertainment world/whatever it is blog. I was on the bus home from the first time I've ever done improv on a stage in front of people who weren't my classmates (went alright, more nerve wracking than I expected) and I got to thinking. Over the last month or so I've had to say goodbye to an awful lot of people. Not permanent goodbyes, thankfully, as I think I've done a pretty good job keeping up with most of them. These people are my closest friends and family and they mean the world to me. So when I tell these people that I love them, it comes as no surprise. They say it back in most cases, and we go on our way. But we never stop and try to articulate it. There were at least two people who I had planne...

I'm not trying to be manly, but I don't consider myself as the type who is afraid of a lot of things. I'm not afraid of heights, spiders, truck drivers, or even Germans. So I'm not going to write a post titled "fear" and tell you all about any kind of standard fear (like my fear of dirty dish-water and how when I touch it, it triggers my gag-reflex). Nor will I pretend I'm great because I went skydiving on Sunday. Yes, it was completely insane. And no, I'll not soon forget it. And yes, I get sick on roller coasters but still thought this was a good idea. That's not the kind of fear I'm talking about. I do have one or two very real fears, though. I want to try to dig into one of them. We'll see how this goes. I have a paralyzing fear of being like everyone else. Anyone reading this, whether you know me well, have only met me in passing, or only know who I am because you stumbled upon this and have never met me in a face-to-face environment, ...

I had another one of those moments today. It reaffirmed that I'm making the right choice by wanting to go to Second City and go after the ultimate goal of making people laugh all the time. That's actually one of the nice things about caddying, is that it makes me realize that I don't want to be caddying and would rather be out doing something I enjoy. Now that I'm thinking about it, there were actually two moments, and I'll explain them. Starting now-ish. I was forecaddying for a group of four really nice guys. Being nice guys, they asked me what I wanted to do and what I was doing and all those standards, so I told them I was saving up some money from caddying and was gonna head to Chicago in the fall to go after the dream of Second City and either Improv or Comedy Writing. As we talked about it, the one guy said something like this: "Well, you're looking at three CPAs and a business owner. They're good jobs, it's a great way to make a living...but...

Disclaimer: this post has nothing to do with me wanting to be famous or anything like that. It is exclusively about how I feel about the country in which I live. I've been told that the easiest way to write is to write about something you love, or at least about something you know. If you get lucky, those two are the same. I'm feeling lucky. The current world climate is full of moments that make you think "boy, maybe I am really lucky, I shouldn't take so many things for granted," but how often do you really take that to heart? Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, market crashes, bailouts, unemployment...these things happen - some of them are worse than others. But through the good and the bad, one thing rings true to me. There is nothing I love as much as I love my country. I wanted to write this on Memorial Day when I got home from work, but what happened instead only affirmed my love for all things American. Someone I know called me because their basement had flood...

There's a commonly used expression that says you should do something every day that scares you. I'm not so sure that this is a safe practice because I don't have the money to do a lot of scary things like parachuting, alligator wrestling, heli -skiing, or asking someone to marry me (easily the scariest on the list). That leaves me with less expensive fear options like driving on the wrong side of the road, walking into the Crip neighborhood with Blood colors on, or what I did today; stand on the top of a really shaky ladder and paint a barn on a very windy day. I realize that painting a barn isn't gonna get me the street cred that Coolio has, but I'll be damned if I didn't feel a gust of wind, wobble a little bit, feel my heart skip a beat, and then laugh about how awesome it was. My point is this: How great is that feeling? How cool is it to know that something could have gone horribly wrong, but it didn't? Does anything make you feel more alive than that...

I planned on writing a poem to a complete stranger who happened to be my 100th follower. Instead, I'm now going to write a poem to Mike Eppich ( @Mike_Eppich on Twitter). Mike came in as my 100th follower. On the one hand, that's fun...on the other hand, he was my 40th (ish) follower who then decided to unfollow me in hopes of becoming my 100th follower and recipient of said poem. The shame is that it actually worked. The reason I have such a 'tude toward this character is because I played baseball with him for a couple years and have kept in very close touch with him ever since. He specifically requested that I do not write a haiku for him. So here's a haiku for him. Mike just quit his job He probably sucked at it 'Cause Mike Eppich sucks. So that's a start. But I feel like that's a total cop-out. Check out @Mike_Eppich and you can read his little bio, It's where he uses ellipses to fake some James Bond style. It falsely claims he works and sells unifor...