Note: The post tonight is part 1 of a 2 part series, and is a fictional story set four years in the future. My Fall represents a worse-case scenario of my weaknesses getting the best of me. My Rise is a best-case scenario where my strengths lead to greatness. Again, both cases are fictional, and are meant merely as a creative writing exercise and possibly as lessons for me to remember in the future.
MY FALL
“The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.” – Sophocles
Fresh off a move to New York City, a year of excellent ratings at work, and some strong stand-up performances, I was feeling on top of the world. On the verge of 24, everything seemed to be lining up just right, and my confidence was soaring.
I had achieved and surpassed a number of my goals in 2007, and knew that 2008 was going to be an even better year. With a slew of accomplishments-professional, comedic and personal- under my belt, I was ready to go.
The move to NYC was a draining one. I had committed to delivering my key projects with excellence, and long days turned into long nights just to fulfill that commitment. By the time the 2007 Holidays were done, my projects from the prior role were wrapped up, and I was settled into my Manhattan apartment, I was mentally and physically tired.
Over the course of the next couple of months, I allowed myself a break. I spent a lot of time just watching TV, surfing the Internet, reading various business and comedy books, giving myself excuses not to do any real work. I justified my (in)actions by reflecting on my past year’s successes, not the challenges that lay ahead.
The comedy was the first thing to suffer. You can’t just stop showing up to a corporate job without their being immediate repercussions- there are people there expecting to see you, coworkers and bosses that will hold you accountable.
You don’t have that person looking over you in your hobbies, especially not comedy. A club manager isn’t going to call you and ask why you haven’t been showing up to the open mics, or why you’ve yet to sign up for an improv class. In a city like NYC, it’s hard enough just to make it into the comedy scene, let alone break through it. And you certainly won’t do it sitting at home.
But at the time I wasn’t thinking about that. I told myself I’d get back to doing comedy once work settled down, once I got to the know the city, once I finished my website.
Yeah, that was it. The “amazing website” I was supposed to create to make myself more marketable. I had a number of great ideas for it: a constantly updated blog, cartoons representing some of my stand-up bits, games based on my stories, videos and audio of me in action, merchandise.
I was going to get my piece of “Internet fame” through YouTube videos, and creative applications. It was going to help set me apart.
The problem is that it never happened. And I had told myself, until the site goes up, I’ll stay off the stage- that was going to be my motivation. But I’d come home from work, tired from the mental drain of trying to learn a new job and still deliver results.
I’d plop down on the couch and watch “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” because that’s kind of like working on comedy, trying to learn from the people that made it. But day by day, “Inside the Actor’s Studio” turned into NBC’s Thursday night lineup because it’s comedy, which turned into sitting down and watching whatever was on.
All the while my website stayed in it’s unfinished state from 2007.
In addition to TV, I read a lot. It wasn’t fiction, but business books like “The World is Flat,” productivity books like “Getting Things Done,” and comedy books like “Truth in Comedy.” In my mind, reading was “work.”
“So what if I didn’t get on stage this week, I read three chapters of ‘Improvise.’ This will just make me better the next time I do get on stage (or need to manage my time, or get this project done).” The problem was “next time” didn’t happen.
The social life was the next to go. I had done a pretty good job of getting out and making new friends when I first arrived in the Big Apple. The city was still very exciting, I was the new guy in the office so people made it easy by offering up things to do. And my friends and family were still on the top of my mind, with plenty of people staying in touch, talking about how much they’ll visit.
But the big city life started wearing off. The twenty minute subway ride to various entertainment spots started getting old, and the allure of the TV, Internet, and books in my apartment started to take hold. With no roommate or close friends to pull me out of the house, I easily slipped into a comfortable pattern of spending weekends alone.
At first it was nice. It was a great way to relax from the move, and to really plan for the future- to figure out what I was really going to do with my life.
I had a lot of plans, like those for comedy. I also had plans for doing even better at P&G, for building a huge social group of friends, for being and staying happy. I had a lot of plans.
“Never mistake motion for action.” – Ernest Hemingway
Eventually the same cancer that destroyed my comedy and social life infected my business world as well. I started off strong, leading one of my first projects to overwhelming success and setting the roadmap for another great year.
But I started getting complacent. I leaned on my success from the past year for justification. The internal humor blog slowly started dying, shoved out of the way because of “too much work.” My network started crumbling as the effort to maintain and grow it from NYC in a Cincinnati-based company was “too high.”
Over time the highly productive 8, 9, 10 hour days, turned into 6 hour stints more reminiscent of “Office Space.” ESPN.com started replacing the internal company site, RSS Feeds replacing corporate email.
At first, no one really noticed. I had learned my role, and my boss’ schedule, well enough that I could fake doing a good job. Fortunately at P&G, you can’t do that for too long.
As the three core areas of my life from 2007 started declining, time started to blur. The first year passed and I received average ratings at work. I blamed them on my recent move. I had only been on stage a handful of times. I blamed it on the “stressful” work. I failed to stay in touch with a lot of my friends, some of my family, and didn’t really meet and stay connected with a new group of people in the city. I blamed the other people.
By 2009, I was no longer a comedian. I was still decent at my job- some projects finished on time, others got delayed, and I rarely went “above and beyond.” I had returned to my more introverted ways of my middle school years- talking only to a small group of people, making no real attempts to meet others.
A bipolar self-esteem did little to help. One day I’d look in the mirror and think “Girls want me. Guys want to be me.” The next day, I’d think “What’s wrong with you?” A mix of anger and depression started to seep in as I failed to achieve results like I had in the past.
What others offered in encouragement, I took as expectations. Off hand remarks that I’d “someday be the CIO,” meant I was failing when other people from my new hire class got promoted before me. Quips of “I’ll be seeing you on the Tonight Show” meant I was lazy for no longer doing comedy.
My anger at myself for not meeting such “expectations” turned into anger at other people for “expecting too much.” I started down a “woe is me” mentality where I proclaimed my life was so difficult because people had always expected me to do great things. It didn’t matter what was true, it was what I believed.
After my second year in New York City, I transferred back to Cincinnati. Having found moderate success while gone, I was still viewed as a solid employee and welcomed back to the Queen City. The return to familiarity provided a brief jolt to my demeanor, and things were looking up. But after a few tough projects, failed stand-up attempts, and a shaky social life, whatever cancer grew in NYC returned.
With my friends and family struggling to try understand what had changed in me, I fell into a deep depression. I turned to alcohol for the same reason I had grown to hate it, the same reason I had avoided it for 26 years – I used it to escape reality, responsibility and my problems.
Though I had come to terms with other people drinking, and had realized it wasn’t evil like I thought it was growing up, the fact that I started drinking served as a catalyst to deeper despair. I would get drunk to try to drink away the fact that I drank.
On November 18, 2011, it all came to a head. After two straight years of low ratings, my manager had no choice but to let me go at work. I had gone from being a “go as high as you want to go” standout employee, to no longer working at the company.
Stand-up was a distant memory, relegated to YouTube clips of open mics, and “Best Of” DVDs from my college years. Socially I had only a couple of friends who maintained the relationship, and I remained in a single, depressed state.
I was escorted out of work in the early afternoon, and stopped by a bar, as had now become habit. I drank anything the bartender would give me, thinking about what I was going to do next- who I could call for a job. In a drunken stupor, I decided to head home.
The 5 o’clock rush hour had just begun, and I grew angry at all the people able to keep their jobs. I flew down an entry ramp to the highway, determined to get home and pass-out, forgetting all of my troubles until another day. By now, the shots at the bar had settled in, and I failed to notice the stopped traffic. At 70 mph, I crash into a stopped car, careening through the front windshield.
“Being defeated is a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.” – Marlene vos Savant
My body lay like a torn up rag doll. I couldn’t move, and everything seemed surreal. I knew immediately that I wasn’t going to make it to see the next day. I thought back to how I ended up there on the pavement. I thought back to how I got into such a situation, when 4 years prior I seemed poised to fulfill my alma mater’s catchphrase – “Do something great.”
As people gathered around to help, just as others had done throughout my life, I blocked them out of my mind, like I had during the my mounting troubles. I thought about the cancer that ultimately led to my demise. Though it wasn’t the same cancer that had taken some of my friends and family, it still led to the same result.
It wasn’t a cellular growth, but rather a mental one. It was a growth of complacency, selfishness, and laziness. It was a growth of excuses, instead of action. I closed my eyes for the final time, and finally understood my sickness.
I had wanted so desperately to be successful that I failed to act. Sometimes out of focusing on the wrong things, sometimes out of hubris from already having had small successes, sometimes out of fear of failure, I failed to take action.
As the world around me started to fade away, I thought, “Do something great? Hell, just do something.”
