1/30/09

For the last 7 1/2 years the legal profession has been a large part of my life.  For the past 5 1/2 years comedy has been standing by like a mistress who has been promised a divorce and a new last name.  Well, as January 31, 2009 I will be shedding the dual identity and forging ahead as a comedian, instead of a “slashie,” lawyer-comedian.  Now the legal profession is a little bit like the priesthood in that as long as I keep up my CLE credits and pay my dues I will always technically be an attorney, but I will be free to identify myself as something else. 

I’d like to say that there was a Ben Affleck-Matt Damon moment, where my best friend came up to me and said to me “If you’re still filing papers and billing hours in twenty years I’m going to fu-king kill you.”  But there was no moment like this.  Most people I know do not understand the forces in me pulling and pushing: the steadiness of the legal profession and the respect many people give you for being a lawyer coupled with a sense of incredible ordinariness versus the individuality and excitment of being a comedian coupled with the fear of failure and coming to grips that you are a nobody until you are a somebody.  I had targeted 2009 as the year that I give 100% to comedy instead of 50%.  Did I target February 2009? No, but the law has had a way of pushing me towards comedy since 2003 so I cannot blame the timing.

In February 2003 I was down in the dumps.  I was having a tough time balancing all my work in law school to the point that my Mom, who never quits anything and my Dad, who quits plenty of things, but loves the law and comes from a family of lawyers said to me that I could quit law school.  That same month as I contemplated my professional future I went to Nany O’Brien’s, a bar near my apartment in Cleveland Park in Washington, DC to watch an amateur comedy show.  I was hooked.  I had always liked stand up comedy and making people laugh, but this was different.  It seemed accessible and possible for me to do.  I fought through the second semester of my second year of law school and the first Monday after school was done I went to my first open mic at Takoma Station Tavern a Jazz club in DC that hosted comedy every Monday.  The only joke I can remember from that set was about the low standards of a cab company called “Arrive Alive Cabs” (which was actually observed by my then girlfriend on a visit to DC).  I did well enough to continue and the third year of law school was a breeze because I had found my passion.  If I was bored in class I could just brainstorm some jokes.  I finished law school, but I never felt like a lawyer.  I was a comedian.

The summer of the bar I studied about half as much as I should have because I was unable to stop going to open mics.  I ended up failing the bar by 3 points.  I passed easily the second time, but in hindsight it looks like yet another message of the direction my life should be taking. 

For the last 5 1/2 years comedy has been one of the greatest joys and one of the greatest pains in my life, as well as the greatest therapy in my life.  It has helped me deal with the greatest challenges on my life from law school to break-ups to loneliness and depression and it has given me some of my greatest joys of my life – appearing on national television, two CD recordings, and just making people laugh.  But last night the thought of being a full time comedian gave me liberation on stage that I have not felt before.  And I had the best set of my life.

So at the end of this week I will say goodbye to a profession that has made me friends, helped build my character and made me some decent money, and say a full time hello to what I should be doing.  I remember hearing comedian Paul Mooney say that comedians are born – you either have it or you don’t.  Only time and hard work will determine whether I get the success I want, but I know that I am a comedian.

Many of my friends have said they think this is “awesome” and other words like that.  I have had many friends telling me that I should be a full time comic, but these are either people who would not dream of leaving their health insurance  or safe and secure worlds for a second, or those who have never known the perks that go with being a lawyer or similarly situated profession.  So the decision is scary for me, but at the same time it is also an easy one.   The law has been useful because it allowed me to save enough money to give my dream a real chance without having to starve while doing it, but it may take the next 5 1/2 years to get where I want.  It may take longer.  But for me to not do it would be like asking me to stop being tall.  It is who I am and what I want and need to do.  And it feels good to be able to do.

It reminds me of an anecdote a priest once told many years ago at my Church (paraphrased):

A man’s town was flooded and to survive he had to climb up on his roof.  As he sat on his roof he saw the water rising to the point where the door of a house went floating by.  As the water continued to rise he saw that the water had risen so much that a tree went floating by.  Then, finally, he saw another house float by.  Eventually the flood overcame the man and he drowned.  When the man died he went to Heaven and asked God, “Why did I have to die?  I did not feel like it was my time.”  And God answered, “I did not intend for you to die.  I sent you a door, a tree and a house and you ignored all three!”

I think the signs in my life have all pointed towards comedy so as Maximus said in Gladiator: “The time for talk and half measures is over.”