*NOTE: I’m breaking this into parts, to make for less one-time reading, and to make it look like I’m really updating. This is also pretty self-indulgent, but I tend to reflect and reevaluate when I hit milestones like this. Anyway, let’s begin.*

Earlier this month, I passed the 6 year mark of chasing comedy as a career goal. Two weeks after graduating from college in 2003, after doing stand-up about 6 times in college, I went to the Pittsburgh Improv for an open mic night with the specific goal of that being the jump-off point, the very first step in what I knew would be a very, VERY long road. Herein, I’ll be looking back at what I’ve done, what I should have done, where I am, and what I still need to do.

All through my life, I knew I wanted to be an entertainer, but I didn’t really know how to do that or what it entailed. To be honest, I still barely know. I denied that a lot, because I grew up in an area where people didn’t do “entertainment industry” as a career choice. Beaver County wasn’t a place where dreams grew, it was a place where dreams rusted out, then you got someone pregnant and eventually taught yourself to hide your seething animosity for your own place in life. It wasn’t until I was hanging out with a girlfriend in college that I said I wanted to be a comedian, and she turned to me and said “yeah, I can totally see that.” That was all the validation I needed, because she’d trusted me enough to let me fuck her, so I knew she believed in me.