A failure a day

What if we failed at something once every day and kept a record of it? It doesn't have to be a big huge, "oh my goodness my life is over" failure. It could be a "oh crap I can't believe that happened (or didn't happen)" failure. Why would someone do this you ask? I'm not really sure, but it was an idea I thought of and it got stuck in my head. When we fail at something it means we tried to do something that meant something or that we cared about and it didn't work out the way we wanted it to or at all. So if we fail that means that we tried something, we took a risk. This may not even be a failure at all, but maybe just not succeeding the first time (or the second, third, fourth, etc.). The real failure would be to not learn from the unsuccess and not grow from that experience. At first I thought it would be so depressing to everyday think of how you failed. But when I thought more about it I realized what would be more depressing would be to look back on many days/months/years and realize that you only tried once, that once you failed you were done and didn't become a better/stronger/whatever person because of that one failure. I would rather look back at my life and see that of all the failures I created, a whole lot more successes were realized, rather than dreamed about. That is one of my fears, that when I'm old I'll look back on my life and regret not trying something, not taking that risk to do something, or giving up a dream after failing a few (or many) times. If none of my dreams come true, I'd rather that I pursued them than to have not even tried at all. Because in that pursuit is where life is. The dream coming true is just an added bonus that isn't always realized. But if the pursuit of the dream takes place, I think you're all the better for it, no matter what happens at the end of the ride. I don't really know what I'm trying to say. I guess I'm telling myself to not give up, to move ahead, even if I'm not quite sure where I'm going or why. And if that means keeping track of my failures, maybe not every day, but every once in a while, then that's what I need to do. As long as I'm failing then I'm moving foward, and that's about all I can hope for.

What am I doing with my life?

I don't know. But I can tell you what I'm doing in the mean time. I've been taking improv comedy classes at a little comedy club in Santa Monica called Westside Eclectic and working there as an intern so I can take the classes for free (sweet deal). I started class about a month ago after I went to see a show there because my friend Vanessa Irwin takes classes there and is a night manager Friday nights. I was sitting there watching four or five improv groups perform (some good, some not so good, and some pretty awesome) and I thought to myself "Joe, you could this. You should do this. Why don't you do it? You'll like it. Okay, I'm doing it." And I proved myself right. So far I've had four lessons in the level 1 class, and 2 more to go before I graduate to level 2. It's definitely fun, but definitely a learning experience and definitely not as easy as it looks. Every class I leave thinking about 15 more ways I could improve my game. I enjoy learning a new skill and someday hope to make it onto one of the Westside house improv teams and perform in front of real people like you. But before that I gotta get through a couple more classes. But yeah, it's fun and exciting and new and scary and good all at the same time.

What else am I doing, you ask. Okay, maybe you didn't ask, but I'm gonna tell you anyways. I talk about things on a semi-bi-weekly podcast on Fringeblog, the blog baby of my roomate Jeremiah Lewis. Soon Fringecast.net will up and running, but until then go to the blog and listen to it there. What is the fringecast? It has been described by some as "Seinfeld for the radio" and "crazy." We talk about anything and everything and stuff in between. The key players are myself, Jeremiah Lewis, and Tim Fescoe, another roomate. Every now and then we have guest hosts either come in to the "studio" (our living room) or through online interviews. Doing the show is smashing fun, because it's randomness at its purest. Hopefully someday we'll be famous and awesome, but right now we'll settle for just being awesome. We got business cards made with our pictures on it. We had a photo shoot with our friend Lane, and she took some awesome shots of us being us. I kind of felt semi cool doing the photo shoot because, well, they're fun to do. Also, someday we're gonna have fringecast t-shirts and bobble heads and trading cards and the like. So until you can get your very own Joe bobble head, please listen to the Fringecast and just imagine my head bobbing up and down with awesomeness.

I dream in digital

I finally gave in and bought a digital camera. I tried holding out as long as I could, but I just couldn't hold on any longer. I love my film camera, but it's such a pain to take the film in and develop it and then if I want the pictures on my computer I gotta pay more to have them put on CD or scan them in. I figured it's about time for me to embrace the digital age and sell my soul to the Mega Pixels. Someday I'd like to be a more serious photographer, so I took this first step and a chunk of my wallet into the great above and beyond of digital photography. It seems like almost everybody has some sort of digital camera something, whether it be in a camera, or their phone, or their Helio or their pen or their eyeballs. I think that someday all we need to do to take a picture is to blink, then think about what we just blinked at, stare at our computer screen for a second, then WHALA, there's our picture. That's the future my friends, welcome to it.