iO Summer Intensive - Time to Think

Week 2 of the Summer Intensive is dead and gone and I'm set to languish in this 3 day weekend we're cursed with for five straight weeks. It seems dumb to complain about time off but I've been doing 40 hour weeks since I was 17 and 60+ hour weeks since 19, so time off is a hard concept for me to wrap my head around. I spend weekends pacing around like a caged animal, unsure what to do with my hands or all of the thoughts I've got kicking around in my brain. I try to catch up on TV or read or do anything normal humans do, but I lose interest after an hour and my restlessness gets the best of me.

The effects of that restlessness are amplified by the giant pause button for my life that these five weeks at iO represent. I get to step back and take a breath from all of my relationships back home, all of my work, all of my ambitions. There's nothing I can really do about those from up here except pop in occasionally to remind some of those folks that I still exist and I still care about them. Nashville Improv is doing their first full month of shows without me in over 3 years. Third Coast will debut their main stage cast without me there. My godson will probably be on an Olympic Track and Field team before I get back. I guess it's just time for me to contemplate my next move.

Captured this image shortly before I captured a Dragonair on the bridge near iO Chicago

When I get back I want to do more shows with the people I work with best. I want to go to festivals and show off the kind of work I do. By November or December I want to start phasing out my day jobs and make the switch into supporting myself through teaching and performing. I want to be an active pillar of the comedy community and maybe even step back into theatre again. It's time for me to hunker down in Nashville and help push our scene screaming into the sunlight.

Two weeks in and I've learned so very much, but the most important lesson has been about who I was already. I am as good as people have told me. My ability isn't some illusion cast on me by the protection of my very talented and kind teammates, it's something I've actually cultivated through years of intense work. I met Susan Messing the other day and she said that by the end of the intensive I would be exhausted, but I think that comes from the assumption that I don't live and breathe this work. This week will be the real test of my mettle and I'm champing at the bit. I promised I'd come up here and give'em hell and I aim to deliver.