The Other 23h50m
If you listen to a lot of comedy podcasts like I do, you know that the comedians often fall into the behind the scenes of their lives as professional joke-writers. This can certainly become very “inside baseball,” often devolving into a semi-satirical “woe is me” of their workday that sometimes only lasts for a ten minute set at 10:30pm. Seems like a pretty sweet life, to have all of that freedom of schedule.
Until you really think about how they spend the other 23h50m of their day. So much time to fill… and truly with what? One can begin to take for granted their structured schedules and assigned due dates. The rhythms of life that come with a start and end time at the office.
On a recent podcast press run, Jim Gaffigan described his work as “Self-Assignment.” No one is telling him what topics to write jokes about. No one is giving him a due date that they must be completed. Instead, he is in charge of his set from start to finish… and it’s never truly finished. It’s a constant loop of “tell joke, receive feedback through applause, silence or disgust, rewrite joke…” rinse, wash, repeat.
This is a similar path of the self-employed musician. The only truly dictated due dates for me now are church services or symphony concerts. Otherwise, a majority of my paid work is a constant flow of wedding receptions and corporate events that contain (mostly) the same rehearsed and polished tunes that my band played the night before. Maybe we tweak the flow of the show a bit, attempt to spice up a section with a new line of notes, but overall… rinse, wash, repeat.
So… I too am on “Self-Assignment.”
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Enter: The Rest of My Day
“Michael, you have so much free time now.”
You’re correct… I do. And it is really great in a lot of ways — but I am not a person who rests/relaxes easily. Gabi refers to me as a shark — if I stop swimming, I will die. Free, unstructured time is a special type of punishment for a task-rabbit like myself. I fill that space up with anxiety and dread. So I must come up with new ways to grow, habits to improve, skills to learn.
But that is a daunting task. What’s even worth working on? Does it really matter that I can play this scale at this speed? Who is even going to listen to this? This is where social media has actually helped me a lot.
Yes, it is destructive in so many ways. A true time-suck. An escape that definitely shouldn’t be as prevalent in any of our lives. Some days, my phonescreen time absolutely dominates my sleeping hours… No Bueno!
However, I have used posting to social media as a self-assigned due date. I post “X” on Tuesday, “Y” on Friday, and I’m working to learn and record “Z” by next week. This process has yielded transcriptions to tackle, video/audio recording and editing to master, and tapped into a creative side that is the source of this very blog! I now ignore the amount of likes or shares a video or post gets — the act of creating is itself the proof of improvement I so desperately crave.
And, because of the aforementioned drawbacks of social media, I have also instituted physical and mental activities into my day. Now, running and lifting, long walks, meditation, journaling, and quality time with Gabi and friends is just as important (if not far more) than practicing my instruments. If you’re reading this and thinking “Yeah, Mike… you should have been doing that this whole time…”
…Stop yelling at me.
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As I’ve said before, I envy you “normies” for your steady, structured lives. I say this with utmost sincerity, please do not take for granted the knowledge that good or bad day at work or school, there is freedom at 5:00pm.
…And just go ahead and ignore my Instagram story of me sitting with Homie and enjoying a coffee at 10:30am…
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