Sharing your work is fun and easy lol
Wherein I struggle to share a Funny or Die thing I wrote and acted in yay
A photo of me as a Soviet man asking a Soviet woman on a date. My parents have never been prouder.
Below is a story about the dumb difficulties of sharing your work online. If you’d rather just watch the video, click the button above. If you’re interested in seeing what the mind of an idiot like me is during a moment of panic, read on below.
Here We Go…
Yesterday, I wake up groggy and anxious, mostly about what to write inside this blog. I then get angry at myself for being anxious - what's there to be anxious about I say, you've literally shared this with like 3 people.
That's a common one, the anxiety --> anger hyperloop® and they're both emotions that arise through Judd, my voice of judgement. You can read a bit more about him here.
Then I realize that a comedy short I wrote and acted in for a Funny or Die series called Loosely Translated has just come out. Actually, I realized that the day before, but was too anxious to even watch it for fear of how bad I would look in it, so I delayed. Until yesterday morning, when I watched it, mostly in an anxious deathtrap, unable to feel much of anything. It ends and I think this is pretty cool, I should share this with people.
Which is true. It is cool, and I should share it. But then I freeze. I haven't really shared much of my stuff with people since Distance, which I released a year and a half ago, and I've sort of forgotten how to do it. I freeze, tight and overwhelmed with questions - how do I do it? How *should* I do it? It's a big deal, Funny or Die!
And I guess if I was just a normal well adjusted person I could have shared the video and some of the above backstory and been done with it, but that did not happen. No, no friends, that did not happen. Instead, I phreaked and kept on phreaking. It went something like this.
Here Come The Voices
Note, these voices all sort of scream over each other and often are talking at the same time, in whatever the opposite of 'harmony' is:
Maybe I can share that video?
Yeah, that could be cool, sharing your own stuff through this blog!
Share it!
Is that cool? That seems vain.
It sucks! You suck!
Maybe you share other people's work too.
Yea like Chris Duffy does in his blog.
It's really cool and Funny or Die is so dope! Will Ferrell!
Is this a good way to build an audience?
Adam McKay!
Building an audience? WTF you poser hack, be real!
Don't share it without sharing other people's stuff!
Share some podcasts! Podcasts you love!
This went on for some time, though in fact time disappeared. I was stuck outside of time for a brief stint, enveloped in the familiar strangle of my dear friend Anxiety.
Shame —> Share
I emerged momenthours later and found myself on Chris Duffy's blog - which is awesome. He does an amazing job of curating interesting and hilarious people and their work. I started looking at his recommendations and became more and more depressed because of how lame I was in comparison.
Look, I know this is not a good look, trust me I do, but it's what happened and I feel like if there's any value to my writing this blog is to share the dark weird corners of myself so that they might help others feel a bit less alone so that is what I'm doing.
It wasn't pretty, especially as I kicked right back into my anxiety+anger thing which lasted most of the rest of the day, BUT I am proud of the fact that after about 30 more minutes of wallowing, I realized that I was wallowing and got myself the fuck out of there. I didn’t post anything and I didn’t beat myself up over it but instead went to the gym and beat my muscles up over some curls and tricep stuff.
It should also be noted that a few min later I realized Chris was living in LA and I texted him to hang out, since that was something we’d talked about doing way way back when a long time ago. I was sure he wouldn’t respond (since he and all other funny people hate me), but he did and after some joyous bits about LA and the 101, we agreed to hang real, real soon.
Did this change how I felt about myself? No, not in that moment, but that’s okay. Because BOTH THINGS ARE TRUE - I can live inside my own anxieties more often than I would like AND still be a person who can reach out to someone and set up a time to hang out like normies do. One does not negate the other.
The Reason Im Actually Proud About This Sketch
A day and some really good sleep later, I can say with some confidence that the part I most want to share with people from this sketch, the thing I'm proudest of, is that I was able to connect with my dad about this idea and basically collaborate with him on something in my professional life. To back up a bit, the video series is called Loosely Translated and its pretty sweet - it's a throwback to the weird language learning videos of the 1980s wherein the host - Miss Communication - explores how a word or phrase can have two meanings. For example, the pilot is about how the Spanish word "Cachucha" means "cap" in Mexico and "vagina" in Argentina. Lolz.
I was connected with the creator - Tamara Yajia - who wanted to do a Russian episode and asked if I knew of any double word situations in Russian, which I definitely did not. My dad, however, did. He knew lots, but by far my favorite was the one that we based the episode around - that the phrase "delayt nogi" means to "get a pedicure" in Russia and means "to run from the cops" in Odessa, Ukraine, where my family is from and which, according to my dad and no one else, is considered the humor capital of the world.
So we wrote a fun little sketch around that and this is that sketch. It was fun to make and great to work with Tamara and the other writer, Ben Rosen (whose Twitter is pure fire emoji). Just being around other people making stuff was great, and something I want to do way more of in the future. And I want to connect more to my Russian roots and put that into the work, if for nothing else than to keep wearing Russian army uniforms like the one in this video to make my mother proud.
a funny tweet from Ben Rosen
And there you have it. Consider this my strange and truthful way of sharing a thing I did.