I'm grateful for the new MLB Network channel. They have more time to go in depth on baseball, well beyond the tired 3 minute SportsCenter clips. And watching spring training games in HD is such a nice contrast to the tiny box scores I used to get in the paper as a kid.
Anyway, I feel that most baseball players and managers give better interviews than athletes in other sports. They're more likely to go in depth about their challenges and show a healthy respect for the game. It's such a difficult sport no matter how good you are that an overall sense of humility is usually the rule. And humility typically leads to deeper thought and introspection than you'd see from some blowhard wideout on the Eagles.
Pitchers in particular learn how to be humble and resilient. Over the course of a career in the big leagues every pitcher will have down times and struggle. Which is when you really have to use your mind in a disciplined manner in order to persevere. As a commentator who had recently interviewed a struggling pitcher about his mentality put it:
"You have two choices--You can let it eat at you or you can learn from it. Last year he got caught up in trying to do too much, to control things he couldn't control, and letting things bother him more than they should. You have to start to treat success and failure the same way. You can't get too mentally up or down. Easier said than done."
A lot of this applies to stand up. No comic will have amazing gigs every night their whole career. A lot of it is going to be struggle and half empty rooms and punchlines that don't hit. But I'm trying to learn how to treat success and failure the same way. Do good, do bad, it doesn't matter. Keep getting out there and doing it day in and day out and focus on learning more than success.
In this vein here is a snippet from an interview with author David Shenk:
Question: How do we go about finding the genius in all of us? What steps we can take to unlock latent talent?
David Shenk: Find the thing you love to do, and work and work and work at it. Don't be discouraged by failure; realize that high achievers thrive on failure as a motivating mechanism and as instruction guide on how to get better.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Amateur arts
I did a set tonight and I was like at least the 15th comic to come on. The guy before me--it was his first time doing stand up comedy EVER and he struggled. It was quiet for like 3 minutes out of 5. He got a few laughs but overall people were pretty disinterested/uncomfortable.
Anyway, the SECOND he stops talking everyone starts talking to each other. Why wouldn't they? That just sucked for 5 minutes, I'm bored, let's talk about something else. I have such empathy for the crowd now. Anyway, I go up and people are still talking through the first joke. Some are listening, and they laugh. Then I do the second joke and I win over a few more people. Then by the time I got to my 4th joke no one was making a noise. I feel more proud of that fact than a laugh that any particular joke got. An hour and a half into an amateur comedy night I got everyone in the room to think "Alright this guy could be funny." At this stage that's all I really want. They're giving me a chance. It's a nice metaphor for my life overall. People in this new field are definitely giving me a chance.
Also, I have a newfound respect for arts at the ground level. It's one thing to go watch a Broadway show, it's another to see the star when they're starting their career and not many other people are in the audience. I think that's a vital component of what makes art art. There's something aspirational and hopeful about it when it's done well. When you watch people new in a field trying to get better you're buying into the whole artistic enterprise. You're implicitly stating through your attendance that the creation process is just as meaningful and enjoyable as the end product. That you don't require a major studio to green light your entertainment. It's more personal and intimate.
Having said that, parts of it suck. But it's good to pause to recognize things that may be transcendent.
Anyway, the SECOND he stops talking everyone starts talking to each other. Why wouldn't they? That just sucked for 5 minutes, I'm bored, let's talk about something else. I have such empathy for the crowd now. Anyway, I go up and people are still talking through the first joke. Some are listening, and they laugh. Then I do the second joke and I win over a few more people. Then by the time I got to my 4th joke no one was making a noise. I feel more proud of that fact than a laugh that any particular joke got. An hour and a half into an amateur comedy night I got everyone in the room to think "Alright this guy could be funny." At this stage that's all I really want. They're giving me a chance. It's a nice metaphor for my life overall. People in this new field are definitely giving me a chance.
Also, I have a newfound respect for arts at the ground level. It's one thing to go watch a Broadway show, it's another to see the star when they're starting their career and not many other people are in the audience. I think that's a vital component of what makes art art. There's something aspirational and hopeful about it when it's done well. When you watch people new in a field trying to get better you're buying into the whole artistic enterprise. You're implicitly stating through your attendance that the creation process is just as meaningful and enjoyable as the end product. That you don't require a major studio to green light your entertainment. It's more personal and intimate.
Having said that, parts of it suck. But it's good to pause to recognize things that may be transcendent.
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