Quitting Comedy: Relief or Regret?

Which “R” are you filled with?

There’s a scene in Kill Bill Vol. 2 where one assassin asks another a very important question.  They both believe their nemesis, Beatrix Kiddo, to be dead.  After Budd, brother of the titular Bill, pours his colleague and frenemy Elle Driver a drink, he asks her, “Which ‘R’ are you filled with?”  Elle is confused, and asks Budd to clarify.  Budd obliges.  Since Kiddo is thought dead and Elle no longer has to face her on the battlefield, is Elle filled with Relief or Regret?  Is she relieved that she won’t have to worry about Kiddo anymore, or does she regret that she’ll never get the chance to destroy her enemy?  Which “R” is she filled with?  

“A little bit of both,” Elle replies.

“Horse shit,” says Budd.  “I’m sure you do feel a little bit of both.  But I know damn well that you feel one more than you feel the other.”

I thought about this scene a lot towards the end of 2023, when I knew my comedy career was coming to a close.  I had spent the previous fifteen years with one single-minded pursuit: To become a full-time stand up comedian that didn’t need a day job to pay the bills.  I had sacrificed so much while striving for this goal. Time, money, social events, relationships, opportunities for advancement at my day job, rest and relaxation, my self-esteem, a little bit of my sanity, and plenty of other things that would depress me if I listed them all out here.  Once I decided to put it all behind me, I had to ask myself, “Which ‘R’ am I filled with?”  Am I filled with regret that I didn’t reach my ultimate aim?  Or am I filled with relief that I don’t have to struggle so much anymore?

The answer is, like Elle, a little bit of both.  But I feel one way more than I feel the other.

My Regret, And Where It Comes From

I feel regret.  But the regret isn’t for the things that I did while pursuing a career in comedy.  I don’t regret the countless subway rides around New York City, going from open mic to shitty bar show to open mic, working to cultivate my skills and advance my career.  I don’t regret all the time I spent rewatching sets, attempting to edit old jokes and write new ones.  I don’t even regret going to comedy clubs and independently produced shows to hang out, show face and network.  This is what must be done in order to become a full-time comedian.  I don’t see any of it as time wasted.  Instead, the regret I feel is for the things I’ll never do.

I will never perform at The Comedy Cellar.  I will never do a set on a late night talk show.  I will never headline a weekend at a top tier comedy club.  These goals meant a lot to me, and I had my heart set on them for a decade and a half. 

I remember watching the first season of Louie back in 2010, when I was living in Washington, D.C. and beginning my comedy career in earnest.  I saw the stand-up interludes filmed at The Comedy Cellar and dreamily thought to myself, “One day…”  

I remember, years later in New York, watching peers and friends of mine perform on The Tonight Show and The Late Show and Comedy Central.  I saw them on my TV and sincerely hoped, “One day…”  

I remember weekends being back in DC, performing as an opening act at The DC Improv or The Arlington Drafthouse.  I watched headliners from out of town captivate the crowd for an hour and truly believed, “One day…”  

Unfortunately, my “one day” never came, and that bums me out.  But that’s not the main source of my regret.  My regret runs deeper than not getting to perform stand-up on certain stages.  That’s because what I really wanted was more intangible and difficult to achieve than simply telling five minutes of jokes at 30 Rock and having Jimmy Fallon come over to shake my hand afterwards.  I was searching for something spiritual rather than material.

A lot of comedians, and artists in general, talk about the importance of “freedom” in their work and in their lives.  They want to be unencumbered by responsibilities so that they’re free to create their art whenever they feel like it.  That’s why you see a lot of artists eschew traditional lifestyles that are centered on commitment, like marriage and having a family.  

Personally, I was never drawn to this type of freedom.  I could have gotten a low stress, part-time job while pursuing comedy, like so many others do, but I valued the stability of a regular paycheck and health insurance.  I intentionally made that choice.  I also got married a few years ago.  That was an intentional choice as well.  Having a family was always something I knew that I wanted, even when I was in my carefree twenties.  I think responsibility is a good thing, and most people’s conception of “freedom” is overrated at best and self-destructive at worst.  In fact, I’d argue there’s a force far more important and powerful than freedom.  It’s related, but the meaning runs deeper.  Everyone claims that they want freedom, but I think what they should really want is agency.

Agency is having a sense of control and command in your life.  Agency is being able to dictate the terms of your day-to-day schedule and using that to better yourself and those around you.  Agency is the ability to move onward and upward without being bogged down by unnecessary outside demands.  It’s easy to see why people mistake freedom for agency, but there is an important distinction.  Agency is not laying around during the day, creating art when the muse strikes, and cavorting around town with friends and strangers at night.  That’s what freedom is, and it’s cheap.  Freedom is centered around passivity, while agency is powered by the dynamic, whirring engine of intentional action.  

I wanted to become a full-time comedian that didn’t need a day job, not for a sense of freedom, but because I wanted to have agency in my life.  Think of it this way.  When you have a job, your work day doesn’t really start at 9am, or whatever time you have to be in the office.  It starts whenever you begin the process of getting ready and commuting to work.  If you have to wake up at 7:00am to get into the office by 9:00, your work day really starts at 7:00, because from that point onward your time is not your own.  Your time and actions are being controlled by an outside force.  

When I was spending all of those years pursuing a comedy career, I wasn’t trying to escape my office job so that I could have the freedom to live some kind of bohemian layabout lifestyle.  I was trying to reclaim my time so that I could make it my own.  I didn’t want free time just for free time’s sake.  I wanted to be productive and fill my days with stuff that was authentically meaningful to me.  I wanted more time to write jokes, perform on shows, work on comedy projects, read, exercise, and do other things that would fulfill me and help me better myself.   And sure, I would have most likely taken more naps with this additional time, but the thrust of it would be put towards intentional and useful activities.  I’d still be working hard and doing difficult tasks, but I would have been able to choose my difficult tasks, and they would have been far more rewarding than sending emails for a paycheck.  

That’s why agency is important.  Agency is freedom of responsibility, not freedom from responsibility.  Because even if you spend your life trying to avoid it, responsibility will eventually come for you.  And it’s far better to put in effort now so you can control what responsibility you end up carrying later.  To me, that’s the end result of striving for a meaningful goal.  If done right, it can give you more command over your life.

Ultimately, my biggest regret is that I was never able to attain the level of agency I was seeking.  As I write this, I’m still commuting into work and sitting at a desk every day.  I’ve made peace with it at this point.  I have a new job, a job that I like well enough, and I put in more effort there than I ever did at any of my previous ones.  What got me here and allows me to be okay with all of that is the other “R,” Relief.

The Road To Relief

Relief can seem like cowardice, a type of surrender.  Look at the Kill Bill example above.  If Elle had claimed that she was filled with Relief, it would have betrayed a fear of Beatrix and proven that she was unwilling to face her.  But the Relief I felt when I quit comedy didn’t feel like backing down or giving in.  Instead it felt like an intentional choice made for my own personal benefit.  It wasn’t the easy way out, it was simply the next logical step based on where things had gotten to for me.

The life of a comedian, especially in New York City, can be particularly brutal.  At least, brutal as far as artistic pursuits go.  Starting out, you have to perform at soul-sucking open mics where the only audience members are 40 other comedians waiting to get on stage and tell their own poorly written jokes.  Then, if you do that for long enough, you can graduate to soul-sucking bar shows where the only audience members are 5-10 random people who may or may not have known that a comedy show was about to happen.  In the end, only an extremely small percentage of comedians get to perform regularly in front of actual crowds at comedy clubs and the handful of quality independent shows around town.  The rest toil in the lower levels with occasional glimpses into the life of the top 1% of comedians in the city.

The struggle isn’t just emotional either.  Building a comedy career in New York City is a physical act.  You’re constantly on the move, riding the subway from one show to another, walking up and down station stairs and then across multiple blocks and avenues to get to the venue.  Hitting a 10,000 step-per-day goal is nothing to a New York City comedian.  After my first six months in New York I was completely exhausted, but my calves had never looked better.  

You also need to hit multiple mics and shows a night if you want to generate any momentum for yourself.  This means you have to stay out past midnight if you want to make the most of your time.  For someone who has to wake up for an office job in the morning, like I did, that stuff catches up with you pretty quick.  Most nights I’d be in bed around 1am with my alarm set for 7am so I could get ready for work.  

Do you want to pursue comedy while also exercising and eating healthy?  Forget about it.  There isn’t a lot of time to hit the gym or meal prep when you’re going straight from bed to work to comedy and back to bed in an 18 hour period.  The same goes for advancing at your day job.  If you want to get promoted at work, you need to put in extra time and effort around the office, and your comedy commitments don’t allow for that.  Now, most comedians don’t care about their day jobs, so this doesn’t bother them.  But it certainly has a big impact on your finances, especially in a city as expensive as New York.  

If you’re extremely disciplined, you might be able to make one of these additional pursuits work, but definitely not all of them.  I once heard another comedian say,  “Great jokes, a great body, and a great bank account.  You can only pick two.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the nature of this reality.  I think it’s necessary to build discipline and weed out the comics who don’t really want it.  For many, many years, the difficulty of this lifestyle was motivating.  It felt good to work hard.  But I also wanted the hard work to eventually lead to something, to some type of advancement or achievement.  I know we’re all told to focus on the journey and not the destination, but let’s not forget that the destination is pretty damn important too.  It’s the whole reason you start the journey in the first place. 

After years of doing all the stuff I mentioned above, I hadn’t made any meaningful progress.  Because of this, I lost my enjoyment of the process.  Sure, there was a decent stretch of time where I was content to just put my head down, write my jokes, do my shows, and not focus on the outcome.  But by the time I looked up, I hadn’t made any real headway.  I was in my 30s and barely any farther along than I was when I first moved to New York at 25.  I had gotten in at a couple clubs in the city and performed at some fun festivals over the years, but I had never come anywhere close to my ultimate goal of making a living in comedy (An explanation as to why this happened is something that deserves its own post.  A discussion for another day I suppose). 

Here’s where Relief comes in.  And much like Regret, my sense of Relief is informed by my desire for agency.

Relief Over Regret

Agency was always my ultimate goal in comedy.  It was the meta-goal that all of the other goals were subordinate to.  But as I continued to strive and struggle without many positive results, comedy started to feel like it was taking agency away from me instead of helping me get more of it. 

The things I had once done with relish and zeal, all of those physically and mentally demanding actions that are necessary to build a career, began to feel like a burden.  I didn’t want to stay out and do open mics or hang out at shows anymore.  But I felt like I had to, so I forced myself to do it, and I was miserable the entire time.  And don’t even get me started on the whole process of generating sketches and stand-up clips to post on social media.  That felt like an obligation before I ever started making it a regular practice. 

Eventually, I got to the point where I didn’t even enjoy writing jokes anymore.  Early on in my career, there was a sense of possibility whenever I sat down to write.  It always felt like the next joke could be the one that broke the whole thing open for me.  But after so many years of banging my head against the wall, that sense of possibility was gone, and writing jokes became just another activity I did because I felt like I was supposed to.

That’s when I knew I had to give it up.  If the fundamental act of this endeavor, generating a funny thought to share with others, wasn’t providing me any enjoyment or satisfaction at the most basic level, then the entire enterprise wasn’t worth it anymore.  I had gotten so far from my ultimate goal of agency, and any additional effort was driving me further away instead of bringing me closer to it.  The process and my desires were no longer aligned.  So I closed the book on stand-up for good.

That’s why I feel Relief way more than I feel Regret.  Granted, I don’t have the level of agency I initially set out for.  But I have way more agency now than I did during my last 10+ years doing stand-up.  Any creative act I do now, I do it because I want to.  I’m writing this at my kitchen table at 6am, not because I feel like I have to, but because I want to.  I want to write long form essays, because it feels good to get my thoughts organized and out of my head.  I want to wake up early so I can have time for myself, time to write and read and exercise before I get ready for work.  And now that I’m not staying out past midnight anymore, waking up early is easy.  So yeah, where I’m at now isn’t where I always wanted to be, but it’s so much better than where I was before.  Best of all, I don’t constantly feel like I’m failing, day after week after month after year.  I still love stand-up, and I wish it had worked out, but I’m okay with letting it go at this point.  That has given me a measure of Relief I couldn’t have imagined even a few short months ago.

Back to Kill Bill to wrap this up.  Elle eventually gives Budd her answer, but only after the Black Mamba snake she snuck into his trailer bites him on the face multiple times, sealing his fate.  As Budd writhes on the ground in pain, taking his last gasping breaths, Elle says to him:

“Right at this moment, the biggest "R" I feel is Regret. Regret that maybe the greatest warrior I have ever known met her end at the hands of a bushwhacking, scrub, alky piece of shit like you. That woman deserved better.”

I understand where she’s coming from.  Regret is an incredibly powerful emotion, especially when you mix it with anger.  I could have easily fallen into that trap, and I’m so happy that I didn’t.  I’m glad I feel Relief.

I’m especially glad I feel Relief a minute later when Elle gets her wish.  Beatrix Kiddo isn’t dead.  She flies into the trailer, dropkicks Elle in the chest, plucks out her only working eyeball, and leaves her to die in the desert.  Elle should have picked Relief.  Regret will ruin you every time.

Maybe it makes me a loser, a quitter, or just straight up soft.  But I’m content to be at home with my wife and dog, making dinner, doing the dishes, getting to bed early, and waking up before the sunrise to sit down and write.  After fifteen years of wishing, striving and struggling, it’s a much better use of my time.  I’m happy with the choice that I made, and the agency that has come with it.