We’re All Rusty
June of 2019 was one of my favorite months in my 20-year comedy career. I finished up a successful week headlining the St. Louis Funnybone. I performed well at various wineries and bars around the Midwest. I impressed a club manager with a guest set and was offered even more work. The crowds were great, the shows were easy, the money was good.
Last week I performed a set for the first time in 3 months and messed up the key word in my very first punchline. The rest of the 10-minute set felt equally awkward, and though I received some laughs, none of the material I’d written during this quarter-of-a-year hibernation worked like I wanted it to. Oh, to be as sharp as I was a year ago.
At some point everyone is a novice. Jimi Hendrix had to pick up a guitar for the first time. Bobby Fischer needed someone to explain which chess pieces did what. George Carlin struggled through his first open mic long before he became a legend.
When you perform like a beginner, whether it’s a job, hobby, or physical activity, it’s often frustrating. Many refrain from ever trying a new activity for fear of the unknown because the anxiety of learning something new outweighs the sense of adventure.
You know what’s worse? Feeling like a beginner in an activity where you previously excelled.
I know a pal who used to be a scratch golfer but won’t pick up his clubs anymore because he can’t stand to shoot above an 80 (oh, the horror!). We’re both very competitive people so I can relate. I stopped running 5K races because I know my days of under 21 minutes are over. No one likes to regress to a beginner at something they’ve already succeeded at. Unfortunately in the very near future, a lot of us are going to have to.
Regression terrorizes your self-esteem. It makes you feel like a part of you has deteriorated — like you’ve wasted precious time between when you were great and where you’ve fallen. The more I think about it, the more things I realize I can no longer do well, or at all.
I used to know how to do calculus. I spoke Spanish muy bueno during college. I benched 60 pounds more than my body weight. I beat Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out without getting knocked down. These are not vital life skills, but I cringe at the thought of having to attempt any of them ever again (especially the latter).
But here’s what I will have to relearn how to do: Teach five high school classes a day while putting my students first. Perform up to an hour of stand-up comedy. Not long ago these abilities were executed in autopilot.
Whatever you have to get back into the swing of doing, tell yourself it’s okay to suck at it for a while. None of us are superhuman. We can’t be at the top of our game at everything.
Be patient. Not just with yourself, but with others. Many of us were given this Super Bowl length “halftime” to rest our minds and bodies whether we wanted it or not. Take it easy on yourself if you feel like you’ve lost a step, whether it be a highly-skilled craft or merely socializing with other people. Just waking up and going to bed at normal hours could be a chore.
Yes, a lot of us lost income and skill during this crisis, but there’s at least one positive I can illustrate with another silly example: Every winter I have to take time away from playing pickleball with my buddy (the same one who won’t golf anymore). When spring hits and we resume, sure, we’re rusty at first, but after a short time we can tell our skills have improved from the previous year. Having time off and restarting can help you break through your ability plateau. So in these upcoming months, give yourself and others (I can’t stress that enough) time to relearn whatever it is that used to be mastered. Odds are you’ll be even better than you were before in just a short amount of time.
