Operation Achieve Anything: Day Seventy-Eight, Dateline 3-19-2018
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“He who laughs, lasts!”
Hey Crickets. Welcome to day number seventy-eight of Operation Achieve Anything. I was starting to feel like I was in a better mood but now that the Achieve Anything… book is focused on laughter being the best medicine, it’s ironically got me feeling down. First off, I know for sure that the book has already focused on humor being a tool for success because I’ve already delved into the fact that I used to be a really funny guy who now feels dead inside since I no longer feel as driven to make people laugh.
In the past assignment where humor was the topic of the lesson, I focused on the fact that most of my jokes were self-deprecating while I was playing a version of myself who was openly/boastfully dumb. Though I got many laughs, I don’t think as many people so the line between fact and fiction and genuinely thought I was an idiot. I always thought that this approach would blow people’s minds when they get around to reading my work and see what’s really going on inside my head but then who wants to read the work of an idiot.
After years of feeling stuck portraying this dumb but fun version of me, humor, in general, started to grow old as the country started to get super sensitive. That’s not to say that people started to attack me because of my jokes but it got to the point where even I was over analyzing anything funny said by anyone, including myself, to determine what’s too offensive of hypocritical, in an effort to preemptively point out any issues that others might have only to find that I was correct most of the time.
This Where’s Waldo approach to figure out what’s okay to be said eventually led me to see a striped shirt, glasses, and tuke on absolutely everyone so, I stopped making jokes just to be on the safe side. That’s not to say that there is any group that I want to make fun of as a whole and these Waldos are holding me back. No, these Waldos seemed to grow to be so uptight that you can’t joke about anything at all, and since laughter was already no longer working like a drug to me, I pretty much just gave up on humor in general.
I share this as a regret and not as a statement as to how the world should be because I really miss those days when my reputation for being a funny man preceded me where ever I would go. It made interacting with others so much easier than now as a boring grump. That said, I still find humor to be important enough that I fill my days with the sounds of funny podcasts and take mini-breaks to watch hilarious video, so this is definitely not a case where I’m dragging my feet and contradicting the lesson because I find it to be wrong. I just find humor to be a very hard thing to navigate with the current state of the world.
This intro is kind of on topic with yesterday’s non-assignment where I was simply just supposed to try and be more fun throughout the day. I guess I was successful in that task as well since I spent yesterday inside the house hanging out with my sister and nephew instead of locked in my space out in the garage working on my personal projects like a reclusive mad scientist, maniacally laughing to himself as he works.
Today’s assignment is another fun one where it’s barely an assignment at all. Where yesterday, I was supposed to be the one being fun, today I’m supposed to be the one having fun and am supposed to seek out some laughter. I have a few goto shows that should get a few laughs out of me, including today’s episode of SNL that I need to watch in order to fulfill my Seeso Many Saturday Nights challenge.
As always, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for a full update on the fun and games that end up going down. Until then, it’s now that time where I wrap this thing up by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.
Talk to you soon.
Sincerely,
The Wicker Breaker
P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.
