On Stopping

I am returning from some time away this week. Going to San Juan, Puerto Rico. If everything goes as planned, I'll make it to my show tonight; if my plane is delayed, I won't. I said in a class recently that I was doing "too much" improv. I'm about 1/3 of the way through my semi-serious goal of doing 1000 scenes this year (we're about 20% of the way through that by my reckoning), so that goal might as well become serious. A question I have asked myself is if I replaced one addiction, alcohol, with another addiction, improv. I don't think I have, or at least, I don't think they are the same order of thing.

People joke and say that they are addicted to things like boba tea or chocolate, and while food, caffeine, and shopping can be addictions, usually that's not what they mean. When I was drinking, I couldn't stop. Or rather, I would drink until I blacked out, and that would stop me, but then I couldn't stay stopped. I'd start again as soon as I could. I was a captive passenger in my own life. I did a lot of dumb things, a lot of hurtful things, a lot of self-destructive things. When you have an addiction, the substance becomes the most important thing in your life; that's what addiction does. The things that should be the most important things in your life take a backseat. That's real addiction.

Beyond all that, there's a saying that's almost like a joke in recovery: The opposite of addiction is connection. Improv connects me to people, so what I miss most when I stop doing improv is that connection. Over the past nearly two years in recovery, I have been fortunate to make connections with people all over the world, including in Baltimore, California, Canada, and Taipei.

I think it's worth asking myself whether I am doing the improv I want to do, considering stopping the improv I don't want to do, and maybe starting to do the improv I want to do more of. I've been asking myself that a lot recently. It's also worth asking which projects I should focus on. I've been asking that too. For now, this isn't a stop; it's a pause.

A human covered in a sheet with eye holes, universally considered to be a ghost, sits next to a car missing all its tires. The ghost seems to have been hit upon the hear

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Unusual Things - Part 1

On Base Reality - Part 1

Your note is my trauma

On Coaching and Asking Will Hines Questions