If I were to take account of my thoughts on a given day, I would say a good 15% of them would be dedicated to resenting my current situation and contemplating all the things I deserve but don’t have. Aside from that, I’d say another 15% goes to hating myself, 20% goes to what kind of food I should eat next, and the remaining 50% goes to thinking about this one-armed monkey named Xing Xing who is a little standoffish, but you know he has a good heart.

I’d like to talk about that first 15%, and how it can fester and grow until it consumes your entire psyche, making you miss out on some potentially interesting things in your life.

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to take part in the New York Comedy Festival. I flew into JFK a few days early to do standup and get a feel for the scene out there. On the day I flew in, Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral election, and there was a general buzz of excitement when you talked to anyone under the age of 60 who did not own a Fortune 500 company that manufactures industrial child-crushing machines. I got a call that night from the manager of The Stand comedy club, who said that if I could get to Manhattan by 8PM, I could do a spot on his show. I hopped on a train and was shaking with excitement, which worked well because the person to the left of me was shaking with heroin withdrawals, and the woman to the right of me was shaking because she was afraid of the two insane people sitting to her left. I got out of the train and bolted down the sidewalk towards The Stand.

It was a cool November night, and the streets were cluttered with people digging their hands in their coat pockets and hiking their shoulders up as if they were trying to bury their heads deep into their chest cavity for warmth. Yes, yes! I thought to myself as I turned the corner and saw the outside of The Stand. The front of the club looks like the exterior of any upscale restaurant, but when you head inside and to the back there are two rooms--a small upstairs room, and a beautiful downstairs club which offers some of the best audiences I’ve ever seen. Regulars at The Stand have been spoiled by great lineups and food so good it has no business being served in a comedy club. Soon that crowd would be mine, I thought as I walked toward the entrance. Then it happened. I froze, and ducked into an alleyway. I stood there, taking deep breaths and excusing myself to the rats I was intruding on who were eating cheese and playing dice. I don’t know how to describe these episodes that I occasionally suffer. They’re not panic attacks--I don’t feel like I’m having a heart attack, and they’re much less physically taxing. I’ve come to call them “ego tremors.” When I am feeling particularly out of my element or embarrassed, it feels as though a surge of electricity passes through my body, and I need to take a moment to collect myself. I thought years of standup comedy would minimize this reaction, but all it’s done is gotten me accustomed to it. I no longer see this reaction as alien, I see it as an old friend clocking into work with me.

Nice to see you, spasm! Hope you’re not working overtime tonight! I’d like to sleep a little.

I collected myself and started to make sense of the feeling I was experiencing. I had become scared that I was unwanted at the club. Not by the manager, or the other comedians, but by an overarching energetic force that I feel inside any new environment I need to acquaint myself with. This leads me to being nervous and standoffish, and unfortunately being nervous and standoffish is the best way to make a bad impression. I constantly worry I’m not doing the right things in my career, and when I meet new people in comedy who I perceive are doing better than me, shame starts punching me in the stomach like an old-school mobster, trying to collect a debt of my own creation. “Have you had enough?” it asks me. “Good, now you better be as successful as Matt Rife by next week--it’d be a shame if I had to come back and do this constantly throughout your life.”

A lot of comedians in New York have elicited this feeling in me, and as I walked into The Stand it felt like they were all there, comfortable and smiling, having already done ten shows that night and ready to do ten more. There isn’t as much stage time in LA, especially for me, and that gives me an inferiority complex. The manager at The Stand, Joe, acts as if he knows everything I am thinking, and works tirelessly to dispel my self flagellating thoughts. As I walked past the host’s stand, into the dining area that contains a beautiful bar and a brick pizza oven, he walked up to me with a big smile.

“Dan, I got you going up after Neal Brennan! You’re good with that?”

“Yeah, absolutely,” I said. What I was thinking was, Joe, I will literally go up after a dog trained to do backflips if it means I get to do stage time. Getting to go up after Neal Brennan is like the highlight of my month, thank you, thank you so much. But you don’t want to be too desperate.

Joe went off to do some logistical planning with the late night lineup, and I was left standing with my bags in hand, looking around desperately for someone I knew, or somewhere I could be alone. I didn’t recognize any of the comedians at the “comics table,” a booth reserved for those performing on the shows that night. I had seen some of them on shows, but I was in no state to make a clunky introduction, so I opted to sit alone. My thoughts turned dark. I mulled over everything about me that made me unlikable, and then, at the bottom of my spiral, someone started walking over to me, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Michael Longfellow looks like the perfect lead for a teen thriller about vampires who skateboard. We did standup in Los Angeles together before he was inevitably swept up in the arms of the industry. Michael is funny, and not just “he understands the craft of standup comedy” funny. I’m talking really funny, in his bones funny, like “something really bad must have happened to you as a kid” funny. We hadn’t seen each other for a while, and we talked for a long time. Sometimes, someone says exactly what you need in the moment, and in that moment Michael told me, “Yeah, I’ve been feeling stressed lately.”

I hate to say this, and I wish it wasn’t true, but sometimes what I need is someone who I think is better than me to tell me that their life isn’t perfect. Now, Michael just completed a multi-year stint on SNL and is touring at a pace I can only dream of, but it still made me feel good to know that he could have problems too. When I said bye to Michael, I did all I could to convey that not only was I so happy to see him, but also his vulnerability helped my own mental state immensely, which for guys means I said, “Dude seeing you was sick, noogie noogie noogie.”

I descended to the basement, where yet another scene which seemed to be directed by a higher power was unfolding. Neal Brennan was having a rough set. Neal Brennan has multiple Netflix specials, was the co-creator of the Chapelle Show, and is one of my biggest influences in comedy. The crowd was sparse at that hour, and they were out for blood. Neal, like a character in a zombie movie sacrificing himself for the group, was chastising them for their seeming enjoyment of watching people bomb.

“Look at you, trying not to laugh, it’s disgusting.” I was laughing, and they were warming up, if only slightly. He got off stage, and as he passed me he looked at me and said, “Yikes.”

Yikes was right. My set was equally tepid, but far less heroic. I gave my act 110% to try and placate the audience, who glared at me as if I were their hostage. I stepped off stage sweating, feeling bruised but not broken, and I wish I had known then that going up that night would lead to something great the very next night.

The next night, my friend Lucas Zelnick, who looks like the bully in a teen thriller about skateboarding vampires (I guess I have a type?) was showing me around the Comedy Cellar. The Cellar is four different rooms where the greatest comedians of all time developed their acts. That night I saw Nikki Glaser run her SNL monologue. Lucas is a rising star at the Cellar, which makes sense because I saw his set that night, and he made the crowd laugh so hard it looked like he was doing physical damage to the room. While Lucas was giving me a tour of the place, showing me one of the smaller rooms, I saw Neal again in the stairway.

I was now confronted with one of the most challenging aspects of communication for me--introducing myself to someone I have a connection to, but don’t know personally. This happens more often when you see a woman you’re interested in, and it’s usually more perfunctory. “Hey, haven’t I seen you at that one bar that everyone in the city goes to? Wow, what a connection we’ve just made, let’s start a life together.” This type of interaction is much more difficult man-to-man, but I gave it a shot.

“Hey! We were on the same show last night,” I blurted out. Sometimes that’s all it takes. Neal smiled. “Yeah, god damn, what was that?” We chatted about the room and the audience, and soon he had to excuse himself to do his set. This might seem small to you, but there are a few things I want to do in comedy, and talking to Neal was one of them. Once I’ve arm wrestled Kumail Nanjiani and fist fought Jerry Seinfeld I might retire.

I flew back from New York with a new understanding of my social hang-ups. I often feel as though I need to conquer my fear, stomp it out, strangle it, and become a new person in its absence. Now, I think the better thing to do is sit down and have a talk with your fear. Say, “Okay fear, I know you have some points, but we have a couple of people to talk to, and if you let us do that I promise you we can hyperventilate in the car.” There will always be a part of me that will feel inadequate and scared, and maybe that’s good. What’s the alternative--total confidence? Which could very quickly lead to megalomania, narcissism, and wearing those beaded bracelets that spiritual sexual predators wear. Our hang-ups are just texture to our personalities if you learn how to use them. I haven’t fully handled mine yet, but I have a lot of time, and until then I’m excited to find new and exciting alleyways to freak out in.

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