Good Life Project - Adam Cayton-Holland | Comedy in a Time of Darkness

Episode Date: May 5, 2020

Acclaimed comic, Adam Cayton-Holland, has appeared on Conan, The Late Late Show with James Corden, Comedy Central Presents, @midnight, and was named one of Esquire’s “25 Comics to Watch,” as well as one of “10 Comics to Watch” by Variety. Along with his cohorts in The Grawlix, he created, wrote and starred in “Those Who Can’t,” which aired for three seasons on truTV. His albums, “I Don’t Know If I Happy,” “Backyards,” and “Adam Cayton-Holland Performs His Signature Bits,” (voted one of Vulture’s Top Ten Albums of 2018) are all available on iTunes, and his writing has appeared in Village Voice, Spin, The A.V. Club, The New York Times, Esquire and The Atlantic. His first book, Tragedy Plus Time, (https://amzn.to/2VFJXdp) shares the moving story of his ascension into the world of comedy as his sister descended into mental illness and how he moved through that devastating moment of life.You can find Adam Cayton-Holland at: Website: http://www.adamcaytonholland.com/ |Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caytonholland/-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today, Adam Caton Holland, is a stand-up comic who has appeared on Conan, The Late Late Show with James Corden, Comedy Central Presents, At Midnight, The Meltdown with Jonah and Kamal, Hidden America, and was named one of Esquire's 25 comics to watch, as well as one of 10 comics to watch by Variety. And along with his cohorts in The Grawlix, he created, wrote, and starred in Those Who Can, which aired for three seasons on TruTV. He also released a series of comedy albums, and his writing has appeared all over the place from The Village Voice, Spin, Your Times Esquire, The Atlantic, and more. His book Tragedy Plus Time reveals a deeply personal journey that Adam has taken, supporting his sister through mental illness that led devastatingly to suicide, and moved him to re-examine his own life, and then try to figure out how you move forward, being on stage, doing what you love, especially when your job is to stand in front of a room of

people or a screen with potentially millions of people watching and make them laugh. When you're dealing with your own stifling grief, we explore all of this along with the many experiences that have shaped him and built his career in today's conversation. So excited to share it with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Mark Wahlberg You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die Don't shoot him, we need him Y'all need a pilot Flight Risk The Apple Watch Series 10 is here

It has the biggest display ever It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever Making it even more comfortable on your wrist Whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch Getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.

I always drew cartoons and stuff, like comic strips. I wanted to do that. I always drew cartoons and stuff, like comic strips. I wanted to do that. And then when I got to high school, I had a really great teacher who was the English teacher, but also the newspaper guy. And so I got on newspaper staff. And then he started letting us write humor stuff, onion knockoffs or Dave Letterman top ten lists. And once we started doing that, it was like, these are my people. I would sit in the back and write humor with friends. And we would start each newspaper class by breaking down the two Simpsons episodes we had watched the night before on reruns on Fox and then tell all those jokes and be like, okay, let's write some funny stuff.

And then, yeah, once I started doing that at 15, it was over. That's amazing. Was it the art, the expression, like the artistic expression side that was jamming on you? Or was it more like the social commentary or just yes? Just yes. I think it was, I got off like anyone would on coming out in print and everyone reading it and, you know, pay attention to me. Look at the funny thing I did. Of course I got off on that. But I definitely, when I was writing these top 10 lists or articles with my friends, it was, I think it was a high in that my brain liked working this way. I feel like it's like an engineer sits down and is like, I really want to take apart this toy truck I'm playing with. It was just kind of my brain was, felt like it was

firing pretty well in a satisfying way to me when I was doing that. Did you have any sense, even at that age, that like, oh, this would be cool if I could actually in some way, shape or form do this moving forward? I don't think so. I feel like I'm, you know, make it sound like I was born in the fifties, but I feel like in the late nineties, there wasn't social media. My friends and I were still blown away when we learned how to burn CDs. I mean, that was huge.

So access to making things on a high level wasn't as, you know, it was hard to film edit. All those things didn't seem achievable. It felt like something done far away in Hollywood. I knew I liked it and I thought maybe someday, but it definitely didn't. I think now it's kind of like there's this mindset that you can make a movie on your iphone and it could get to cans or something it wasn't like that for us it still felt very daunting to me yeah but i mean even the idea of a comic strip right because i'm i'm guessing also if you were creating these things you were also i mean probably reading them and devouring oh for sure calvin and hobbes right and when you look at

those on the one hand they're a very small number of strips. But on the other hand, a lot of the ones that have been out there have been out there forever. True. And you got it, like you're imagining, okay, so somebody's like, this is sustainable enough. So somebody has been able to actually make this their jam for sometimes decades. Yeah. No, and you know, I guess I am exaggerating a little bit because I remember seeing the movie Clerks, which I don't love as much as I did, but when I saw it at 15 and it's

this black and white film, that's very dialogue driven. And I remember reading it costs $30,000 or something like that. I, that opened my head up to people who didn't have access, could still make things that broke through. So you ended up going, you said you went to Wesleyan. Yeah. Jim, any sense for what you want to do there when you showed up? I became, I was a film major. All right. And so that was part of the reason I went there. They got a real good film department and I wanted

to see what that was about. But going through the film department made me realize that I was bad at it. But I wrote scripts and stuff and that was valuable. You know, when I got to Wesleyan as well, one of the first things I did is I started writing a humor paper and satire. And that always seemed to, I would just do that on my own, not even for class. And I'd put it out and that was definitely humor. Again, it was what I was angling towards clumsily. And then I kept doing that for years until I found standup. I mean, and I know Wesleyan for you was not just a time of finding channels of expression, but also a time where it sounds like

maybe for the first time in a really meaningful way, darkness really starts to kind of like touch down in your psyche. Yeah, absolutely. I got super depressed and eventually pretty suicidal at Wesleyan. And I don't – it was – looking back, it's a lot to do with emotional immaturity, I think. But, you know, also my family's got this mental illness in our blood and I think I was tasting it a little bit, the closest I ever came anyway.

But yeah, you know, you get to a school like that. In order to get to a school like that. In order to get to a school like that, you kind of got to be a hot shot at your school. So, you know, typical big fish, little pond. Then I get to Wesleyan, Lin-Manuel Miranda's in my class. No one's showering me with praise anymore. No one cares. And it's these very peacoat wearing Manhattanite kids that are like impressive to me. And I just didn't, you know, I didn't make the newspaper. I got cut from the soccer team. I had these grandiose notions of what I should be doing as an 18-year-old that I wasn't living up to. And rather than just sort of having the maturity to realize, hey, these are bumps on the road. You'll get through it. There's many

paths. This is what college is, man. This is what growing up is. I just kind of sunk and I didn't talk about it to people and started, you know, drinking and doing a lot of drugs. And it just was a snake devouring its tail. And I mean, that was the first two years of college was getting darker and darker and darker and vandalizing all the time, breaking stuff, just an angry little entitled kid howling at the moon. And then I eventually got caught and almost got expelled. And that was sort of a wake up call. It's like, Hey, you're about to blow all this. And that's sort of helped pull me out of it. A very clear line of like, they might take this all away. Did you have, before that happened,

did you have a sense for sort of like how much you were spinning out of control or was that the moment where you're like, oh, this is actually different than what I thought. This is not the normal, like freaking out that most people have in the first year or two of college and just trying to figure out which way is up. Yeah. I don't know. Because again, I feel like only now at 39, can I say this is a normal freak out of any of identity that at the time it wasn't, I didn't know that I didn't have the distance to know that. But that, you know, there was one time where I had just for three days, partied an insane amount and done an insane amount of drugs.

And I was asleep in my dorm room freshman year and got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the day. It's probably Sunday at four. I'm still sleeping. And I just passed out in the hall and everybody was freaking out and wanted to take me to detox. And I was like, I'm fine. And I went to the bathroom, passed out again. And it was just a really like, clearly this is a warning sign thing. But I was able to convince everybody not to do anything and sleep it off.

Yeah. Did your, because you're across the country from your family at that point also, did they have any sense of what was going on? My older sister, Anna, was actually at Wesleyan. I followed her there. She's like two years old? Two years old. So when I was a freshman, she was a junior.

But I kept it from her pretty good. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. I kept it all from her pretty well. And I didn't, I didn didn't i was embarrassed by how i was doing and i didn't want her to see me doing that poorly and i certainly didn't want my parents to see me so even though i have this lovely family anna would have fallen over herself to come help me out in whatever way or invited me over to hang out with her friend you know she would have

and my parents would have done anything i but i had this strange pride and I didn't want to let on. I kept it all secret until it exploded out of me. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing how much we don't want to share what's going on. When you have somebody who's so close to you who would in a heartbeat step in and say like, I'm here. Let's figure this out together. Yeah. I think there's so much pride tied up in it.

There's so much. Foolish pride. Right. And also this sense of like shame that you don't like, well, if somebody really close to me knows, that's big. Yeah, exactly. And I don't know. I was carving out. I also think my brain was spinning out a little bit. I was writing all sorts of dark stuff

and I, I, I, it was a two pronged fear of what I was becoming and trying to keep away from people. Dark stuff. How? I would write just dark, just journal furious entries and write weird poems. And, you know, it sounds all cliche now, but it was just dark and And I felt like it was never going to get better. Do you, were you a journaler? I was at the time. Do you still have those journals? Yeah.

They're weird. Do you ever like look back at them and reflect? Sort of. It's funny. I have them on my little bedside table. I have all the journals, which then turned into joke books. I just kept all of them. And my son always goes and rifles through them.

He's one years old and he's always tearing through that stuff because it's on his ground level. And I'm kind of like, at what point should I remove these? I don't want him reading this stuff, but he's far from reading. I mean, it's so interesting, I think, to reflect on that. I'm not a journaler and so many times I wish that I was at certain moments just so I could a decade, two decades go back and actually recall like in real time, even the good stuff and the bad stuff. Sure. It helped. I, you know, I wrote this book and it helped a little bit to tap into that mindset for sure. But no, I haven't done it for years.

Now it's kind of, I don't have time, especially with a kid. And yeah, I wish I did it, but cause you, you know, you read these artists and they journal for years and it's fascinating to have that stuff, but I don't know. Yeah. I let go of it. Fodder for something else down the road, maybe. I guess you end up sort of like halfway through, you hit this moment where it's sort of like a moment of reckoning, almost get expelled. Then end up bouncing to Spain, it sounds like for.

Yeah. It's like such a, I feel like such a cliche, but it's like, I went to, I feel like that's part of the reason the school let me back. It's very funny because Anna's a lawyer now, and whereas I was this fuck-up sophomore, she was this stellar senior on all these boards with deans and top of the class, just a really well-respected kid and bound to be an attorney someday. So she, when it hit the fan and they were going to kick me out of the school, she slid in and was my counsel the entire time. She was so good and so supportive and so smart. And so she kind of would spin it in certain ways.

And basically she was this as good as being like, this is the time for a school like Wesleyan to show what they're made of. Do they turn their back on a kid when he's down and hurting? Or do they accept him and get him the help that he needs and turn him into a Wesleyan man? And it's just like, well, I guess we do that. And so, I was going away. It was near the summer of my sophomore year. So, I'd be gone for the whole summer. And then I was going to study abroad for the next semester. So ostensibly it's eight, nine months that I won't be physically back on this campus. And so, you know, in that eight, nine months, they had me do therapy and community service and things like that. So I think that was part of like, okay, maybe this asshole can grow

up a little bit by the time he sets foot on campus again. Yeah. But it sounds like to a certain extent it worked. It did. It did. I think I had spent so much time navel gazing and being dark and depressed and, which is no one really points out is very selfish. It's me, me, me, me, me. I'm sad. I'm bad.

I'm a terrible person, but it's all me. Not a lot of you, you, you, when you're terribly depressed. And I think just going to a beautiful place like Spain and Madrid, and there's beautiful women and the different people. And it was like, oh yeah, the world, your problems are not your dorm room and you like this way bigger than this. And that did honestly occur to me and kind of was a great period for me and opened my brain up a little bit. Yeah, it's funny. I think college experiences can be also – can actually – they can really amplify that sense of like this 20-acre existence is the world. Yeah.

And like that is the full container of all the experience of the world. And I'm like this person who's operating in it. And it becomes so insular. I went to law school and practiced law for a short amount of time. And I remember the first year of law school, which is known as just kind of wrecking you, there was a moment where it was all consuming. It was in the middle of New York City, but nothing existed outside of this bubble of, of kind of crushing pressure and stress. Yeah. And you couldn't imagine,

like you didn't even have the bandwidth to think about anything outside of that. Yeah. Yeah. And meanwhile, 10 miles down the road, there's another group of people feel the exact same way. Right.

I wrote it. I was on a TV show and my friends and I wrote it and we had three seasons and there, there'd be the pressure of the network and this sky is falling for this reason today. And I remember we'd be writing it in Hollywood and we would say, hey, there's down the hall, there's another show having the exact same problems. Like it's bigger than us. Let's breathe. It's okay.

It's not just this entire little microcosm. Yeah. I think that's one of the biggest benefits of getting out of that ecosystem or travel in this case, like entirely in the country. Like, Oh, there's, you know,

like, yeah, this sucks. There's this microcosm and it's not my world and it's not the world. Totally. The universe of possibilities and interactions is so much bigger. It's like a reset. I firmly believe it's a lot of pressure to put on an 18 year old kid to be

like, where do you, and you were, we were talking about your daughter in college, where do you want to go? How do you want to define yourself for the next four years? Some kids nail it, but it's hard. And you're 18. And yes, you're an adult, but we all know that 18 is still a pretty young kid. So it's a lot, you know, if I, for me personally, I think I was a little bit immature in certain ways, clearly. So I feel like it would have benefited me to take a year off and travel or work at Subway and learn how lucky you are to go to a school like this and not waste the first two years just tearing my brain apart. You eventually, you, you graduate Wesleyan degree in film, I guess. Yes. When you leave there, are you like, okay, I'm heading straight into film or- No, not at all. I had no idea. You're basically like, I checked that box, now what? Totally. And everyone was going to New York or LA, everyone. And I watched people in my film department who were so much better at it than me and just seemed to enjoy it more than me,

that I was like, I don't think I want to do this. I think I want to write, I think I'll do funny things, but I don't know what that means at all. So I moved back to Denver for a little while. And then I moved back to Spain with a friend for two friends for eight months, just kind of delaying things. And then I was decided I should make, I should do something. So I remember I wrote a Simpson script and I tried to get that into the right hands. Nothing ever came of it. And in my head, I just thought comedy. Okay. Comedy is second city in Chicago. That's what happens. You go to second city and you get on Saturday Night Live. So Anna was in law school at Chicago. I followed her again.

She let me crash on her floor for six, seven months. And I took classes at second city. What, I mean, what, what flip, what switch flipped even that made you say comedy? I think it was, you know, I graduated college. I moved to Spain again, fucking around, delaying adulthood. And after six months of that, I was trying to teach English, but you can't teach English without a visa. You can't get a visa without a job. This is catch 22. So I just blew my money and had a great time. But I was also, you know, I was the kid who felt the pressure

of not doing well enough at college that I was able to tailspin. At 22, I'm feeling the pressure of what are you doing? You're wasting your time. You're not starting your life. So I think I just, I don't know. I wrote that Simpson script and I was like, maybe I'm good at this. And it was never a light switch flipping. It was more just comedy is it. Whatever that means. The vague concept of comedy. Coming from a family where your mom's a journalist, your dad's a civil rights lawyer and crusader.

You go to Wesleyan, this amazing institution, and you come out and you're like, comedy. Yeah, weird, right? I don't know if anyone was. But I mean, also, I mean, I'm curious what, in like the context of the family dynamic and the values and what you're, quote, supposed to do with your life. Right. When you're like, ah, mom, dad, sis, like this, I think this is my jam. How does that actually land? Well, you know, the good thing about hippie parents is there wasn't a lot of pressure to, obviously that my dad's got an impressive field. My mom was an impressive

journalist, but there was never, hey, you need to do this or that. It was just support all the way. And so, and I was very funny with my little sister in our family. We were, you know, Anna's funny, but she's a little older and more independent. And Lydia and I would kind of be more of a two-man shtick. So I don't think it was a surprise to my parents because at home, we were very funny. And we were the ones that would make the whole family laugh. So I think they, you know, and then in high school, I had written funny stuff. I had written the humor paper. And they were clearly like, well, Adam does this.

He tries to put out comedic content. It wasn't a total curveball. Yeah. So you can kind of look at the dots already starting to like piece themselves together. So you spent time in Second City in Chicago, but then bounced back to Denver fairly soon after that. So while I'm doing that in Second City, Chicago, my buddy who is in Denver, he sent me an article. There's a newspaper here, the Westward. It's the Alt Weekly owned by Village Voice Media. They're all in the same conglomerate. But you know, the indie, indie rag from my and it won their contest. And the editor wrote me. She's like, are you in Denver? Do you want to write more?

Can you, you want to freelance? And I wasn't liking the second city classes. And that seemed like the biggest lead I had. So I moved back to Denver, started substitute teaching to pay the bills, freelancing for this newspaper. And then I started doing standup comedy at mics at open mics around town. So I think I was kind of flirting with it in Chicago. I was doing improv, sketch writing, not liking any of them, but I remember going to open mics in Chicago

and watching and just sitting in the back and watching, but not participating. And so then I got back to Denver and I just was like, you need to start doing standup comedy comedy and I did and I haven't stopped since Mayday Mayday we've been compromised the pilot's a hitman I knew you were gonna be fun on January 24th tell me how to fly this thing Mark Wahlberg you know what the difference between me and you is you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I mean, it seems like there are really two threads that are running through this, right? One is the interest in comedy, but also it's writing. You also want to be on the side of creating the stuff underneath it,

whether it was journalism or writing for the paper or writing for the humorous columns. It's not just being on a stage in front of people. It's also, it's like the craft of creating underneath that. Yeah, I think you're right. And truthfully, there was never the desire to be on stage in front of people. It was always behind the scenes, write, write, write, write, write, write a Simpson script, be the writer. And then once I started going to open mics and seeing the true pathetic nature of standup comedy, you know, I thought standup comedy was this craft anointed by gods. Like Hollywood just says, you're a comic to the guy on Johnny Carson's couch. I didn't think regular people were stand-ups. It just seemed strange to me.

And then going to open mics and learning that truly unfunny people are trying to do this gave me the confidence to be like, you're better than those guys. Write stuff down, try it. And so that I did. And it was, you know, that's when I got the shot in the arm and learned, Oh, I like being on stage too. Yeah. It was, but it was never desperate child doing skits in the living room. Like, look, I mean, it was more playing around with my sister, my parents and I thought we were funny, but writing, writing, writing, writing. Do you remember your, your very first time on stage?

A hundred percent. Yeah. What was like the lion's lair? It was this dive bar in Denver, like really dive bar in Denver. And I had gone the week before and watched. And then I wrote stuff. And I memorized it, rehearsed it in the mirror, memorized it.

And no hyperbole. I got on stage, blacked out, got off stage. And they were like, that was really good. Hey, this guy's funny. All right. So blacked out and basically just froze. And they were like, that was really good. Hey, this guy's funny. All right. So blacked out and basically just froze.

Yeah. Well, I don't remember any of it. I'm sure I went into the routine that I had memorized backwards and forwards, but I don't recall telling it. It was that, I blacked out. So I remember getting on stage and getting off and the MC is like, good stuff, man, shaking my hand. And I was like, okay, I guess it went well. So to this day, you have no it's this little club. And so, a new person would try, not do well. And the funnier comics who are more established, the MC and a few other guys you could tell have been doing it a while, would sort of shun that guy. Just politely, but, you know, no thanks, man. And then if someone got up there and did well, you'd see them sort of be like,

hey, want a drink? And kind of welcome. It was like the price of entry into this club is laughter. If you don't get it, you're not in this club. And so after that, so I had seen that social scene play out the week before. And I got off stage not remembering what I did, but being told I did well. And I was sort of brought into the club. And then they were like, you should sign up at the downtown comedy club. It takes two months to get on. Sign up now.

By then you'll be ready. You know, that type of stuff. Was there much of – because I guess you kind of fall under this like rough umbrella of like, quote, alt comedy. Yeah, I'll take it. I like that because it means thoughtful. Yeah. Not a jerk. It's like more story-driven, more social commentary. Was there, you know, New York is certainly, and LA had been

known for having like a big alt comedy scene for a while. Did that scene exist in Denver when you were doing this? Definitely not. Definitely not. And I think now about the time I wasted at college being depressed and I was like, you should have just been in New York. You should have been 90 miles away watching the rise of the alt comedy scene and getting into it. But, you know, we have our paths. No, Denver had nothing like that. Denver was pretty small. And there's this club called the Comedy Works, which is one of the best in the country.

So we had that. There's a great comedy club. But it's still a club. And a lot of the alt comedy doesn't really happen in the clubs per se. Now it's kind of changed. Now it's one's bled into the other, but especially at that time. So truthfully, I got into comedy really passionately, studied the scene. I got in a CD.

I started working at that newspaper. And I remember the music editor came up to me one day and he's like, here's a comedy CD I got. You want it? Cause he knew I was doing comedy. And it was a double disc CD of this show called invite them up, which was, if you know, all comedy,

it's, it was a very influential New York show that Eugene Merman did. And, you know, Mike Birbiglia came out of there and take the Taro and Michael Showalter. And a lot of the guys from the state. It was just very influential alt comedy.

And I had never heard anything like that. It was like I'd been listening to only Dave Matthews or something. And someone's like, here's a pavement CD. And I was like, whoa, okay, I like this. And as soon as I heard that, I thought, I want to do that here. I want to emulate it. So my friends and I started doing alt comedy and running cool, weird shows at non-traditional venues,

which was, you know, it was a double advantage for us. We could do interesting things, but also we, we got more stage time and got to figure out how to be funnier. So yeah, we started doing that.

And now Denver's got a pretty healthy, thriving, all comedy scene. And yeah, we're definitely kind of the grandfathers. Right. Cause it sounds a pretty healthy, thriving, all-comedy scene. And we're definitely kind of the grandfathers of that. Right, because it sounds like you kind of had to build it from the ground up to a certain extent. Sure. And there's been so many people that contributed and did other stuff. But definitely, it was new when we were doing it.

And I remember I went to invite them up. I took a pilgrimage and watched. And as soon as I could, I started going to New York to try to get on those shows. And I wasn't, you know, I'm not dumb. I know that Denver, no one's trying to come scout you to make you famous. So as soon as I could, I started taking trips out to New York and LA to try to get on the coolest shows I could. And I'd befriend those cool comics when they came through Denver. And then they'd put me on their stages when I went to those towns. So quickly, it started, I started realizing the picture was way bigger than Denver

while sort of trying to build something in Denver. And yet you decided to still, like, this is still your home base to this day. Yeah, a hundred percent. It is. But, you know, I'm on planes three times a month. But yes, definitely I've tried to make it work from here. And that's tied into a lot to mental health and being happier here and being around my family and stuff. Yeah. Which is so important. What happens because you're still, so you're doing this largely at night, right? Um, and you're still working other jobs to pay the bills. Well, you know, I got hired by the newspaper, so I became a full-time staff writer. So I'm a full-time writer. So you're like a journalist at the paper. This is what's happening on the side. What happened? Like what happens that makes you say, okay, I'm writer. So you're like a journalist at the paper. This is what's happening on the side. What happens that makes you say, okay, I'm all in on comedy?

Laid off from the newspaper. Five years later, you know, newspapers, I don't know if you know, they're not doing great. And I was clearly, the newspaper Western was really nice because the first cover story I wrote was about stand-up comedy. It was called iComic. And it was just your typical me checking out the scene of comedy while was about standup comedy. It's called I comic. And it was just your typical me checking out the scene of comedy while writing about me doing comedy. So from that moment on, my editor was like, well, you've just said you're this funny guy in the pages. Would you, you should prove it. And she gave me a column. And so I got to write a weekly humor column.

So I was already the funny guy. And I think they kind of liked that I was doing standup as well. It didn't hurt. You know, my intro would be like, this guy's a writer for Westward every time. They liked that. They both fed each other. For example, Tuesday night was our Saturday night. There was the new talent night at comedy works. And then my friend ran a open mic that was the most popular one started at 11, went till two. So I'd come in Wednesday, hungover at noon, and my editor never gave me any shit about it. They understood. But so, yeah, I got laid off, and I had started doing college gigs the year before,

which pay very well. And so I kind of realized, I was like, if I can string together 18 college gigs, I'll be making as much as I made at the newspaper. So I could see there was a path. So I started hitting college gigs. I'll be making as much as I made at the newspaper. So I could see there was a pass. So I started hitting college gigs really hard. And, but yes, getting laid off was the impetus I needed to be like, all right, it's now or never you're a full-time comic or you're not. Yeah. I mean, it's nothing like that shove that basically says this door is closed. Like you

didn't ask for it to be closed. It was closed. And now this thing that you've had like partially open, you got to go. Yeah. I mean, it was a shock. I didn't to be closed. It was closed. And now this thing that you've had like partially open, you got to go. Yeah. I mean, it was a shock. I didn't see it coming. It was like, it was terrible. And I was really upset about it, but I'm so happy it happened. It was definitely the push I needed.

How quickly, I mean, you said you sort of like went all in on the college circuit. How quickly were you sort of like back to a place where you're like, yeah, I'm doing okay. Purely with comedy. Uh, you mean financially? Yeah. Just like, yeah, I'm doing okay purely with comedy? You mean financially? Yeah. Just like – I mean, it was tough. But I don't recall having to borrow money. But I do – I am lucky enough that I know my parents are never going to let me starve.

So, I would have been okay. But I think, you know, I just kind of cut the fat on everything and lived pretty lean for a while. But yeah, I think within about a year, I had managed to make what I was making at the paper, which was $25,000 or something like that. It wasn't a ton of money, but it was enough to live in Denver at that time. Yeah. For sure. And this is, you're in your late 20s at that point? Yeah.

Like 2008, 2009. Right. Yeah. From there, you kind of go to, I mean, it sounds like it just starts to build and build and build and build. You end up on national stages, on tours, being featured. And then you end up on TV, on some of the big evening shows. I'm always curious. There was a day or a time when those shows, you show up on there and you're kind of minted. Yeah. I mean, it's the Carson phenomenon. Is that still a thing? No, I wish.

No, it used to, because there's so many now, it doesn't hold the influence that that had. It used to be Johnny Carson, you get your five minute late night spot, four and a half minute late night spot. And then if you do well, I mean, everybody would watch that show. So everyone the next day sees you. But if you got invited to the couch, that was sort of the king making thing. If Johnny liked you enough to bring you over to the couch to let you shine comedically with him for two minutes at the end of the show, that was like your royalty now. And that's, you know, the next day your life would literally change. It'd be like, you know, a musician signing that contract in 1991. It was a, oh man, next day you're famous.

But no, it's not like that anymore. Yeah. Do you feel like there's, is there anything in the world of comedy that's like that anymore? Is it like- I mean, honestly, I think a Netflix special currently does that. Because it just gets eyes on you in a way that were never there before. And that's the power of Netflix. But, you know, even that's changing.

Amazon's putting out specials now. So it's not as big a phenomenon. And to get to that Netflix special, odds are most comedy nerds knew about you anyway. No, that makes a lot of sense. So you're building a career, that makes a lot of sense. So you're building a career, also writing a lot of stuff, but now just for yourself. But your Jones for media also never quite goes away for film, for TV. When does that start to, like, as you're sort of like on planes, trains and automobiles performing on stage, writing your own stuff, When does the scripting and the TV start to show up again?

Or was that always a through line? You know, after, it's hard enough to learn how to do standup. Yeah. Because it's a hard craft and you suck at it for a while. So I was doing that, but I was also such a student of the game. And I love, love comedy. And I grew up on watching sketch stuff, Mr. Show, The State. I love that stuff. And I always wanted to do that as well. So as soon as I could find collaborators

to work with to film sketches, we started doing that early, you know, two, three years into comedy, we started making sketches and pointing cameras at each other and trying to figure it out and then i don't know maybe 2009 10 i was doing a show with these two guys ben roy andrew overdall we still do it it's called the growlix our trio became a tv show those who can't which we had for three years but we teamed up with these two filmmakers who reached we reached out to them because we'd seen some of their stuff. And Denver was a small enough town at the time. They're like, oh, we know who you are. We love your stuff. And so they started working with us and we did a web series, but the production quality was way higher and they made us look good. And we weren't just sort of getting together and be like, so what do you want to film today? We'd come with scripts

that we wrote and it was just way more organized. And that web series was definitely our first sort of professional push to like, I would like to do this. And yeah, that was 2009, 10 type of thing. So your career is kind of like building. It's doing really, really nicely. At the same time, on a personal level, especially in your family. And I guess looking back, you can kind now see like there there was sort of like shared darkness and probably even that's passed on through generations but your sister starts your younger sister yeah this time starts to really struggle yeah definitely yeah i you know i've had to think of the timeline because i've written about it and studied it but it all blurred together at the time. But yeah, she started, she went to Colorado college and she was, which is an hour South of Denver and lived there afterwards.

Stayed there for, stayed on, worked at a all breed animal rescue and was finding her little world down there. But then I came down there to do a show one time in Colorado Springs, a comedy show. And she knew I was doing comedy, but I don't think she realized I'd gotten good at it or decent anyway. And she came to the show and I just watched the comedy nerd light bulb go off in her head. And she was already like this punk rocker chick, just indie rock, loved music. I could see. and in that moment, I mean, she transitioned from like obsessive music fan to obsessive comedy fan pretty quickly. And so after the show, she was like,

she wanted to know everything about what I was doing and how I thought of the jokes on stage, why I did them in this order. And you, and she asked, she's like, she was thinking about moving to Denver anyway. And she said, if I move back to Denver, can I help you with your stuff? You know? And I said, of course. And so she moved home and she became integral. These shows that we were running were pretty ambitious. You know, we would have sketches and we would do live act out things and we would do weird audience plants and musical cues. So, you know, she took over and ran all the tech, made all the flyers, worked the door. So she became a part of my comedy scene. Our friends were all the same. And then as this is all going on, she just started to have, she had a couple breakdowns and it started to become

clear that Lydia, you know, mental health was way off. Yeah. How was that actually, how was that showing up in a way that you became aware of? down and confessed to my dad that she's not sleeping. She can't turn her brain off. She's a big reader. And she was saying that she couldn't read the words on the page because she would scan the letters forwards and backwards obsessively. Her brain was very interesting. As a kid, she could say things backwards like that. She wasn't dyslexic. But if she could spell it, if you could say, Lydia, say, I went to the grocery store backwards, she would spit it out backwards. It was a parlor trick. It was amazing. And so she came in and said, I can't read words on the page

because I scan them obsessively forwards and backwards so bad that an hour passes, I haven't read a sentence. And that was this wake up call. And we were like, well, what is this? And I was out of the country at the time, but I remember my mom texted me and told me all about it. And I was like, oh, I can remember just being like, this isn't good. And my dad's sister suffered from mental illness and, you know, we were all hands on deck and she started going to therapists and there was never any, the sad story of my family is there's nothing we could have done better. We were all, you know,

what can we do? How can we help you? Thank you for telling us this is great. You told us, let's get you to the right help. Let's get you the right therapist. If they're not right, we'll find the next one from that day forward.

But it just kept getting worse. And what was frustrating was that it was never consistent. It wasn't this, that was the day. And then it started going downhill from there. It would go up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. Lydia would be great for weeks on end. Then Lydia would have a crisis. Great for weeks on end again, crisis. And so in that time going through it, living it as a family, all you want to see are the weeks on end where she's doing good because you want her to do good. So it's hard to sort of understand and tell the worst happens, how bad those spikes actually were and how much she must've been hiding from us during those periods that we perceived as good.

So yeah, it got ugly. Yeah. And when you say it got ugly, I mean, it gets ugly in terms of her day to existence and her interaction with everyone and with you. Eventually, she ends up taking her own life. Yeah, yeah. She took her own life in 2012, and I found her. And it was as fucked up as that sounds. And it caused me enormous emotional problems and that took me a long time to recognize. And I had to do a lot of therapy

and work to sort of get back to able to function. And the weird thing is, meanwhile, comedy just kept going and these great career opportunities. I mean, literally, there's a thing in comedy called the Just for Laughs comedy festival. It's in Montreal. It's the biggest comedy festival in the world. And every year they do a thing where they pick new faces. And I've likened it to being drafted into the world. And every year they do a thing where they pick new faces and that,

and I've likened it to being drafted into the NFL. It's like, welcome to the big leagues kid. And I think they do 18, 20 a year from all over Canada and the U S. And so in 2012, I was a new face. It's a big deal. I auditioned three times before I didn't get it. 2012, I got it. Went to Canada, did great, crushed it, got an agent, got a manager. Lydia and I are texting. She's geeking out. She's so proud of me. She wants to know every detail. I come home from Montreal. The next day, she killed herself. So what do you do with that? Suddenly this career and all these, you know, we talk about these insular worlds of college and law school, a TV show. I thought comedy is my world. And then Lydia did that.

Her mental illness got that bad that you're like, oh, I don't care at all. This world doesn't matter. I don't care at all. And I certainly don't feel funny. And that's been my life ever since. So yeah, two weeks later, I went to LA. My parents, I didn't want to go, but you create this buzz for yourself. The whole industry is kind of like, hey, who's the new kid?

Let's get him a meeting. And Lydia had wanted it so bad for so long that my parents didn't want me to torpedo things. So everyone's pushed me to go. And I went and I wound up selling a TV show that my friends and I had written the script for, those who can't. And so suddenly the biggest career win I ever got is two weeks after my entire life exploding. And so that's kind of like, okay, here we go. This is the new existence. Just the notion, the entire notion of on the one hand, grappling with this profound loss. All you want to do is essentially curl up in the corner of a room. And at the same time, not only do you have to be forward-facing to earn a living,

but you're being paid to be funny to earn a living. Right. Which is, on the one hand, I almost wonder whether it's brutally hard at that moment in time. And at the same time, you being forced to access something which reframes so much of just what happens, suffering in all parts of life, to find what's lighter in it in any way was helpful to you or not so much? Well, truthfully, I stopped doing stand-up because I did maybe a couple of shows here and there, but I think for about six months, I just didn't. And I remember being so nervous about that. I was like, you just became a new face. And you're going to stop right now?

What are you doing? But then I couldn't do it. And then we sold the show, and that was actually the lifesaver because we had to make a pilot for the show. And as a show that me and my two friends wrote about bad teachers at a failing high school, it has nothing to do, you know, stand up as you, here's my story. It's, and even if you are telling a dick joke, there's a part of you in it. And you're supposed to talk about your experience on stage. I wasn't going to talk about this. I was living it.

I didn't have any perspective. I wasn't. And it would have been weird to get up on stage immediately and be like, my little sister took her own life. Like, here's, let's talk. It's just, I didn't have the maturity as an artist to pull that off. I didn't have the distance or healing to talk about it. But making a TV show where I could just be goofy and play a character and create a world that had nothing to do with this world was something that I quite enjoyed. But we filmed the pilot,

took a week, and it was the best. I was nervous if I could do it, but then I got to set and my friends and I laughed and it was like our baby. There was no network oversight. They let us film it in Denver. No one even came to set. They just gave us money and let us do it. It was a dream come true. And that was the best. I was like, this is funny. I enjoy this. I could do this. And then we wrapped production and you know, there's a year before we figured out whether what our fate was. So that was like snap back to reality. And that got real ugly. That's when I started to bottom out. My agent got me a club gig in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I'd never headlined clubs. It was my first Adams headlining club. And at that point, Lydia died in July. This was in December. So it had been half a year.

And I thought, even though I hadn't been doing comedy, I was like, go play the hits. Who cares if your heart's not in it? I didn't want word to get out that Adam, Kate, and Holland was not emotionally well enough to do comedy work. And so I felt like I had to take the gig. And I went. And it was terrible. And I had like I had to take the gig and I went and it was terrible. And I had like a breakdown and I got suicidal and, and kind of really bottomed out.

And then I, that's when I realized that I was not doing well at all. And I guess I could have kind of, um, tricked myself into thinking I was doing okay, but I, that's when I realized I wasn't doing well. Yeah. Yeah.

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I know you explored a whole bunch of different types of therapy. I guess it was right around then. Yeah. You're like, okay, so I'm not just going to work my way through this. Well, I started going to therapy immediately and started all my family. I mean, we're smart people. We know how devastated we are, but it takes a while to figure out your proper path, especially with something like this. And so I hadn't found anything that was working. I was just kind of like going through the steps of telling a therapist who I didn't even like or feel like was helping, just going every week because that's what you should do, I suppose,

but it wasn't getting me anywhere. Yeah. I mean, filming the TV show, it sounds like it served a certain purpose for you, kind of like completely. It required, it demanded so much of your focus away from that and doing something you truly loved reminds you that you actually can laugh again to a certain extent. But like you said, you know, it's a window in time that ends. And then I think so many of us, when we, when you experience something, some profound loss or trauma, and there is something, whether it's a passion or a hobby or an interest or work that you just, it's all consuming and you love it. You just pour yourself into it. Sometimes that's just an ongoing thing that distracts you. And sometimes it's good, but sometimes it also, it takes you away from you actually doing the work to, to, to figure out like how to somehow be okay for the

rest of your life. If you, if in fact you can do that. It's finite. Yeah. And your pain and suffering is infinite. Right. So it's not, at some point the pain's gonna outlast that. I mean, it's fascinating because you turn to something I've been so curious about for years, but I've never experienced, which sounds like really was maybe the most effective thing

in helping you sort of like cross that bridge, which is EMDR. Tell me more about what this is. And probably a lot of our listeners have no idea what this is too. Yeah. I've become a huge advocate of it. It's EMDR stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. But it's been around for a while.

You think it's like this new agey whatever, but it's been around for, I don't know, 40 years. And it's a treatment that people use to, to work through PTSD a lot. And I've become, like I said, this advocate for it and I've spoken about it and stuff. And I've talked to a lot of people who've done it, some with great success, some with, without. So I, like any therapy, I think it's about the strength of your practitioner and finding the person that works for you. Anyway, I went to my own regular doctor, and he's like, you have PTSD is basically what he said. And he asked me if I was open to this EMDR.

I'd never heard of it. He sent me to this woman who I later found out was a world-renowned leader in the field, thankfully. And honestly, how it works is they put these pulsers in your hand that tick-tock back and forth. They're like electronic. They don't make a sound, but they pulsate back and forth. You close your eyes. And in that way, your eyes instinctually follow that movement, simulating REM, which is what we do when we deep sleep and apparently how the brain processes a lot of things. So you trick your brain into thinking you're asleep. And then you, with this therapist, go through the trauma in every, in lucid detail, tell her about every single detail of this thing. And then it's obviously

clearly overwhelming. So the therapist makes you have a happy place in your brain that you kind of pre-assign and retreat to when it gets to be too much. The way my therapist likened it was that, because therapists love metaphors for the brain, I heard a metaphor was that the memory of finding my little sister had become an errant file in the filing cabinet that is my brain. And it was popping up at inopportune times through nightmares and flashbacks. EMDR's goal is to file it away in an orderly fashion. So it's there to access when you want to access it, but you get to decide when that happens, not it coming up inappropriately. And so that's what we did for, I don't know, like 10, 12 sessions that were as intense as that sounds. Yeah. But it sounds like that was the one thing where obviously the memory and the experience

never goes away, but it allows you to file it in a way where a lot of the trauma is sort of kind of stripped from it to a certain extent where it's the experience is all there. The loss is there. The feelings are there, but you can breathe through it now. Yeah. It's almost like this because it was painful to go through it, but it almost becomes this normalization of the memory. And so I think that's the rote repetition part.

It's just like this happened, this happened, this happened. You're going to process it. It's not going to be this shockingly raw experience every time you recall it or it pops up. And the sadness and the existential angst and the wondering about why and the learning about mental illness and forgiving Lydia who didn't do anything but suffer from a disease, you get to that on your own. There's no therapist that's going to just hand you that in 10 sessions. But the raw traumatic memory that was killing me was what we dealt with.

Yeah. Tell me if I have the timeline right here also. So you're going through this and you're working as much as you can, concerned about, you know, like, well, how much do I let my, quote, public know about this? Because people don't want me showing up and bringing them down. Like my job is the opposite. Yeah, right. You make a decision at some point to say, you know what, I got to write about this. And so you write up basically a post on your website, publish it.

That thing goes viral, gets massive attention. Yeah. What happened in your mind that said, it's time for me to not just write this for myself, but actually write something and then make it public? I think it was that I had spent the last 10 years of my life trying to become a writer, comic, quasi-public figure. In Denver, certainly a public figure. And then I just, the most, for better or for worse, certainly worse, the most profound thing of my life happened to me. And I'm suddenly silent.

And it just ate me up. I was the, the insufferable artiste inside of me needed to deal with it in some way. And it certainly wasn't going to be standup. I didn't have the skillset or the desire, but I just wrote about it and I cried and sobbed and wrote the whole story out. And, you know, I, like I said, I want, it wasn't enough for me to just write it like a journal entry. I wanted it to be out there. And so I put it out there and, uh, and honestly, that felt great. It felt really good. It was overwhelming because it blew up in a way that I didn't anticipate. Did you have any sense that that was going to happen? And it was so overwhelming that I posted it and I was kind of like, was that a mistake? I'm scared. And I went

on a hike and I left my phone in the car and I came back and I was like, oh, Jesus. But that helped me because I think I was tired of people, of wondering if people knew this about me. And I felt like I'm up on stage telling jokes and people are looking at me and they're like, this poor bastard. Like, he's not talking about what happened. And so that's obviously I put that on myself. I don't think anyone, I think most people were like, however, you got to heal, heal man. But in my head, that's what I was thinking. And so I kind of wanted to put this out there and be like, I, this is me dealing with it. This is me addressing it. But then that just opened the

floodgates for me. I just wanted to talk about it more and more and more, and I'm still talking about it. Yeah. And I mean that eventually, I guess that post really seeds what eventually becomes a book, Tragedy Plus Crime, which really tells the fuller story. You said now you talk about it on a regular basis. Is it, you know, because there's this whole thing, like, you know, like there are things that you just don't talk about on stage because they're not funny. They bring the audience down. Right, right. there's this whole thing like, you know, like there, there are things that you just don't talk about on stage because they're not funny. They bring the audience down. Right. Right. You referenced earlier that original CD featured like people from that scene

were bigly, but also Teak Notaro. Yeah. Who was one of those people where, what was it? Five years ago, maybe or something like that. Take,

take, take the stage and starts by saying, I got cancer. And people thought it was fake. Right. Yeah. But that, in my mind, and you know this so much better than I do, was this flag in the sand where it's like, you can stand up there and tell this profoundly real story about suffering and pain and hard stuff. And the audience definitely, you can almost feel listening, like the audience first,

first thing he was fake, then being like, oh, this is real. But then coming around and like, and you referenced not having the craft yet to be able to essentially do what Tig did when she took the stage to do that. Sure, Tig's a master. She's a master of this. But you have sort of like come around to this place now where it's sort of like you're stepping into that same place and sort of saying like, let's talk about something real. But also you have a level of craft and perspective on what's happened now where it's like, can you actually bring people along on this journey, which is emotional and hard, but at the same time leaves them in a place which is not like everybody's walking out like, you know, with their heads down. Yeah, well, it feels I'm nowhere near where Tig is. I aspire to be as good as Tig someday. But I definitely feel comfortable doing it now.

But I do it on my terms. I'm not going to a comedy club where you got to buy two drinks and some fried chicken strips to hear my jokes. I do it at theaters or alt rooms like Tick did. She wouldn't go into the Des Moines Funny Bone and be like, here we go. It's more proper setting and a little bit of like, I don't know, thoughtful NPR listeners in the audience. But yeah, I think people are open to that experience if you're willing to give it to them honestly. And for me, it takes a while. I need an hour to tell you this story, but I love it. And it's the same reason I wrote that post back in the day, because it's a normalization of my experience that I am choosing to put out there.

It's me kicking open the door saying, this happened. I'm not ashamed of it. You want to hear about it? I'll tell you about it. I think about it all the time. And it happens to so many people. And in telling stuff like this, I'm sure Tig's heard the same way. You open yourself up, you tell the story, and the floodgates open with people dying to tell you their story and thanking you for just normalizing it. Because even in 2020 where we think there's no subjects that are off limits, there's no sad condition we can't talk about and embrace and try to help, we still whisper suicide. We don't know whether to say, she died by suicide.

She killed herself. Which one's okay? It's very hesitant and people don't like, it is uncomfortable. But then you do the show and you learn like, it's very hesitant and it's, people don't like, it is uncomfortable. But then you do the show and you learn like, it's not six degrees. It's one degree. Everyone knows someone. So why are we tiptoeing around this? And that, I didn't, I'm not trying to set out to become some leader in the cause or

anything. I just more want to make myself and other people understand that the thing that happened to Lydia is not her fault and it's not my family's fault. And that's been the book and now this show or like been a big learning process. I didn't write the book because I got to a point where it's like, and now I've gathered my thoughts and I'm ready to share them. I wrote the book to gather my thoughts. And that's been what I've gathered is this sort of like, you know, as simple as it sounds is that this is a disease, like cancer is a disease. So why bang your head against the wall about what you could have done differently or why Lydia would choose to do this

because she didn't choose to do any of this. And so that's where I've sort of landed. And it's still sad, but there's a piece in that for sure. Yeah. And I mean, I think it comes full circle to a certain extent also to kind of like the role of comedy and humor in society. Yes, it's to make us laugh. Yes, it's to give us a moment of levity. But underneath all of that, I also wonder if one of like the real primary purposes of humor is just to make us feel less alone. Yeah, I think that might very much be it.

And I think there's a great, in the last 10 years in comedy, push towards representation of all voices. And that's the less alone you're talking about. So, you know, if Hannah Gadsby is getting up there telling her experience, there's some little girl in, you know, Tasmania who can relate to that. That's great. If someone who's suffered through mental illness, who's got a family member, and here's my stuff, they can relate to that. That's great. That's why we need different viewpoints and perspectives. But I once heard stand standup comedy described as a search to sound like yourself on stage. And I think that's really accurate. That's why you're not there when you start out. And it's why you get better and better and better because you sound more like yourself.

And I admire the craft. And when I wasn't talking about Lydia, I felt like I wasn't sounding like myself. And so now when I talk about Lydia, it feels like way more like me up there. Yeah. Do you feel like you're all the way there in terms of like you sounding like yourself on stage? No. It's always going to be like that. Yeah. I think any good comic would say they're never there until the day they die.

I bet Carlin would be like, I'm so far away from that because he's a good self-loathing comedian. And the second you're like, I've nailed it. I'm there. You're a terrible comic. Right. It's like the height of arrogance. No, you're wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm getting closer all the time, but I think it's a lifelong search. You're married. You have a little boy now also. now. So do you feel like that changes your focus in terms of your perspective on life, your perspective on the work that you do or how you want to create and what you want to create? I don't know. I said this to my wife. I don't know if this is a good answer to your question, but in terms of just the difference, I felt like with the birth of Malcolm, like a page is turned. And it's, that makes me sad. Because I feel like it's now a new, you know, Lydia died seven years ago. So I feel like now is the new epic. And I've sort of dealt with it some and I've reached certain levels

of conclusions that certainly can change. But I feel like I've kind of wrapped my head around it somewhat. And now I have a son and it's just, I'm, it just makes me feel old and it makes me feel really sad that it's been seven years and I still don't have my sister around. And so, yeah, it's, it feels like a shift into a new epic of my life, um, that I'm so excited about, but it definitely is the bittersweet of like, feels a little bit of like losing how attached I was to this whole experience of her death and everything. And, you know, it's kind of like when you're first mourning someone, when you have a hour of not thinking about them, you feel guilty because you're like, you need to be,

if you're truly devastated, you need to be in this the whole time. And now I'm starting to be like, I think I'm more focused on life with my kiddo and what's ahead than what's behind. And I'm happy about that, but it's a bittersweet. Yeah. So it's almost like there's this, a door opens to this whole new world of possibility and joy. And at the same time, there's this sort of like a natural second wave of mourning of like, okay, circumstances now require me to let this go on a different level. Right.

It does feel like the door's open to the new thing, but Lydia's like staying on this side of the door and that's sad. Of course, you know, his middle name is Lee, which is her nickname.

And, you know, I'll teach him about her and he'll read the book and know about her and stuff, but it does feel like leaving behind a little bit yeah so it feels like a good place for us to come full circle too so sitting here in this container with a good life project if i offer up the phrase to live a good life what comes up um to live a good life, I think to live a good life, you must realize that the happiness and the beauty of the world outweighs the sadness. And so it's worth it. Thank you.

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