What I've been doing.

So, you’ve most likely noticed that I haven’t posted anything to the Basic Instructions News blog in several months. This is true for two reasons. One is that I am a lazy, lazy man. The other is that I have in fact had far too much news to report. These last three months have been the most eventful of my adult life. My lifestyle has changed in such huge and fundamental ways that it is practically unrecognizable. Rather than just list the changes for you, instead, I intend to tell the whole story in a serialized format, starting with this post.

Part 1 - Necessary Background Information:

I moved to Seattle from my home town in Eastern Washington in the early 1990’s, intent on becoming a stand-up comic. Within a year I had a small but sturdy career as a stand-up comic going and I was quite proud of it. One night a friend of mine introduced me to a member of his improv comedy group named Missy. Within a year Missy and I were married.

The first vacation we ever took together was to Disneyland. I had never been a fan of Disney films, and growing up Disneyland had been this bizarre, almost hypothetical place that you only got to go to if your parents were rich AND you were dying. My only exposure to anything that even resembled an amusement park was the Central Washington State Fair, which was held yearly in Yakima Washington, and boasted an assortment of about twelve rusty metal contraptions designed to make you scream and vomit, sometimes simultaneously.

We both enjoyed Disneyland so much that we honeymooned at Disneyworld. A little trivia here, my favorite ride at Disneyland was the Indiana Jones Adventure. At Disneyworld, my favorite was the Tower of Terror.

Fast forward to three and a half years ago. I had been a stand-up comic for over 10 years. The thing about stand-up is that it’s the greatest job in the world as long as you love it enough that you’d be willing to do it for free. If you stop loving it that much, it becomes a pretty crappy job very quickly. Just for fun I started a little web-comic called Basic Instructions which I enjoyed enormously for about 3 months. Then, I decided to take on a day job, which limited my free time. I took a job as the office manager for a firm who’s business made (and still makes) very little sense to me. I only had time for one non-day job activity and since I was still making money at stand-up, I decided to keep it and drop the comic strip. This was a decision I would often regret over the course of the next 2 years.

That brings us up to about a year ago.

Next time: Part 2 – Something to look forward to