5 of my 8 weeks of Improv have passed and I couldn’t be happier with Second City’s Level C class.  Aside from getting to have some pure fun and have a two and a half hour laugh every week, I’ve met a great mishmash of people that make the experience all the better.

A month ago we were all told that on September 10th we would be having our first small performance alongside a couple other improv classes.

“Umm, excuse me? I didn’t see that in the course outline”

Okay, so I got a little nervous.  And then last week when I showed up for the show and realized there were over 50 people in a crowded standing room only type of performance hall I freaked out a little bit more.  This is probably the part where you’re expecting this to turn into an episode of the Cosby Show when I tell you everything was fine and I was brilliant on stage.  Ya, not quite.

The good news is that I certainly wasn’t terrible and I learned a hell of a lot.  The bad news is that I still think I choked.  One of my biggest challenges when it comes to improv is too much thinking.  Seriously.  When there is a scene taking place listening is a huge fundamental of improvisation, and its not that I don’t listen at all, its that I have a bad habit of intermittent listening.

During this habit I will be listening to one of my cast mates making shit up on the spot and if they happen to spark something hilarious (to me) in my mind I immediately save that line, plot point, or story twist for the first available moment I can pull the trigger and fire it out.  The danger with this is that if the story happens to take any sort of slight detour while I am pulling the trigger (aka NOT listening),  when I eventually fire out my golden line it has absolutely nothing to do with the scene in the moment and I will have also missed a handful of other opportunities along the way.  Allow me to illustrate…

There is one game that we often play in class – “Play in class” I love that- called Story time. Six people stand in a usual suspects style line-up with a conductor facing the group to conduct the storytellers.  When the conductor points at someone that person starts the story and as the conductor points to other people in random order the story continues as the selected player sees fit and so on and so on until the story ends.  Pretty easy right?

So the story begins and it becomes about a girl named Sofie that is out on the town in Montreal, she gets into a cab and apparently smells really bad and for one reason or another becomes aroused from looking at the back of the cabbie’s head.  Now at this point in the story, things were going in a sexual direction and a teammate of mine started a plot point about Sofie wanting to get it on with the cab driver.  So now I am thinking it would sound funny to get a little dirty and have the cab driver find out Sofie was a transvestite.  So I’m laughing about this to myself just waiting to be picked to continue the story (keep in mind the story is progressing at this point and I am not paying attention).  Apparently, during my hiatus from participating Sofie had found out the bad smell was from a dead cat in a bag in the backseat and looking to get rid of it just as the cab driver is turning around, (cue Mike Cecchin’s turn), “to find out I had a penis”.

That was as close to the ACTUAL line I can recall and that gem popped out of my mouth in front of about 50 shocked and confused audience members.  It was certainly one of those experiences that as soon as the words left my mouth I knew I had just made a terrible error in judgment. I laugh at it now as the experience will force me to improve my listening skills but I felt like Homer Simpson at the time (DOH!!!).

I have found the main agenda of these classes on a personal level is to learn to just let yourself go, just be, and not need to control the next moment. This in itself is an important thing for me to learn because you can’t control life, it just happens, and the best we can do at given moment is just to be as best prepared for the very next moment.  In regards to my next improv class the best way I can be prepared is to listen to my teammates, because the more information I have about the story the better equipped I will be to build on it and help to create an amazing scene.

In regards to life, I don’t think I can even answer this one concretely. Perhaps the best way for me to be prepared is to learn to listen more efficiently.  Its one thing to hear the words someone is speaking, but its another to understand what they are saying and where their perspective might be coming from ( eg. If you’re taking relationship advice from uncle Jim, it may help to remember he’s been thrice divorced and is currently cheating on his girlfriend.)

With all the people I have met throughout my life and been lucky to forge even the slightest of friendships with its certainly given me a better vantage point to understand perspective.  Because in my opinion there is no such thing as reality, its ALL about perspective and interpretation.  I might say something to you I think is necessary, helpful, and part of being a good friend, while you may think I’m being a complete prick.  The truth of the matter is that until there is a confrontation and a healthy discussion, both parties are 100% correct.  Its all about perception.

How I’m deriving all of this from 2.5 hours a week of improv? I have no clue.

Happy Listening.

Have you ever had this happen to you?

You’re in the middle of a super duper productive day, I mean, things are just rollin’ and you feel like if you tried building a space ship for NASA today you might have a good chance.

Well that was me on Thursday of last week until into my life pops a text message that brought my productivity level screeeeeeching to a halt, but took my “good for my life” experiences quota and filled it for the month.

The text from my friend said, “I’m reading the Last Lecture right now and I see you in a lot of what this guy says, search it on YouTube”

This friend really knows how to push my buttons as is shown in that message that appeals to every part of me:

• “I’m Reading…” –My Book nerd
• “I see you in a lot of what this guy says”
  • • My ego – does she mean this in a good or bad way? She better not have just interrupted me to insult me.
    • Endless curiosity – What’s this guy saying?
• “Search it on YouTube” – My Inner Geek – Any reason to go to YouTube is a good reason.

So here’s what I found:

The Last Lecture is a long standing tradition at Carnegie Mellon University where a tenured and specifically selected professor is asked the question, “If you had to give the last lecture of your life, what would you say to your students?” and then proceed to give that lecture.

But in 2007 something happened that Carnegie Mellon never wished upon any of its staff, Dr. Randy Pausch had been diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer and now had only several months to live, therefore making his Last Lecture a working definition.

Pausch stood in front of a lecture room that included a his students, colleagues, and his future widow, to give a lecture that went onto be viewed over 6 MILLION times on YouTube. This lecture would later be turned by Dr. Pausch into a book during his last months with us.

Now how I managed to only hear about this last week is beyond me, but I am certainly glad it eventually reached my eyes and ears. Here is a man in a dire situation in which there is no escape, and thankfully has lived a live that allows him to act in such a courageous way that I don’t believe there’s a person alive that could not benefit from his outlook.

Randy Pausch had the presence of mind to realize that after he’s gone, his 3 children and adoring wife will be thrust into an unbelievable time of grieving and sadness where he will not be around to catch them when they fall. So as Randy beautifully puts it, “While I’m still alive I can either choose to dwell in my own situation or work as hard as I can to build nets around my family to catch them as they fall after I”m gone.” The impact of that statement speaks volumes to the meaning of true motivation.

Pausch’s real Last Lecture is more than 90 minutes long, and well worth watching from beginning to end but for those of you looking for a great summary you can watch the 10min clip below this post from (ugh) the Oprah show as Randy sums up his lecture and philosophy as only he can.

What I took away first and foremost from The Last Lecture is Pausch’s realization of the truly important things in life and how much of these things pass the rest of us by as we take life itself for granted.

Because its not the things we have that make us unhappy, its always the things we don’t have. We put so much emphasis on the items we clutter our lives with that we consistently forget about what actually matters.

Pausch tells the great story of how his parents let him paint his room however he’d like as a child and shows the audience pictures of his masterpiece. He painted himself objects like a spaceship, an elevator, and every child’s dream…the quadratic equation. Yes, you guessed it Dr. Randy Pausch was a Doctor of Computer Sciences.

Within his story on Oprah, after shortly pleading with the audience to please let their children paint their room if they want to he said, “Please stop worrying about the re-sell value on the house”. As funny as that line is, I’m sure in most cases it will hold very very true. We tend to care more about a phantom value or perhaps what the neighbours might think instead of thinking about how it feels to be 12 years old without the ability to even pick what goes on the walls of where he sleeps. But its Pausch story about his new car that stands out in my mind the most and I urge you all to watch the 10min clip below to see it.

The worst part is when discussing this clip with other people I hear, “Oh well, he’s dying so he doesn’t have to worry about his new car or the re-sale value of his home, but those of us still living have to keep those things in mind.” I can’t tell you how insane hearing that makes me.  (note: Pausch’s new car story took place well before his diagnosis)

Why must someone be on death’s door to realize our priorities are a little bit off center? In my opinion, as a species our compass of true value has been broken for years, if not centuries. There are people out there worried about how their peers will see them if they date the wrong person, or wear the wrong outfit, yet are completely apathetic to what the cigarette they are smoking is doing to their lungs and the air quality of the people around them. We’ve come so far from what’s important that we don’t know who is our neighbour, who is our friend, and who is the group next to be earmarked as terrorists. Something has to change.

But I digress…

To sum up the insight I received from watching The Last Lecture would be unfair as it truly is something everyone should watch for themselves.

Unfortunately, Dr. Pausch passed away July 25^th, 2008 (my birthday) in his fight with Pancreatic Cancer, and can be remembered only in the legacy he’s left us all to follow. He’s certainly an inspiration to me, and I can only hope his lessons will hopefully influence how I move through life and the values I choose to place on the situations, people, and items that inhabit my life.

The best part about Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture is this, “The lecture really was for my kids, but if others are finding value in it, that is wonderful. But rest assured; I’m hardly unique.”

Thank you Dr. Pausch. Rest In Peace.

And to my friendly text messager, she’s just moved herself to the top of my “Allowed to Refer” list. So a big thank you to her as well.

For the last few months I have been happily unemployed and working on a couple side projects before diving back into the murky world of 9-5. I have also been trying to learn as much about e-commerce and online marketing as possible as I see my future somewhere within the WWW.

My ultimate goal is to work on multiple online and offline ventures so that within the next 5 years or so I can work for myself full-time. I’m a long ways away but you have to start somewhere…so there’s the setup. Phew! With that being said, my last few months have been spent largely online during the day reading reports, watching educational videos, learning about different software, getting to know some helpful experts and trying to figure out what the hell a widget is or does.

Needless to say my “people time” has been severely handicapped and lately I have been starting to feel like a prisoner under house-arrest (without the sexy anklet ). So to revive my inner child and social animal I decided there was no better place than Second City and enrolled myself in their Improv Level C class, Monday nights for two months.

My first taste of Improv was last summer and it was great, but the aspect I didn’t consider then was improv’s vast benefit in the corporate world. There are a couple people in my current class simply to improve their inter-office communication and presentation skills. One girl in particular has said she’s seen her interactions with her co-workers and superiors improve dramatically since she has been taking improvisation classes. This same girl is a self proclaimed introvert “extraordinaire” and is looking to come out of her shell a little.

Social interactions don’t come along easily for everyone. For me, I think I straddle the fence between extrovert and introvert. I love large gatherings and social functions, but sometimes find myself experiencing strong urges to crawl back into my cave in utter silence.

Each class as I enter the room I feel as if I need to reprogram myself from the real world as there are too many preconceived notions of how to act in “real life”that are absent from improv. For those that know me well, you are aware that most conventional rules of social interactions are merely suggestions for my day to day life, so if I find improv liberating I can only imagine how much a true introvert would benefit from these classes.

Within my limited exposure to Second City I find each 150min lesson to be an underlying exposé on what’s wrong with society. Today as the instructor explained our next game/exercise he reminded us of the deprogramming necessary to truly enjoy ourselves (note: the games are not win/lose but enjoy and participate).

Should you take stock of your day-to-day life you’ll find in most case that we live a life of censorship; socially, or even parentally formed parameters that govern the way we act, speak, choose, and essentially live. But in today’s improv class I learned the importance of trusting my own judgments and though they may not be “right” or “wrong” I was learning to trust my instincts and explore their possibilities.

At one point I found myself saying in one scene, “And when the males lactate to a significant level it means the ear wax is ready for harvesting”. That is almost exactly what was said in my long drawn out answer to, “What is photosynthesis?” with someone else’s hands playing my own. And though absolutely ridiculous, I went where the scene took me and it surprisingly worked out extremely well.

I think we tend to censor our actions and choices in the real world for fear of what someone else’s opinion of us might be. You may have wanted to become a teacher but never pursued that dream because you know your parents always dreamed of you becoming a doctor. You might want to get up and start dancing at a concert but you’re not sure how your date will react to you. Its a constant struggle at times to balance who we are on the inside and who we are when the cameras are rolling.

Improv essentially does its best to strip away any sort of self-conscious airs and encourages people to accept one another for whatever choices they should make onstage. If you tell me my hand is a pineapple, well Ahola, its a pineapple. If you tell me the natives are coming and we’ll need scotch tape to protect us, well then so be it, xmas gift wrapping be damned. Its all about being comfortable and taking yourself into waters you may not normally wade into for fear of judgment.

Not since we were kids were we “allowed” to act silly(and even then it was frowned upon most times). There seems to be an age where everyone decides that they need to grow up; whatever the hell that means. We seem to develop routines, debt, large amounts of responsibility only to accumulate endless amounts of valueless valuables and all the while losing every bit of the sillyness that used to be our lifeblood.

Why do you think some of the best times we have in life are typically when we are gathered around family and close friends? Its usually because its with these people only that we are comfortable enough to be ourselves (or the closest we’ll get while the cameras roll) to regain some sillyness.

So this Monday’s life lesson from improv was: Don’t let others judge your actions before you’ve actually acted. Try to be comfortable and confident enough to be yourself, at least its original…and silly is ALWAYS cool.