What Are You Dying To Do

This clip is a Tedx Talk in San Jose by comedian Steve Mazan.  I'd never heard of him before  I listened to this talk.  He got really bad news from a doctor and took lots of bad advice from friends before he got back to the dream that was really important to him.  His talk comes down to this:  What are you dying to do?

A couple days ago I made a vision board.  I wrote about that in the last post.  It's not very exciting.  Most everything on it could be done by a person with a decent job in a couple of weeks.  But I'm starting without a job, so I know it will take some time to get going.  I took that into account.  But what I missed on my vision board is exactly what Steve Mazan's Tedx Talk above speaks about.  What am I dying to do?  What are you dying to do that you've put aside over the years?  If a doctor told you that you only had a finite time to live, what would you want to accomplish before you died?  Did you think of something?  Well... why aren't you doing that now? 

On the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2007, I took a long drive out into the desert of Southern California to think about my life.  I was a taxi driver, a homeless taxi driver, living in my cab.  I had three bouts of cellulitis, a severe bacterial infection in my legs, in 2007.  During the last ER visit, the doctor told me in October 2007 that if I kept driving a taxi I would die... in a matter of weeks, possibly months.  I weighed about 365 pounds at the time, up from 210 pounds a few short years before.  I worked seven days a week, 14 to 16 hours most days.  I got almost no exercise.  I knew I had to quit driving a taxi for health reasons.  At the same time, the business had changed and I could no longer make enough to pay the rent on my taxi each week.  It's a long story, but technology totally changed the taxi industry, even before Uber came along.  Driving around the desert that day, I realized I had to quit.  So I drove back to the taxi yard in Santa Ana and dropped my cab.  I walked onto the streets with about $15 in my pocket.  The few things I owned were in a closet sized storage unit.  My feet were cracked and bleeding with severe athlete's foot.  I hobbled out onto the streets of Orange County, California, expecting to die on the streets within a few weeks. 

I spent half my money on a book that first night.  It was Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey.  It was a great read, and I was glad I bought it.  I began sleeping on buses and at bus stops and in the bushes.  I panhandled for food money and bus fare to survive each day.  After a few days I began "flying a sign" as we call in in the homeless world.  I stood on off ramps with a cardboard sign that said "Homeless and Hungry."  After a couple weeks, I was still alive.  I realized I needed a project to keep me busy while I was dying on the streets.  I'd been toying with the idea of stand up comedy, and had been writing material for several months.  I even went to a couple open mic nights at a bar that had a comedy stage.  But I never got up on stage and tried it. 

Sitting in a Carl's Jr. restaurant, sipping on a Diet Coke that day, I decided that I would make a comedy video about homelessness.  I had produced several BMX videos and worked on the crew of TV shows, so the project seemed like a natural fit for me.  I grabbed a notebook and began writing comedy ideas and planning out the video.  I wrote an hour's worth of material.  I panhandled enough money to get my video camera out of the pawn shop.  I wrote out panhandling type signs for intros to each section of the video.  I planned to do each section in one take each, in order, in different locations around Orange County.  I paced back and forth at bus stops late at night to keep warm, practicing my comedy bits as I walked.  In six weeks, I had produced a super cheap, but moderately funny video.  I pawned my camera again, had a good meal, and spent a night in a motel  to celebrate.  There's nothing like a nice, hot bath when you've been sleeping outside.  I did this all while literally living on the streets as a bum.  I was pretty proud that I accomplished my goal of making a comedy video.  I put the Hi 8 master tape in my storage unit with the rest of my stuff. 

At that point, I'd been homeless for about eight weeks.  Something occurred to me.  I realized that I might not die.  I might live.  If I lived, then I had to get back to a "normal" life at some point.  I lived in the streets for nine more months.  I started talking to my family again, who all lived in North Carolina.  Ultimately, they flew me to North Carolina so I could start my life over.  In the move, I wound up losing all my BMX video footage, hundreds of poems I'd written, and my homeless comedy tape.  Not a single person ever saw it.  But the goal of making a comedy video saved my life.  So while I'm not facing the same situation as Steve Mazan in the clip above, I have been at a point where I thought my life was truly over.  I found my dream at that time, and pursued that dream.  Now, several years later, I'm back at that decision point.  What am I dying to do?  What are you dying to do?  We're all going to die some day.  We better figure it out and get to it.