By me, Fernando A. Funes
Trying To Salvage This Blog From My Extreme Neglect
I feel like if you switched out a few words in the title of this post, it would describe my human experience – Trying to Salvage My Life From Extreme Neglect.
In fact, if I ever make it BIG, and I mean so BIG, I don’t have to work a real job ever again, I might call my cash-grab autobiography that.
And believe me, that book will be 100% Fernando A. Funes propaganda on the level of the ridiculous documentary, History of the Eagles Part 1 and 2.
I would be both Glen Frey and Don Henley.
Whoever my David Geffen is, I would have that person in the documentary to just serve as a famous person that helped me out but who I still shit on. I would make broad, indirect swipes at Neil Young, even though I’m nowhere near his level.
This is all just fantasy. I’m just a – and this is a nod to a great but now defunct podcast – Journeyman Improviser.
So I’ve neglected this blog.
There was a time when I would write in it frequently, especially in the heyday of my Orange County Improv Days.
In fact, this blog was created to keep me focused on growing and developing as an improviser because I knew that I would not be as active in Orange County as I had been in San Francisco.
There are a lot of good times recorded in this blog.
It’s a diary of a time when Improv in the OC was golden, and I didn’t need to go to LA because there was enough here to keep me busy, engaged, and growing.
Most of the blogs are sentimental.
How so? Because I was neglected, I’m sentimental. Because I’m sentimental, I’m aware how soon things come and go; how you have to appreciate the present because it’s not going to last.
I don’t like being sentimental – mostly because people who are not sentimental don’t dig that part of me – but fuck it, that’s who I am, and I’m not going to suppress it. This blog has been a great tool in accepting that part of myself.
This blog post, A Poem For Orange County Improv, is proof of my sentimentality – it’s about my love of Orange County Improv and how a bunch of us came of age together in the OC doing improv.
Alas, LA is next door.
I just didn’t feel that I needed to go to LA.
That’s bullshit. The more comedy you do, the deeper you get into, the louder the call of LA becomes.
Half of the people I know in LA – and multiply that half by two – are here because the need to do comedy, as much of it as possible, became so overwhelming that they had to come to LA. Of course, it’s more nuanced than that, but that’s been my general experience.
I’m just very lucky that LA is next door.
Driving down The 5 sucks, but I didn’t need to move here from New Jersey (a lot of people out here seem to be from New Jersey).
So I got sucked in by LA.
And there was a time where I could do comedy both Orange County and LA, but LA’s gravity slowly pulled me closer and closer until one day I woke up and realized that 90% of my comedy life was now in Los Angeles.
The more time I spent in LA, the less time I would spend in Orange County, dwindling down to one improv show a month (the first Friday of the month with Big Selfie) and the less I would write in this blog.
Neglecting This Blog
I feel bad. I worked really hard to build this blog into something, a channel for sharing my love of improv with the world.
And I just neglected it. A common theme in my life.
I’ve neglected a bunch of things, mostly involving my relationships with people.
On the other side of neglect – not the desire to squeeze everything out of every possible moment because you know it will be gone someday – is not understanding how important something is.
You have something, but you don’t realize how precious or delicate it is. And you don’t nurture it, give it the attention it deserves, or stop giving it the attention you once gave it.
Eventually, it withers and dies, and resentment takes it place. And resentment can last a long time.
To all the people I’ve neglected whether knowingly or unknowingly, there is nothing I can ever do to make up for not giving you the proper attention. I apologize for sucking you into my cycle of neglect, and you are under no obligations to forgive me. I just hope I can grow past the cycle of neglect and be a more responsible human being.
So What Am I Going To Do Next?
I’m just going to try to start writing in this blog again.
How do you overcome neglect? Action. Action is the only remedy for neglect.
Not just random action, but calculated efforts to rebuild this blog one post at a time.
To start off, I’m going to read Truth In Comedy and post my sincere opinions about it in here. It’s not much, but it’s a start! This is my comeback angle, baby!
On the real, this blog helped me grow and develop as an improviser and sketch comedian, and just overall comedy artist.
I don’t know if I would be where I am today had it not been for this blog. This blog forced me to think deeply about comedy and share those insights with whoever would have them.
If I can stay true to that promise throughout the life of this blog, then I’ll be okay.
Fernando.
Fernando's Improv Blog 