I, like so many others with ADD growing up, struggled to learn. It wasn’t until I was in college that I figured out what worked for me. I hate to admit it, but it was a scene in the movie “Road Trip” that was a game changer for me. It is the scene where the main character has to learn something really quickly on the end of the road trip to pass a class or something. His smart friend says “Oh you just have to relate the material to something you love. Like you love pro wrestling Socrates was the Vince McMann of philosophers…” This changed my whole approach to basically everything and school especially. I would just take the material and relate it to whatever subject I was obsessed with. It’s how I passed all my classes in business school; I was always relating everything to the skateboard or snowboard industry that I knew. This has become a habit, so I apply new things to my obsession. My obsession is the subject of these articles, Comedy. When I picked up golf, I realized there were so many concepts I could apply to standup comedy. This is my favorite.

“A golfer has to train his swing on the practice tee, then trust it on the course.” Dr. Bob Rotella.

I started playing golf back in 2020. Growing up I was curious about golf and I had gone to courses a few times, it was always a struggle. Going straight to a course without ever swinging a club is like trying to learn to drive a car in the middle of rush hour traffic on the freeway. It's jumping into the deep end of the pool to learn to swim. You are not going to have a good time, and I never did. But after going through a breakup in the height of the pandemic a friend invited me to go to a driving range. Really, I was searching for something to occupy my mind and hurt something the way I hurt, so I hit balls. At that time, I didn’t care about going on the course, I just went and hit balls as hard as I could. It was great because I didn’t have to go find those bad shots in fact I didn’t care where they went. I just had to make contact with the ball and after several months of this a friend invited me to go on a course and I was surprised to find out that I had a significantly better time.

I learned that there is the practice arena (driving range) and there is the test (golf course). They are both important but what is most important for me was a mix of both. In the beginning I needed more range than I did of course. I needed the practice arena more than tests. The range is the time to work on separating emotions and the core of the game. Swing mechanics, tempo, etc. Once I am on the course I make small adjustments, but not big changes, just play. On the course we don’t rise to the occasion, we sink to the level of our training.

This experience got me thinking about standup. In standup there are open mics or if you host a show that can be one's driving range. That is the practice arena, to make changes and try something new. Make performance adjustments. Separate emotion and expectations of a response. Work on the mechanics of my jokes and performance elements. Then when I’m on a showcase, that is the test. That is my going to a course to show off my skills I learned at the driving range.

When I’m in the test I still focus on how it’s all information to separate emotions from outcome. I still want the desirable outcome of doing well and getting laughs. But I need to look at the show as just information. It’s all information and what I need to learn. Comedy gives me exactly what I need at that moment. Let’s hope it’s what it feels like to kill. If a joke doesn’t work right away I have to stay in it and keep trying. I want to become someone who works harder when it’s not working. When I hit a terrible shot or bomb a joke, I get more focused. On the golf course I accomplish this with gratitude, when I hit the ball way off in the rough I say “yes, thank you, I love hitting out of the woods!”

Finding what is my own personal driving range for comedy has been interesting. For me it’s been about writing, meeting with friends to discuss jokes and ideas then taking those ideas on stage at my weekly show. The writing meetings give me excitement to share the thing and the audience tells me information about those ideas. I find that small bites work well for me. So just doing enough to be able to sustain it and trust that I am always pushing myself. The push for me personally is to just keep doing it week after week. I don’t need to take on more. I already built a pretty challenging system with a weekly show and weekly comedy writing meeting and a podcast. Only as long as I am continuing to push myself outside that comfort zone and expand my comfort zone, yet not so far that I burn out. I love that comedy and now golf are my unwinnable games of endless practice. See you at an open mic, driving range, or the open mic at a driving range.

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Thank you for reading, you’re doing great.

Bjorn RG.

Find your driving range.