Viva Conan

Watched the final episode of The Tonight Show With Conan tonight.

Pretty inspiring. He left with some very classy final comments about the whole NBC debacle and even choked up a little. I highly doubt this is the last I will see of him but it was still a cool moment in television.

(Some may say that walking away with some 30 million in cash probably makes it a bit easier)

But the funny thing is I look at Conan and I honestly believe its not about the money for him and never has been. I saw him on Charlie Rose and it was cool to see him being completely serious for an hour talking about his career.

Tom Hanks was one of the guests for this final episode and was talking about how he remembers him being one of the unseen writers for SNL (Arguably during its heyday... coincidence? I doubt it)

The guy is truly funny. He wrote some of the best episodes of the Simpsons for God's sake. The guy has helped shape my idea of what funny is in more ways than I realized.

I doubt when he was sweating away in the SNL dungeon with Robert Smigel he was imagining what it would be like to walk away from NBC with 30 million. He was just doing what he does best.

This final episode tonight is especially interesting to me because I have been going back and forth with this whole "do what you love"/"think about your future thing" for awhile now.

I was reading about Britt Daniel of Spoon today as well, and in 2003 during some of their first strokes of critical acclaim someone asked him if he was making a good living. He said something about it barely covering his rent for a few months and then he had to be doing something else. Lying? Maybe. But I doubt it. The life of an indie artist without major label funding can be pretty shoestring.

But once again... its not about that. And I am starting to understand this whole thing on a level I have never really "gotten" before.

Adulation, wealth, acclaim all these things sound pretty sweet. But if there isn't some kernel in you that is doing it for no other reason than you feeling like its what you HAVE to do and truly feel life is better when you do it then you are wasting your time and time of the people who have to sit through it.

Conversely if you are doing something you despise and feel like you HAVE to do it then that's an even bigger travesty and worth examining very carefully.

I think this idea is the root of a lot of people's mid life crisis' and total breakdowns when they get older. There are so many pretty illusions to chase and unless you get real fucking honest with yourself you end up chasing them for years before realizing it was all for nothing. Or the payoff wasn't worth what you lost.

Even crazier is how people can end up convincing themselves that the bullshit is the actual prize. That's pretty terrifying.

So no this isn't some excuse as to why I am 31 and don't have much of a savings account. That's something I definitely need to work on and have no excuse but my own bad planning.

This is about having to remind myself to stick to that thing that makes me feel like I am alive regardless of how many people scoff at it or think its a waste. And I need to keep reminding myself because its easy to get caught up in the illusion. Its easy to ignore how important it is to find that pure, undiluted joy that comes from going after all those crazy harebrained schemes.

Because when I'm dying I'm pretty sure that's the stuff that will make me smile.