Thinking

I've been really trying over the last little while to think positively. More so, trying to control a bit more where my thoughts go. What I focus on and where my mind wanders. For long periods of time over the last few years, I've been stuck in negative thinking patterns. For long periods of time, my own brain was attacking me, telling me that I was useless and untalented and any other number of things. The more of those thoughts I had, the more they became real. 

'I'm stupid.'

'I'm your brain, and fine, you are.'

'Wait, I don't want to be stupid.'

'Well, are you stupid?'

'... Yes?'

'Okay. Fine. We'll go with that.'

There have been points in my life where all I did was think positively, believe in myself and do my best. What did that get me? Honestly, everything. I felt great, people wanted to be around me, and I didn't look at life as this huge struggle that needs to be battled everyday. I just walked the earth. Even when I had nothing! At one point in time I was sleeping in a closet, but I still was killing it. I was still having a great time, liking my life. I started doing stand up while I was sleeping in that closet, and was having a lot of fun with everything. 

I've gotten into very negative points of thinking at certain times, not believing in myself and not thinking that anything I did was any good. What did that get me? ALL of those things. I don't do as well on stage when I think that way. I don't write as much because I think 'what is the point?' People don't want to be around me. Not even me! I can't get out of hanging out with myself but in that mind state I'd like to. I'd stay in bed way too long. I'd sit and and zone out, and worry about every single thing that's every happened.

'Nathan, what the hell are you doing?'

'I'm thinking that at 45 I'm gonna be living on the street.'

'While we're eating ice cream? Are you crazy?'

When I'm thinking negatively, I'm not really anywhere. I'm stuck in my head. I'll go on stage, stand at the back of rooms, hang with friends, but I'm not REALLY there. I'm in my head, thinking about how terrible I am, about how everything I'm doing is wrong and how NONE of it is good, entertaining, funny or whatever. I'll be around people but in my head I'm just tearing myself down. 

I sort of wandered around the last few years, in and out of feeling great for stretches and feeling awful, not really realizing why either was happening. I would think, 'Why can't I always feel the way that I did when I was sleeping in that closet? Why can't I feel the way that I did my last year of high school and my first year of college?' I'd fall in and out of that feeling, and think that if I had this or that, killed on this show or that show, I'd feel better. 

Then, I did a show a couple of weeks ago in front of ten people. That happens all the time, not crazy, but this one was in front of ten people, three hour drive from my house, and I was headlining. Doing forty five minutes to ten people in a big room. I was excited for some reason to do this show. I couldn't wait to get on stage. Had I been in a negative mind space, I would have DREADED doing this show. I would have torn myself apart for performing to ten people, that nobody cares about what I'm doing. That I have no business doing this and that it's all going to suck. These ten people were amazing and it was so much fun. Talked to them after and they were great, and one person from this show had actually seen me before and forced his friend to come check me out. 

After the show, I'm driving back to the hotel, and something just sort of clicked. I started to think about all of the time I've wasted talking myself down and not having fun living my own life. How much time I've wasted being on stage and not really having a good time. Not having a good time ON STAGE. The ONE thing I've always wanted to do. I drove back the next day and I couldn't stop thinking about this. Thinking about how much of my own way I've gotten in over the years. How many times I've talked myself into having a bad show. How many times I've stood on a stage, telling jokes that I wrote and liked, hating them and hating how I was telling them. 

I decided from that weekend to really make an effort to not go back to negative thinking. Not just saying, 'I'm not going to think negative', REALLY trying to keep my mind in check. Really trying to control what I say about myself and how I feel from day to day. I don't want to continue to do what I do if every single day of it is a struggle. I don't want to keep pulling myself to shows and to writing jokes or whatever. I want to STAY in the mind space of loving what I do, wanting to do what I do, and having so much fun with. I want to STAY in the place of wanting to get up everyday and walk this earth. Want to STAY in the place of having fun with my life. 

I'm not saying that I'm not going to be negative again, or feel bad about what I'm doing sometimes. I'm just going to try not live there for a long time. 

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2 Chainz and Nancy Grace tag team.

Nancy Grace and 2Chainz talked about legalizing weed. And the winner was? A hit count on YouTube. Neither of these people are in any kind of control over whether or not weed gets legalized. Nancy Grace and 2Chainz talking legalizing weed is like a couple of aunts talking about what the States should do with their soldiers.

'I'll tell you what they should do. Pull the goddamn troops out! And fix everything they destroyed over there!'

"Guys. Your both covered in powdered donuts. They're not coming to you.'

They have no control over the outcome. Either way, Grace and Chainz talked it out. 

People say that 2Chainz held his own in this interview. Of course he did. He's a smart guy. That's not some kind of incredible thing that he can sit down like a human being and talk about a topic. He is smart. Went to college, got good grades. So smart in fact, that he has made a career off of pretending to be stupid. His whole thing to pretend to be this barely can rap, talk about stupidness dude. So people hear and see that, and think, 'that guy is an idiot!' He's not. He knows exactly what is happening. 

And held his own against who? Nancy Grace? People look to Nancy Grace as some sort of intellectual hero? 

'Hey, do you know how far away the stars are from earth?'

"I haven't got a goddamn clue. But I know who does. The one woman on this planet who is smarter and better than just about everyone out here. The one, the only, TV's own, strange mouthed, angry haired, Nancy Grace.'

In this video she's wearing Diddy's jacket from '98, and it's hard to hold his own in this interview? Against a woman talking dumb and looking like Mase?

Weed has to be one of the easiest things to buy drug wise. In America, you ned ID to get cough medicine in a drug store. Cough medicine.

"Hey. Just this 'sniff' Nyquil."

"Do you have ID?"

"For Nyquil? I'm coughing and sneezing. Is that enough ID?"

For weed, there's probably some of it in your couch right now. Other than not locking people up for having weed, legalize it for what? People get it pretty easily. There's no WAY that people who do drugs, if that is their sole offence, should be going to jail. Doesn't make any sense. For that part, sure, legalize it. But for getting it and smoking it, it's pretty legal. You can't smoke it at a NBA game, sure, but you also can't drink out of a glass bottle there either. 

It's such a stupid argument as is. Hard to believe that in 2015 people are still talking about whether this should be legalized. Jesus Christ. There's stronger drugs pumped into the food we eat. 

'Should weed be legalized? Think about the harm done to people!"

'I just took a bite of this burrito from 7/Eleven, and I tested positive for steroids. My nuts shrank. That's not worse?"

Alcohol must just be ECSTATIC when this argument comes around every two weeks. People yelling at each other about a stupid plant while alcohol is throwing people off of highways and starting COUNTless fights at terrible bars all over the world. 

'Man, I thought today was gonna be the day that people started talking about how in the hell I'm still legal when I'm causing more domestic disputes than home wreckers, but BAM! These idiots are back to weed! WEED! I'm sold in grocery stores, and JUST made some fall onto a train track, and they're yelling about weed! Whew. I live another day.'

It doesn't make any kind of sense as an argument at all. But, we still have it. And now, Nancy Grace and 2Chainz, get to the bottom of it, in a segment that should and could have easily been a sketch on SNL. 

Twitter @nathanmacintosh