The Wisdom of Penn Jillette

Confession: I’ve been hooked on Celebrity Apprentice. I started watching it because  on of my heros, Adam Carolla was on it.  Since his firing on the show, I’ve become very interested in Penn Jillette.  In the board room, Mr. Trump was talking to Penn about a recent project on the show:

Donald Trump: “Do you need a certain tough side to be a comedian?”

Penn Jillette: “I think it’s the opposite. I think you have to act tough. Bravery is not an absence of fear, bravery is action in the face of fear. I think to be a tough comedian, you must keep going. But that doesn’t mean your heart doesn’t get broken. Constantly.”

Vulnerability is really hard for me.  I suffered the two worst heart breaks of my life a few years ago, and since then, I’ve been very guarded.  I’ve become  very self conscious about it.  Trying to learn to do stand up comedy has forced me to look at myself in ways that I’ve conveniently avoided for many years.

Blogging has been another humbling task master since Jory challenged me to step things up. I’ve been trying to blog on a consistent basis.  Forcing myself to get more real in my blog has been a difficult and instructive process.  I’ve realized what a guarded, verbose, boring asshole I can be.

I discovered this blog the other day:  http://blissbombed.com/blog/

yin yang
The Yin / Yang teaches us about the duality of all things.

It’s quite brilliant.  She is so positive, so radiant.  I then look at my blog – frankly, I’m quite embarrassed by how negative and dark my writing tends to be.  I became very self conscious.  I’ve been writing all week, but never clicking the “publish” button.  I wish I was more cheery and radiant like Stephanie St. Claire. I love people like that.  Sometimes I am almost ashamed of the dark side of my personality, and this week is one of them. It seems that I’m in midst of reacquainting myself with the duality of my nature. I’m even embarrassed that I’m embarrassed about my dark side.  How meta.

Anyway, there is no moral to this story.  I just had to share Penn Jillette’s awesome words and explain my momentary silence.

 

 

 

 

1 comment
  1. Interesting. I was somewhat interested in watching this season, but when I went to watch it on demand they had blocked use of the rewind, pause and fast forward buttons and I never watch all of a reality show, too much garbage too bear through. I generally like Penn and Adam, but from what I happened to watch of the show it was extremely depressing. It seemed to be mostly people who are so concerned about being the center of attention and have fallen out of mainstream celebrity or have always just been a bottom feeding reality star.
     
    I hope you get out of your funk. I, myself, constantly have to battle with depressing thoughts. I am just so frustrated with the state of the world, our celebrities and entertainment and our politics. It’s difficult to ignore it all and focus on living a good life.

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