One of the most lovely parts of a vacation, favorite holiday, or special event is the booking, excited research, and Christmas-Eve feeling of God, this is gonna be so great!

Most folks have to plan travel well in advance to get decent rates, time the visit perfectly to weather considerations and the reason they're going, and navigate around obligations. That gives most people weeks or months to daydream about how awesome of a time they're gonna have.

That said! This truism is also popular:

We forget what an aggravating, exhausting, expensive pain in the ass it can be to lug our heavy shit around dealing with dehydration, flight delays, traffic, getting lost, the TSA, and where to get edible food late at night in a strange city.

So could it stand to reason that the anticipation in advance of going somewhere cool is actually better than the travel?

Sure, the things you learn traveling to new places and all the photos, tchotchkes, and memories you drag back with you are undeniably priceless, but is there a case to be made that having something to look forward to - especially considering how life just is now - is actually the main attraction and not just a side effect?

Why I'm talking about this now

​Fest is next weekend and I've mentioned here before that I'm hosting the comedy arm of that 3-day event next Saturday. I've been looking forward to Halloween weekend since I found out I was performing in late March.

To paraphrase a favorite comedian, Dennis Wolfberg (RIP), saying I'm pumped is like saying someone in the path of a tsunami is about to experience moisture.

This has been an abnormally long buildup. Using the argument I made above, has this crazy wait actually been a gift?

I got a pretty happy 3-season cycle out of chatting about Fest just about every day with musician friends and how pumped we all are to be doing this together.

All year I've been looking forward to seeing far-flung friends I love tremendously and never get to see. My hysterical excitement to lay eyes on these people and hug them breathless is bubbling, burning, and spitting like cheese on a lasagna on the home stretch under the broiler.

The oven timer is beeping, my dudes! Let's eat!

Also, I've spent the last six weeks or so tearing down and rewriting my existing set, co-writing new jokes with comedian friends, creating and reviewing voice recordings, hitting open mics, and taking notes on what to tweak from open-mic tape my friends have captured.

I think I finally have my set where I want it to be!

Let's get it!

The harsh part

How this excitement is starting to manifest a week out is every single day I have this section of this song in my head:

I've read that the body knows only one emotion: excitement. I'm built for comfort, not for speed, so intense excitement spread out over too long a period just turns into profound anxiety.

I've been attempting to manage this problem by making a TOTALLY UNHINGED amount of lists. One of my oldest buds, Mike, has teased me for years about the avalanche of lists that I make to calm my mind down.

Mike!

Don't disparage a winning strategy!

Making lists to organize my chaotic thoughts works for me (most of the time). It's more productive than the foggy obliviousness of smoking weed or popping a Klonopin that just puts you to sleep.

Or booze. Psych meds don't let you binge-drink to sidestep weird feelings!

So yeah, I have a joke list, packing lists (plural), road-trip reminders, and a pathologically thorough list of to-do items labeled by day from now until I get home on November 1st so I don't forget anything important.

Most of this bodily excitement is legit just happy anticipation of doing my absolute best to be funny in front of an audience I know pretty well and having a drink and a smoke with people I'm stoked to kick it with. There's at least 17 people I'm trying to hit up (surprise: I made a list).

The actual fear

The last few days or so, I've been going nuts from the magical thinking that THIS will be the week that my Covid-free streak ends.

Wouldn't that be an anticlimactic bitch?! To go an entire 3-year pandemic without even a runny nose and then the week I've been going insane over for 7 months just gets yanked away from my fingertips right as I touch it?

I have a plan for everything, so I've already figured out how I'll deal with the logistics (mostly recovering an allegedly non-refundable hotel deposit) and managing communication channels if I do get sick.

You know how? Made a bunch of lists. 😂

When your anxiety about something out of your hands makes you feel out of control, you figure out strategies you can act on if your worst nightmare happens.

If my personal history is any indication, though, I'm freaking the fuck out about something that isn't going to happen, and this is just my dysfunctional brain chemistry being unable to deal with being this stoked.

So! I'm just kind of in a waiting-mode state of suspense until I hit the road this coming Wednesday.

Things won't feel settled until I'm back home, so I'm hoping my lists will help carry me across the finish line in good health and then seamlessly into the next season of projects.

Let's go!

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