Still firmly infirm and formidably un-formed, in this NPR interview with Louis C.K. there are two ideas pushing their way to the surface that may define my focus in 2015. I don’t do resolutions as a general rule, but I do reflect. I revisit. I dismantle and re-assemble. All the time.

“I thought, ‘I want to do something that’s compelling and really a good monologue, but the crowd might not be there for it.’ It may not be their thing, so I trained for that monologue. I did a lot of sets in town and I did a lot of clubs where there was no audience really, or places where I knew I would do poorly because I wanted to be sure that the monologue would go well whether the audience likes me or not.”

So smart. That’s true dedication, skill, talent, even. It’s knowing yourself: your abilities, your limitations, your appeal, well enough that you see clearly the gap between where you are and where you want to be, then you span it by working hard and working smart.

“I was in trouble a lot when I was a kid, so I got used to it. Like, when you’re never in trouble, you can never go to places like that. But if you’re in trouble all the time, it’s like, why not? I mean, I know what this feels like. I know I can survive everybody being pissed off at me.”

This has always been difficult for me. I was not in trouble a lot as a kid (I still fucked up but was good at hiding it), so disrupting the status quo, risking disapproval or the possibility that I might not be sufficiently armed to respond to criticism, feels scary, out of my depth. I am no pushover, but left to my own devices I would just as soon sit and watch others tell their stories, speak uncomfortable truths, than tell my own. If I am to feel any kind of satisfaction in my creative accomplishments, that needs to end.