Whatever Happened to Extracurricular Activities?

When you're a kid, adults are constantly trying to get you to do things.

Join a team. Take dance. Try theater. Learn an instrument. Paint something. Write for the school paper. Colleges even want to know whether you were "well-rounded," which is a strange amount of pressure to put on a seventeen-year-old who is also supposed to understand algebra.

Then you become an adult and, somehow, all of that disappears.

You're supposed to work, take care of the house, run errands, pay bills, watch something on television, and maybe have one respectable hobby that doesn't interfere too much with anything else.

Apparently I did not get that memo.

This past Friday, I performed with Something Else Improv and then stayed for the Risqué Improv show afterward. Today, I'm headlining Back to the Feature at Boomerang Comedy Theater. In between, I've been plotting out the next several seasons of Tongue of the Serpent and editing the next episode.

I also had to make myself a murder shirt and spend ten minutes pretending to be dead on the floor of a hotel dining room.

As one does.

And next Saturday, August 29, I'll be hauling art, tables, displays, and assorted booth paraphernalia to City Park for the New Orleans Art Market from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

It occurred to me this week that I apparently have extracurricular activities again.

The funny thing is that we encourage children to have lives like this. A kid who paints, plays soccer, and acts in the school play is considered curious and engaged. An adult who performs improv, writes novels, makes art, and occasionally lies motionless on a hotel floor in a homemade murder shirt starts sounding slightly unhinged.

Maybe we have that backward.

I've spent a lot of my adult life thinking that everything needed a reason. Work should accomplish something. Creative projects should lead somewhere. Time should be productive.

Lately, I've become much more interested in doing things that make my life more interesting.

Comedy doesn't have to become anything larger than comedy. Improv doesn't need a five-year plan. I don't need to explain why I make art and write fiction at the same time. One thing doesn't have to justify another.

They also feed each other in ways I never expected. Improv makes me less afraid of getting something wrong. Stand-up makes me pay attention to timing. Writing makes me notice people. Art makes me notice atmosphere. Selling at markets makes me talk to strangers, which is probably the most dangerous extracurricular of all.

Maybe being "well-rounded" shouldn't expire when we graduate.

Maybe adulthood needs more extracurricular activities.

So that's where I'll be next Saturday, continuing my extremely impractical education under the oak trees in City Park.

If you're in New Orleans, come see me at the New Orleans Art Market in City Park, Saturday, August 29, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

I promise there will be art.

I cannot promise I won't try to make you laugh.