In which Our Hero smiles at the received positivity.
A friend of my father’s recommended a game today. She reads my daily blog and, since she knows my love for poker and my interest in cooperative games, she linked over a cooperative poker game. Today my family played it. We had a blast. A new favorite. One for the ages. Such glee.
We sent her a video indicating our excitement. She’s glad we’re glad. We’re glad she’s glad. She’s glad that we’re glad that she’s glad. Etc.
I’m glad my daily blog is having such positive impact. With dozens of daily readers, I’m clearly having a positive impact. And the fact that I’ve received recently a bunch of unexpected positive feedback suggests I’m doing something right. I’m also glad that I have people around me who would tell me honestly if they thought something negative about it. But they don’t, so everyone must like it.
—
It’s a game about accurately ranking your poker hands compared to the other players’ hands. You win or lose as a team: either your whole ranking is accurate or it’s not. Play is simple: you rank preflop, then on the flop, turn, and river. Only the river rankings matter: if they’re correct, you all win. If they’re not, you all lose.
A few lessons:
It’s hard to navigate small discrepancies. 8,7 vs 8,6 is nearly impossible to distinguish if no 7 or 6 comes on the board.
Personal proclivities abound. One person’s confident grab of the top rank preflop means only pocket tens or better, while another’s may be Ace-9.
Have fun. This means A) When a conflict arises, diagnose it accurately (was the problem really on the river, or did this stem from preflop?); and B) when you feel uncomfortable, say “I feel uncomfortable”. It’s shocking how well people respond when you simply say “I feel uncomfortable”.
—
I’ve been writing a daily blog about clown school. I suspect (but don’t know) that plenty of my peers read this blog. As yet, no one has said “I feel uncomfortable”. That’s nice. Guess I’ll continue 🙂
In which Our Hero remembers the audience and the performer are on the same team.
Today I didn’t buy a painting.
I could have. There are worlds in which I walk out of that studio holding a canvas, or at least a print. I like his work. It’s good enough that I’d happily see it on my wall. I also, frankly, think this guy could be very successful. And while I don’t know anything about investing in art, I do know that he does good work.
Instead of buying, I did something arguably more valuable: I gave him one mental shift that might change the way he sells forever (hard-won after nine years of being a creative freelancer myself).
The shift was this:
You and the buyer are on the same team, trying to get to the sale together.
Most artists don’t think that way. They imagine selling as hoodwinking, convincing, persuading. Commerce as a low-grade con.
But when I exchange $20 for a meal, two true things are happening at once:
I am saying, “I’d rather have this meal than this $20.”
The seller is saying, “I’d rather have this $20 than this meal.”
We both win. That’s the point.
If someone wanders into your studio already 50% likely to buy your painting, wouldn’t you both be better off if a sale happens?
That’s what my friend was missing. He felt like he was pushing against the customer, trying to “get them” to buy, and he hated it. Instead, he should walk next to them, shoulder to shoulder, helping the buyer cross the line they already half-want to cross.
Sales, at least for an honest artist, is a cooperative game.
Clowning is the same game
This is also the part that many performing artists (including clowns) forget: the audience wants you to succeed.
When we audience members sit down for standup, for a play, for a clown show, we’re not secretly hoping it’s terrible so we can be right about humanity’s decline. We might predict it will be bad, but given the choice between:
“I knew it would suck,” and “It blew my expectations out of the water,”
almost everyone would rather be wrong and delighted.
Even the pessimists would rather go home saying, “Honestly, it was great.”
So performance is also a cooperative game:
As the clown, you are the leader.
The audience is your team.
The “sale” you’re closing together is shared pleasure.
You’re not dragging them, hostage-style, toward your weird art. You’re inviting them into something – pleasure – they already came to find.
This, unfortunately, is not my default setting.
Competitive games vs cooperative games
I am more experienced with competitive games than cooperative ones. Poker, for instance, is the opposite:
There, the goal is to hide.
To show nothing.
To give away as little information as possible while extracting as much value as possible.
Clowning is about the inverse:
Openness instead of secrecy.
Generosity instead of extraction.
“Let’s enjoy this together” instead of “Let me get the best of you.”
One of the purposes of clown school (for me) is to re-train this reflex. To make cooperation feel as natural as competition.
Right now, the questions I’m wrestling with include:
How do I lead the team gently? Guide the audience without shoving, nudge without bullying, care for each teammate without over-focusing on any one.
How do I actually lead, instead of hiding behind stronger personalities? Be the tip of the spear, not the person comfortably in the second row.
When I’m with a partner on stage, how do I treat them as a collaborator instead of a combatant? Remember that “winning” is making the scene sing, and that often occurs when you’re playing harmoniously.
How do I remain open when uncomfortable? Oftentimes, I’m shutting down. And that… is not… helpful. 😦
These are not just stage problems. They’re life problems. Which brings us to the cocktail party.
When I forgot we were on the same team
At a cocktail party today, I met a few people I genuinely liked. Smart, funny, curious. The kind of people I’d happily see again.
They asked about my relationship status. I told them a technically-true (and engaging), but far-more-boring version.
Here’s what I told them:
In college, I was interested in a girl who was dating a woman. A friend told me she only dated women, so I filed that away as “ah well, not for me.”
Ten years later, we reconnected. It turned out my friend had been wrong:
She does not, in fact, only date women.
And here’s the part I didn’t share – not because it’s shameful, but because it’s intimate, and intimacy is precisely what I tend to withhold when I get scared:
At the time of meeting her, I was taking exogenous estrogen. I had grown breasts. My emotional life was much closer to that of a woman than a man.
So even if she had only dated women, I still might have qualified.
That’s the good bit. The twist ending. The painting on the wall I could have offered.
Instead, I hid it. I offered the flat version. And therefore, the next bit that I added – when I later tried to connect – didn’t land. I’d already collapsed into myself, ending the cooperative game.
I protected information, staying “safe”. But they weren’t my opponents. They were potential teammates. We were building something delightful together. And that collapse — the retreat instead of the play — is exactly the reflex I’m trying to rewire.
(To be clear, the issue wasn’t that I “should have” told strangers something deeply personal. It’s that I noticed myself collapsing inward even though both they and I wanted to play, to connect, to stay in the cooperative game.)
The update
So: today I didn’t buy a painting. I also didn’t honestly sell myself.
In both cases, the correction is the same:
Be in situations where we’re on the same side.
Remember we’re on the same side.
Act like the game is cooperative.
Offer the real story, not the safe one.
When I become excellent at those in daily life, I’ll be a better clown. And when I become a better clown, maybe I’ll finally remember, in the moment, that we all walked into the room wanting the same thing:To leave having created shared pleasure. And in that pleasure, created Value.
In which Our Hero learns that ease is its own form of status.
The skills of upper-class social engagement and the skills of clowning: shockingly similar.
Can you keep it light—even when the topic isn’t? Can you remember the game? That this is a game. That life is a game. And the more you remember it’s a game, the less you’ll feel poked. The less you feel poked, the less likely you’ll commit a faux pas.
When meeting someone new: Can you stay present? Open? Emotionally available? Can you find pleasure in what they’re saying, find pleasure in yourself, and entertain yourself while entertaining them? Do you make eye contact instead of studying the floor or the ceiling?
Can you jump to the new game quickly? Roll with the punches without letting irritation leak? Or if you do get irritated, can you metabolize it quietly so others don’t feel it?
In short: are you easy?
Even shorter: be social soy sauce: enhancing whatever flavor is already present. Do not be social tofu (merely a warm body), nor wasabi (adding too much kick), and certainly not ginger (an entirely unrelated taste altogether).
Some people don’t need to be easy. They have structural reasons to be included—money, skills, status, connections. Their mere existence provides value.
If you have those advantages, you can afford a little heaviness.
But if you lack them, ease becomes an important asset.
—
I met someone today who was surprised to learn a fairly large fact about her husband.
I get that. It’s also foreign to me.
When one (A) has enough happening that there’s no need to narrate every detail, and (B) is so deeply present with others when actually together, the result is fewer facts shared and more connection felt. This is an instance of putting the text on the game.
Perhaps these people live such driven, full lives that they don’t need to lean on each other for conversational ballast. They’re satisfied by the things they’re doing. Their overlaps shrink. Their presence expands.
—
Maybe this is why the skills of social ease and clowning feel so linked for me. I had to learn lightness. I had to learn the game. I had to learn to entertain myself, then others, and to orient toward warmth and pleasantness.
Other people don’t always need those skills. They build companies, hire teams, command rooms, confer opportunities. What do I confer? Stories. Emotional resonance. Connection.
I’ve lived as a writer for the last decade. I’ve flown around the world, lived in a van, written books, attended clown school, played competitive pickleball, lived as an œstrogen-powered life form. These things made me interesting, but they did not give me structural advantages to hand out.
What I offer is not leverage. It’s wisdom. Presence. Delight.
So it sure as hell helps if I’m light.
Airy. Gentle. Easy. Fun. Funny. Generous. Kind.
This makes it possible to add me to your car, to your dinner, to your team. It makes me someone who lightens your load, even when you carry me on your shoulders.
In which Our Hero finally plays the writing game, not merely performs the genre.
Yesterday’s post set a record in responses. So I found myself asking:
Why did people like it?
If we assume it wasn’t merely well-written form, it likely was one of these three traits:
I wrote about two games I know extremely well. (I played poker as a method of money-making previously, in the pre-solver Jurassic period.)
I compared two activities everyone recognizes, even if only through cultural osmosis. (Everyone knows what a clown is. Everyone knows what poker looks like.)
I accidentally wandered into a space my sister claims is my superpower: the philosophy of games.
Two months ago she called to tell me I had a gift.
She’d asked for help diagnosing an unspoken social game at her workplace, and when I broke it down for her, she said:
“You could be the expert at this. Not ‘an’ expert — the expert.”
For clarity: philosophy of games ≠ game theory.
I’m not a game theorist and have no ambition to become one. (Though one of my closest friends is probably top hundred in the world at the practical application of game theory.)
Instead, I love:
games
what games do to people
how humans use games
the mechanics and sub-mechanics inside games
the social physics that games create
the playing of games
fun
This has always been true. As a kid, I invented strategies in schoolyard games so effective that fellow students rewrote the rules the next day. As an adult, I earned second place in the Hoboken Open pickleball tournament, which is exactly as prestigious as it sounds. In college I studied philosophy to understand the rules of our life’s game (hint: start with Aristotle).
But here’s the truth:
Yesterday’s writing, to me, felt bland. I haven’t been having many fresh clowning insights. I’m on break from clown school because of a broken foot. I haven’t been around many clowns — except myself.
So instead of writing about clowning, I jotted down what I thought were painfully obvious observations.
And two people found them profound. Compelling. Insightful.
Why?
Clowning offers two simple rules:
give the audience what they want, and
follow the fun.
One mistake people make is assuming “what they want” means “repeat the product.” But that’s not it — at least not entirely. If I reposted yesterday’s essay verbatim, nobody would care. This exaggerated example makes the point:
The audience doesn’t want the same product. They want the same emotional experience. The same arc. The same sense of discovery. The same journey.
Maybe one reader liked my emotional growth. Maybe another liked the simple clarity around two games they’d only ever observed from the outside. Maybe someone else just enjoyed seeing me think.
Writers know this: readers fall in love not with the thing but with the transformation.
Van Gogh didn’t sell paintings until his letters were published. Until people could see his suffering. Until his bed wasn’t just a bed but the first possession of a poor, unraveling man. Stories create meaning. Meaning creates attachment.
And that’s why Starting today, I’m going to include writing about hormones.
Yesterday I talked for an hour with my parents about my four-year experience taking œstrogen. It was medical, emotional, biological, and sociopolitical. It reshaped my values, which reshaped the games I chose to play. It rewired my physical and emotional landscape. It altered my comfort with strangers, my sense of risk, and my appetite for play.
I was on œstrogen when I decided to go to clown school. I was back on my natural testosterone when I actually started the school year.
That contrast was… intense.
My desire to play poker changed with my hormonal profile. My social ease changed too.
On œstrogen, my fluency with strangers soared: top decile of my life. Now that the ease has dropped, I’m having to relearn it. And with that comes fear. Not melodramatic fear. More like the fear of an aging driver noticing their reaction time isn’t what it used to be:
“I used to be good at this. What if I’m not anymore?”
But here’s the secret about fear: It’s freezing. But it’s also your friend. If you don’t embrace it and step through it, You’ll always be under its power.
This was as true yesterday — staring down an A6s decision on a 4-6-7-A-K board facing a river jam — as it is about my long hesitation to share my hormonal story.
In that hand, I should have called. In this life, I should speak. Not because you’re entitled to know. You’re not. None of this is “your business.” But I chose to be a writer. Which makes it my business.
Said differently: I chose this writing game. Time to stop playing it like a wimp.
A friend says my attending clown school is selfish.
A second friend concurs.
The second friend, at least, says it without judgment. They think it’s a selfish act, but not necessarily a bad one. (I didn’t ask the first whether “selfish” = “bad,” so I can’t report on their view.)
The second friend is a professional poker player. I asked if studying poker is selfish. They said no. I asked why. They gave reasons like: “it keeps my mind sharp,” “it teaches me skills I use in other areas.” I pointed out that clowning does the same. Just swap “understanding randomness and variance” for “learning to connect with others and bring them pleasure.”
I’m surprised people find clown school selfish. I don’t find it more selfish than acting school, sales training, or learning accounting. Maybe slightly more selfish than learning to be a plumber. Definitely less selfish than being a momentum trader or a poker player.
I get that performers are self-involved. Sometimes self-obsessed. But selfish?
The job of a clown is to bring people pleasure. Joy. Happiness. Are the best in the profession—Jim Carrey, Sacha Baron Cohen, Robin Williams—selfish? That seems unfair.
So what do people actually mean when they say “clown school is selfish”?
They might mean something like:
“Clowning doesn’t contribute much to other people.”
“Julian will get more personal joy out of clown school than he’ll generate for others.”
“Clown school isn’t contributory (either because clowning isn’t, or because clown school won’t lead to clowning).”
“Clown school interferes with more contributory things you could be doing.”
Here’s how these land:
1. “Clowning doesn’t contribute much.”
I’m dismissing this outright as a misunderstanding of what this school teaches. This school teaches how to find pleasure in order to share it. You can believe pleasure is unimportant, but if you believe it matters, clowning is clearly contributory.
2. “You’ll get more out of this than others will.”
This becomes a comment about skill. If I will always be a bad clown, then yes: clown school would be more self-pleasure than other-pleasure. But that assumes failure as destiny. I’m earnestly trying to learn these skills. I want to be good at play, connection, and generosity. Multiple people—people with no incentive to flatter me—have said clowning seems like a particularly great fit for me. I think so too.
3. “Clown school won’t lead to clowning.”
This is the critique I take most seriously.
My goal isn’t to become a professional clown per se: it’s to become a better performer, a better player, a better connector. I want to learn charisma. I want to learn to bring joy not just onstage but in everyday life. I want to learn to play for the sake of fun rather than optimization. I want to play well with my nephew. I want to play well with future kids of my own.
If I’m truly seeking personal enrichment more than professional clowning, then yes, one could call that “selfish.” But personal enrichment that increases one’s capacity to love, play, and be present seems… not exactly a moral failing.
4. “Is clown school the best use of your time?”
Honestly? I don’t know. A year is long. (Well, seven months of actual school.) But I’m not locked in. Students drop in and out. There’s one course in March I’m particularly excited about. For the rest, I’m open: if more-contributory opportunities appear, I’ll take them. If someone offered me a full-time job tomorrow, I’d consider it. (And, notably, I applied to one recently.)
At the moment, my time is quite unoccupied. I’m writing for one company, and that leaves plenty of space. So: clown school.
I want a family someday. I want kids. Cultivating lightness and play feels deeply aligned with the values I want to bring into a home. And I’m at a turning point: many friends are settling down. If not now, then when would I ever have the time to go to clown school? When else would learning to stay light during stress be so valuable?
I was bumming around the U.S. in a van. I was working half-time, sometimes quarter-time, vaguely searching for more. Given that reality, filling the time with something joyful and growth-oriented seems… pretty reasonable.
But if someone wants to hire me for something more productive, I’m here for it!
(Finally: when pressed, the poker friend admitted he couldn’t clearly articulate what he meant by “selfish.” He guessed it was closest to number 3, but also said his inability to articulate the position probably means it’s weakly held. That’s reassuring. I thought this assessment was more associational than well-considered. Still, it’s good to check.)
[P.s. I’ll share this write-up with the first friend, too. They might have a whole different analysis of how the selfishness works, in which case I’ll jot up a part 2 🤓]
In which Our Hero muses on the interaction of these forces.
The question came up at dinner: What’s the relationship between play and depression? Is play the antidote? Is the lack of play the cause? Or are they simply two dancers who keep stepping on each other’s toes?
My take:
I love Play. Play is enlivening and delightful and deeply satisfying.
Play is a sign of a healthy environment: one that nurtures the growth and expression of its members.
Some environments don’t require play or can’t support it, especially high-stress or high-stakes ones in intense moments.
If you lack play long enough, you will feel like crap.
If you can’t play with people, you won’t feel good around those people.
Blockers to play:
Lack of safety. If you can’t experiment or express, you shrink. The body contracts. The options narrow. The world gets small.
I often think of depression as a kind of flatness. A greying-out of inner movement. And a lot of what prevents play, at least in my own experience, is fear/anxiety. So the loop becomes: fear/anxiety → no play → depression. It’s not the only description of the loop, but it’s a fair one.
Another view:
Maybe depression is fundamentally the lack of experienced pleasure.
If that’s true, then you can find pleasure through play. But also through other avenues, including observation and appreciation.
In that framing, play is one antidote, but not the only one. (And it may not be the proper antidote for a specific situation, nor a permanent fix.)
Still, I think social play is necessary for social satisfaction. It’s a treadmill you have to keep running on—just enough—for the system to stay stable. Stop for too long, and you get flung off the end, cascading into a wall of lonesomeness. Start running again, and the world comes back into color.
However, you can’t force play. You can only create the context for it to naturally emerge. Even if you’re a player? Even if you’re the game.
In which Our Hero gently invites his classmates to find pleasure in their fear.
[I wrote this earlier today, before a long and insightful conversation with my roommate. By the vacillations of clown school, I’m not sure how much I still endorse or will endorse tomorrow. How’s that for a cop-out? 🤡]
Another shit day at clown school. I should frighten other students more.
Listen:
Earlier today we were playing dodgeball. Someone on the opposing team had the ball and motioned toward me. I ran away, bumped into a teammate, and she let out a startled little yelp, plus an admonishment along the lines of “come on guys, it’s a game.”
Later in that same match, I leapt to grab a ball, robbing the opposing team of a catch, like stealing a home run but dodgeball-style. A player said, “Chill out.” The first person would probably call themselves unathletic. The second, not very competitive.
Okay.
Sure.
What of it?
Sidebar: clown school is populated far more by theatre nerds than athletes. I’m probably the best all-around athlete in my class—not the strongest or tallest, just the one with the most hunger to win and the actual ability to put that into reality. So why is it not showing up?
After her yelp, I shrank back. I became smaller, gentler, duller. I had less fun.
But realistically? A little bump between teammates in dodgeball is not a big deal. No one fell. No one got hurt. It was a collision between two moving bodies in a game whose entire premise is hurling projectiles at each other.
The recent American neurosis of “don’t cause anyone fear ever” does not help me here. Hurting people would be bad. Frightening them? Not inherently. If two people bump into each other while playing dodgeball, the appropriate move is some sort of affectionate “eh, no worries love”.
But I’ve been avoiding frightening people. And it’s getting in the way of my clowning.
The first time I truly succeeded on stage was when I FINALLY LET LOOSE. A demon burst out of my sternum and shat poop-colored rainbows across the stage.
The teacher told me to tone it down, apologize, and bring the same energy with more sensitivity.
The second time I started from a light, airy emotional place: gentle by nature, and the power followed.
Today the feedback is that I lack impulse. And the truth is: I felt it. In the afternoon class, I wasn’t powering with impulse at all. I was stuck in my head, nitpicking the pedagogy (correctly, but uselessly). I couldn’t find pleasure in anything.
I hate being in this oscillation space.
My roommate disagrees with my whole “frighten them more” instinct. He thinks I’m conflating playing intensely with playing to win (and that playing to win will necessarily not maximize group pleasure). He says I lack a lightness—a tiny joke kept in the back of my mind.
And maybe he’s right. On stage today, I lost the game. I forgot the game. I played it well for a few minutes. Then I forgot it.
Never forget the game.
Look.
When I do have impulse, people get scared. That’s the truth. I’m intense. When I try to win at dodgeball, people get quiet and the light, floaty vibe evaporates. Today I had the ball, and an opponent squared up. I pump-faked twice. Then I whammed him.
During that exchange, the room went silent. The airy part of the game vanished.
Did it become another kind of fun?
Is it not fun to watch two gladiators square off? To see combatants toy with another in a spirit of agreed-upon play? Isn’t that a form of respect—acknowledging we both have power and we’re choosing to use it?
Maybe the audience wasn’t laughing. Maybe they were leaning in. I don’t know. Maybe I’m justifying.
Maybe I should scale it: go hard against the skilled players, soften against the less-skilled. A consent-based approach to dodgeball. (Unless I’m the last one alive. Then it’s win, win, win.)
I don’t know whether it was pleasant to watch me whang that guy. I imagine it was.
I’m six feet tall, bearded, and frequently voracious. Of course people are scared of me. Underneath any coverings I add (silliness, friendliness, gentleness), they may always feel some amount of fear.
But maybe their fear isn’t a reason for me to shrink.
Maybe their fear is something they get to deal with.
Because otherwise, I become small and boring. I lose my impulse. And that is absolutely not fun for me.
Fear without safety is fear. Fear with safety is exhilaration.
I guess I need to give people that safety.
To clearly show this is a joke. This whole thing is silly. Show them in a way that’s obvious to them: I’m not taking myself too seriously: the thing I’m doing is a joke. And that way, when you fear me, you also feel safe around me. And that way, even though you fear me; even though you respect me and my intensity, you love me.
Would you rather I be too much or too little?
Right now, at school, too much. They can work with too much. Too little just gets kicked off.
In which Our Hero sleeps, sins, and seeks salvation.
At the end of this week, I’m a quarter of the way through this program. That’s wild. Three times as much left as what I’ve already done. No wonder it feels like I’ve lived six different emotional lifetimes.
I told my sister today about our daily Simon Says game. It’s brilliantly constructed. It’s also deranged.
Here’s how it works: when you make a mistake, you must seek absolution. You get to choose your method of redemption. The menu:
Hug
Kiss
Swedish handshake
Nothing
Or… torture
If you choose “nothing,” nothing happens. If you choose “torture,” one of the teachers (or a friend, if you prefer) faux-tortures you in front of the class. If you choose one of the other options, you turn to a peer and ask, “Can I have a [hug/kiss/handshake]?”
If they say “yes,” you receive absolution.
If they say anything else—literally anything: “yep” is interpreted as “go to hell”—you get tortured.
My sister was horrified. Honestly, same. The first time we played, I felt like I’d accidentally joined a cult that prioritizes whimsy over human rights. And yet…it works. The faux-torture weirdly brings us together. There’s something intimate about placing your fate in someone else’s hands and trusting they’ll either help you or throw you to the wolves. (And, sometimes we just choose the torture directly: our Assistant Teacher is an exquisite tickler.)
My sister asked why people don’t always say “yes.” Partially because we’re learning how to ask and receive asks well. So if you ask poorly (not loud enough; emotionally closed; selfish), your odds plummet. And partially because, well, that’s the game.
—
Last night, for the first time in ages, I slept well. Deeply. My room traps CO₂, so I’ve been sleeping poorly. Last night I cracked open both the window and the shutters. Oxygen: acquired. Primitive problem, elegant solution.
I don’t have much to write about today. My energy feels softer, steadier.
One woman in class has been struggling to find a lower, more powerful voice. Our assistant teacher stood behind her and performed a kind of gentle, low Heimlich maneuver while she screamed “FUCK YOU, [Head Teacher]!” at full volume. It helped. Theatre is strange medicine.
We also explored two new “substances”: oil/petrol/gasoline and superglue. I’m tired of this exercise. Some classmates love it; I don’t. Maybe that’s the point: finding joy in an approach I don’t naturally love. I can learn it. I just don’t yet.
—
I found a partner for Friday’s scene. The task: play contrasting characters who always agree. Hot, fast, smoky oil in perfect harmony with gentle, falling snow: two beings that shouldn’t coexist and yet do.
It might be funny. It might be a disaster. That’s clown school.
—
My goal this week is simple and impossible: be sensitive, be open, be gentle: with my partners, with the audience, with myself. I’ll do the exercises, but the real work is internal.
Do I have pleasure? If so, am I sharing it with the audience? If so, am I sharing it with my partner? Am I playing together, or am I playing alone?
Clown school is hard. But at least I slept. And maybe—just maybe—I’ve solved my CO₂ problem.
Mondays after class, everyone mills around forming groups for Friday’s performance. And every Monday, I feel like I’m picked last in gym. It’s not that anyone is doing anything wrong. It’s that my internal meter flips into nobody wants you. Even though I have no idea whether that’s true or not.
In Movement class, too, I somehow end up in the group of three more often than not. (“Everyone in pairs, one group of three.) Some part of me takes this as evidence. Evidence of what? That I don’t fit. That I’m the odd one out. That I’m in the wrong place even when I want to be here more than anything.
None of this is rational. It just feels real.
I’ve asked people a few times to grab dinner or go for a walk, and the responses have been mixed. That should be normal. It is normal. But this week, the rejections land harder than they should. My brain turns each one into a thesis on exile.
And so I keep circling the same questions:
Is it that I don’t like them?
Is it that they don’t like me?
Or am I simply struggling to be open?
Is this why I can’t clown? Is this the same issue: some belief that if they saw me, they wouldn’t like me → so I don’t show them myself?
Head Teacher once said that even if I don’t want to perform with others, I still have to perform for the audience—to give. I keep wondering if she can see the part of me that prefers single-player games. The part that only trusts what I can control.
So yeah—Friday requires groups of 3 or 5. I still don’t have a group. I posted in the group chat. And a small, childish part of me wants to take my ball and go home. Fuck this. I don’t need this. Except… I clearly do.
—
After class, someone asked how I was. “I’ve been better.” She tried to give me a hug. Kind, if a little awkward. I walked away still feeling disconnected, but I guess appreciating the attempt? That’s the weird part: even gestures of care glance off me this week.
They say you’ll see sadness in the eyes of a clown. Is that because clowning attracts people searching for joy? Who else dedicates themselves to fun except those who’ve had to hunt for it? It’s the old question: Who is the clown for the clown?
For me, the work is spiritual. The connection, the nakedness, the earnestness. And right now, all of that feels out of reach.
I sobbed three separate times today. Is that sensitive enough for you, Head Teacher?
The first time was after class, when groups were forming. Historically, I’ve had terrible luck picking groups—worse than random probability—so now I let randomness decide. There’s also the small practical matter: I came here to learn to work with whoever shows up.
But still: no group. Again.
I’m clearly struggling with the social part of clown school. And it stings, because this is the place people come when they feel misaligned with the “normal” world. The circus is for the outsiders. But what happens when you feel like an outsider inside the circus?
So today, when I tried being an ostrich and got one laugh before retreating into my shell, I felt that same old instinct: run, hide, disappear.
Maybe that’s part of the training. They apply pressure and see what cracks, what softens, what finally opens.
In my case, the message I keep hearing from the teachers is: They don’t love you because you’re not showing them you.
And fuck, that’s hard. It’s hard to show yourself when you already feel unwanted.
Anyway— I still lack a group. So that. Really. Hurts.
P.S. Head Teacher said my clothing looked like broccoli vomit. I believe she’s suggesting I dress differently. So tomorrow, I will. Change.
Julian Wise 