Goodbye For Now

Friday May 23rd, 2014 – Island Lake, IL

Since everything else in my life is broken at the moment, why not make it a matched set? I am going to take a break from writing my daily diary for a while, and I have no idea how long it will be. When I started, I wanted to see if I could do it thirty straight days. That was March 14, 2006.

I’ve always been a diary keeper, but I have no idea why. I just thought it was neat to be able to look back over things that happened in the past – even though I rarely if ever read any of what I write. Once it’s done it’s done, and the main joy I get is from the doing. That’s why I’ve done it.

As a kid I wrote about things like going to see live professional wrestling matches with my best friend Timbo who would eventually go on to commit not one but two bank robberies. Worse yet, he tried to pin one on me and I had to wear a wire to get him to confess and then testify in court.

I chronicled that orally on cassette tapes, and I still have them somewhere. I’ve never been able to listen to them, as that time is still a painful memory. At the end of every day I’d narrate all that happened, but I kept it under three minutes. Maybe someone will want to hear them in the future.

This particular incarnation of keeping a daily diary has changed my life – both good and bad. If nothing else it has given me a discipline I didn’t know I had. I now have literally THOUSANDS of pages of stories and events and opinions that I can sort through and use however I feel like it.

I have no idea what I could use it for, but there has to be some kind of a book in here wouldn’t one think? Many times I wrote with the young comedian of the future in mind, hoping to shed an ounce of insight on the insanity of the business and also the actual craft of comedy. I think I did a good job in sharing subtle and not so subtle points that are timeless and can help a lot of people.

Other times I just ranted about what was making my innards percolate, and some of it ruffled a few feathers. Actually, more than a few. I am now banned from several comedy clubs and people have told me how surprised I’d be at who actually reads what I write. Well, that’s 100% correct.

Frankly, I’m shocked anyone has read it at all. I did it mainly for me, but am delighted that I had some regular readers that actually got what I was trying to say and do. Others couldn’t stand my point of view, and chose to excommunicate me from communities I didn’t even know I was in.

Whatever the case, it’s exactly as advertised – a diary of a ‘dented can’. I’m struggling in many areas of my life right now, and just need to take a break and get myself better. As a rule I haven’t been afraid to discuss anything and everything in my life – even the very deepest darkest parts.

Well, in the last week and a half since Mother’s Day I’ve been going through a situation I don’t want to talk about right now. It’s personal, and I need to deal with it for a while. I have helped as many others as humanly possible over a lifetime, but now it’s time to focus on me for a while.

I may start up again in a month, a year – or never. I just don’t know. What I do know is that my life is all over the place and needs some regular structure. I think I’m going to go as far as trying the day job route, just so I can get my head straight and see what’s really important. Comedy has changed drastically just as life has, and everyone is in a constant state of transition. I am as well. If you enjoyed reading my thoughts, THANK YOU! If you didn’t, I thank you for at least taking the time to read my ramblings. I’m going to use this time off to recharge and regroup. Hope to be back again. Goodbye for now.

Thanks for reading my daily ‘Dented Can’ diary if and whenever you did so. I’m going to take a break for a while, not sure how long. Goodbye for now!

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Website Cobwebs

Friday November 2^nd, 2012 – Fox Lake, IL

   Where is Dobie Maxwell and who is this mysteriously efficient new life form that has taken his place? Urgent note to the universe: whoever it might be and wherever it may come from, I would greatly appreciate if you could keep it here a tad longer to do what it’s been doing. It’s working!

Boy, have I been making the positive progress lately and I can’t feel any better about it. What a fantastic feeling of deep satisfaction that goes with it, and I wish I had half of a clue as to exactly how or why this particular fire got lit – but it absolutely did. I’m knocking tasks out left and right.

Yesterday it was organizing all my disorganized computer files. I’d been meaning to get to that since who knows when, but I got it done in a day and it feels great. Today I faced another dragon I’d been avoiding literally for years as I addressed my embarrassingly out of date web presence.

I won’t be able to fix this one in a day, but I sure took a major step in the right direction. It’s an absolute necessity these days for entertainers to have a respectable and updated website, but I’ve been painfully lacking in that area for far too long. There are reasons for that, but not one excuse.

I had trusted everything to my former business partner, and when he embezzled money I had to cut ties immediately. That left me hanging in the lurch as far as my website, and I am sure it hurt my credibility. My friend Shelley stepped in and helped me get something going, but it wasn’t at the level it needed to be. No offense to her, she did her best and I appreciate it. But I need more.

I need to take it to a higher level and find someone who does it for a living. That way I can fire them if I need to, even though I hope I won’t need to. I just want someone who can keep me on a level of professionalism to keep me in the game and not make me look like a complete goober.

I’ve never been good at things like consistently keeping my calendar of upcoming bookings up to date, but I can’t think of anything more important to get out there so people who might want to take in a show can find out where I’ll be performing. It’s like owning a store but not getting word out when it’s open or where it’s located. That’s about as stupid as it gets, and I have been guilty.

There are a couple of options to ponder, as I know more than one person who does web design for a living. I’m hoping to build multiple sites for all the different projects I have, and eventually link them all together. There won’t ever be a single person in charge of everything again, and it’s to protect me from ever having to relive the nightmare of what I’ve had to endure in recent years.

I’ve got one person assigned to a King of Uranus site, and another doing a ‘Schlitz Happened’ site. The main ones I needed to focus on desperately were sites for ‘The Mothership Connection’ radio show and my own individual site at www.dobiemaxwell.com. Those are what I did today.

I have a third person working on those, but I’ve been delaying it for reasons that don’t matter – even if they’re legitimate. I’ve been busy, but nobody cares. So is everyone else. I needed to get it done and I got the ball rolling today. The feeling of satisfaction that goes with it is tremendous.