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I'm a Comedian who loves to write blogs about my past experiences, no matter what they are.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

FEAR!

                          What's happening beautiful people? Its been a hell of a week but we're here. The surgery went well and the recovery has been a piece of cake, thank you for all your thoughts.  Its amazing how far we've come, I remember when they would stitch you up with a needle and thread, then they'd shoot you directly in the wound with the liquid coke, then they'd start sewing.
                         Anyway, enough of that, I'll faint right here on the computer. A few weeks ago on one of the JRE podcast, I spoke about fear and how I dealt with it. Lets get something straight, I've always been scared of my own shadow. If it wasn't for my Mother's methods of raising a child, I would have been in trouble. I was an only child and to boot I was an immigrant, my father died when I was three and I was left to my mother. When you have a Spanish mom, your her little prince, for Christ sake, my mom would dress me in white from head to toe and send me out to play, I didn't know, but my mother thought it was cute. That was NYCity in the 70's, I got tortured and I adjusted but it always left a scar in my brain, that all white clothing shit was Cuban and kids would laugh, are Cubans weird? So I did everything to be American, thats all I strived for as a kid. I ate hotdogs and hamburgers like a motherfucker. I watched every TV show imaginable, thats how I really learned to speak English,  so after a while, I had it covered, or did I.
                    In the 6th grade I discovered another secret, I couldn't do a pull up in gym class so they wouldn't give me the Presidents Patch for fitness, that killed me. I went home and did pushups and jumping jacks for weeks, eventually two years later I did a pull up. Where are you going with this Joey? Those little things always made me feel weak, and I'm sure there were other things that gave me those feelings of insecurity.
                   About 9 years ago, I started getting really bad anxiety attacks. I would get to a place, see a few people and just leave, you have no idea how many gigs and auditions and functions I missed because of this. I thought it was the blow, but we all know that gives you balls of steel, was it the other drugs and alcohol I was doing? I went to see Doctors and phyciatrist and they all perscribed some shit, but those feeling didn't go away. I would be home relaxing watching a movie and my brain would flip out. At the time doing blow would be the only thing to calm me down. I would run red lights till I'd hit the ATM machine and then do the same on the way to the dealer's house, it was amazing. I'd get the package, grind it with my hands and snort it at the first red light that now I would stop for. It was a great bandaid for a while but I knew eventually, it would have to stop.
                After a few years of this, I sat down one night and had a long talk with myself. The conclusion I came up with was the anxiety that was hitting me was my body telling me that there was something wrong with it that I had to take care of, the first thing I did was to throw away the pills and start working out. I went to sleep at a decent hour and I gave accupuncture a try, that was 6 years ago, but there was something else.
             I've always had a voice, something my mother put in my head at an early age, say what you feel and do what feels right to you. Lets face it, I've always been a fucking wild man but after I got out of prison, I tried to tone that down a little. I figured out that maybe I should think before I strike, think about things before I let the Cuban come out, I tried it for a while. Then came the divorce, they fucked with me not to mention I had 2 felonies already so I had to behave, but at the same time, I had to keep my mouth shut, it got so overwhelming for me that I left that dream of raising a daughter to pursue comedy, it was painfull but I knew if I stayed something bad was going to happen, so I bit my tongue.
           Then I moved out to L.A.  to pursue my dream and boy do you have to be a sheep and keep your mouth closed because that person knows this person and this person knows that one, so even though I was dealing with a bigger thiefs than I ever was and at least I had the balls to rob me with a gun, these fucks don't have those types of manners, so again I bit my tongue. That fear along with my other insecurities drove me and my addictions to new levels and I didn't even know at the time, that what was giving me the anxiety, one not taking care of myself and two not telling people how I feel and telling them to go fuck themselves but most importantly, living my life on my terms, fuck the Jone's and the Johnson's!
            Fear and anxiety go hand in hand, when I started comedy, it took me 9 months to finally get on stage, we all have fears, attack them with 3 hands because if you don't, the fears add up and you go no where. You know whats bothering you, why the fuck are you asking people for help. Everybody has an iPhone and an iPod but when it comes to ourselves, I, we forget. If something is not right, attack it, conquer it or fail, but move on, why linger. You know what you can or can't do, but the quicker you get it over with, the quicker you know. I can't lie I had doubts about that knee surgery until that morning. On the drive is where I talked myself into it. At first I wasn't going to tell anyone, but I did and the added pressure and love from you guys helped me through. I still get scared before I go on stage after 20 years of doing it, at first I panic but after a few seconds I know I'm alive, and again, what can you do? Go in there and do it!  Thank you for reading.

        If you don't know, the documentary is getting released on March 17th. I am doing a 1 Man Show called, "Stories" on February 29th @ The IceHouse Stage 2. I'm taking footage from the show to use on the film. Come out! Tickets are 10$
        Thank you also for making, "It's Either You or The Priest" the #1 Download on Payloadz.com. It will be available on iTunes In March. But you could get it here for 5$! It will be more on iTunes because thats how that works!
         Thank you again for reading a have a Happy Presidents weekend! Stay Black!

8 comments:

  1. That's the best advice Chico ! Te queremos <3

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  2. Super fucking inspiring! You just made me realize I need to deal with my fears instead of pretending that everything is okay. Love everything that you do. Amor!

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  3. thx for the inspiration coco, un abrazo mi hermano :)

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  4. thanks man for this, there is a lot of people with feelings similar to this and they do not know how to deal with them, so to read this not only encourages those people like me, but gives them a manner in which to address them. thank you.

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  5. Jesus christ JOEY you are a menace to society!!! I love you!

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  6. You got so much balls now, it's spilling over onto other motherfuckers! Much love Joey, keep chasin your dreams man, you see em comin true. We see your stories and we get inspired to write our own. Keep doin what youre doin because it's workin.







    STAY BLACK!

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  7. Good shit man! You took the fear and showed it what is up. It gave me inspiration to get above my fear of sharing and I started to writeout my life and share it with anyone who finds it. Stuff like a KFC that sold LSD, being a driver for a made man at age 16 or getting ripped off in Detroit at 3am trying to randomally get weed from the first black person walking around which led to trying to run someone over cause we got ripped off. Keep up the inspiration Joey. You kill it man!

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