Name: Bill Burr - Career Advice
Uploaded: 2015-08-24T18:32:55.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bill Burr - Career Advice' from Bill Burr Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-08-24. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bill Burr - Career Advice' from Bill Burr Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-08-24. Transcript available.

All right, let's wrap this thing up here.
Career advice.
Dear Bilexia Burr.
Oh, that's a great one.
Inaccurate.
I've been a high school teacher for the past seven years.
But my dream is always to become a professional writer.
Oh, that's awesome.
You know, dude, that would be a great life.
You molded some young minds and then you became a professional writer.
So far, he says, so far, I don't have a teaching job
for the upcoming school year.
I'm considering no longer having my own classes
and instead becoming substitute teacher for the school year.
This would give me more time to write and submit my work
to literary agents and hopefully get a big publishing deal.
I've had some success so far with writing a published short story
and a nomination for a literary prize.
Dude, what the fuck are you waiting for?
How many more signs of land do you need?
This is like Columbus when he fucking sailed over
and he saw some tree branches and a couple of birds.
You're going to get there.
The problem is that my wife and I still have a lot of student debt
that we're repaying and substitute teaching doesn't pay nearly as much
as being a regular classroom teacher.
I've put off my dream of becoming a writer for years
and I think now may be the time to metaphorically push in all my chips.
I might lose, but I might win.
No, dude, there's no way you lose when you go after a dream.
You don't.
It always leads to something better.
Always.
All right?
Dude, fucking substitute teacher, teach and be a fucking Uber driver.
All right?
And, you know, eat at home more.
Starving artist.
I slept on a futon until I was 36.
I don't fucking regret any of it.
I told you that story a zillion times in this podcast.
I was dating this woman and I said I had a spot I had to go do
and it paid $8 at the comic strip during the week.
Tuesday night, I went down there and I came back.
I tried out a new bit and I was doing this and afterwards I was at home
in my apartment and I was doing this silly dance in the kitchen
because I had a new bit and I was psyched because I had gone through this
period where I wasn't coming up with any new material and she was laughing
and then she got a sad look on her face and I said, what's the matter?
And she said, I wish I had a job where I only got paid $8 yet I came home
and I did a silly dance in the kitchen.
And I never forgot that, dude.
So that, you know what I mean?
You're going to have to suffer a little bit.
But Substitute Teach, Uber.
Dude, you got a short story published and you got a nomination for a literary
prize.
Come on, man.
You know what you're supposed to do.
I don't even have to go through the rest of this fucking thing.
He goes, all right, I'll get through the whole thing.
He said, you know, part of me fights against the dream
and insists that I have to do the responsible thing and keep teaching.
Fuck all of that.
Fuck all.
The responsible thing to do is to listen to your heart.
My question for you, either in your career when you were trying to build an
audience
and make it as a stand-up comedian, did you struggle with the financial strain
of chasing
your dream?
Did you ever have to choose between a good-paying job or doing stand-up?
How hard was it to work at a shitty job just so you could chase your dream?
Did you ever think that maybe you were wasting your time?
Any advice or encouragement?
I think I answered all of those.
It wasn't hard to work at the shitty job because I was always thinking about
the exciting job
I was going to do afterwards.
And every night that I just went up on stage and if it just went moderately
okay,
I couldn't believe it.
I have to be honest with you.
I couldn't fucking believe that I was actually doing it.
That I was actually, I had a dream and I was making it happen.
And I still remember the first time I really went on stage and I actually got
in the zone
for what was considered a zone at the level comic I was.
And I only was in the zone for about eight seconds.
I was at Nick's Comedy Stop in Framingham on Route 9.
It doesn't even exist anymore.
And I just got on this roll of laughter that I was actually able to pause
and fucking be in the moment and enjoy it rather than being like,
oh my God, what's my next joke?
What's my next joke?
And that fucking feeling can carry you through a fucking shitty job for a week.
Chasing to get back on stage to feel that again.
And then the first time I got $5 for gas money, Freddie Stone.
I've told all these stories.
Freddie Stone, the excitable boy.
That's what he went by.
I did a room for him and he gave me $5 gas money.
I'd probably spent $10 to get there and I couldn't fucking believe it.
And I was like, I did that and they gave me this.
I couldn't fucking believe it.
At what point, just listen to the sound of my voice as I'm talking about this.
Have you ever had that level of excitement doing any other fucking job?
That's what it's like when you go after a dream job.
So nothing, nothing is worse than not going after it, okay?
And doing the responsible thing and all of that type of shit.
And then you sit in your house with all your responsible stuff.
Fuck all of that.
Financially, I did not do the responsible thing.
And yeah, I've said all these stories.
I fucking used to eat spaghetti every fucking night with a can of fucking prego.
And then a bunch of bread and I would just fill myself up on that or I'd go to
Denny's and I'd get the five stack of pancakes and just pour it in my stomach
like concrete so I wouldn't have to eat the whole fucking day and do stand up
in some cafeteria at some fucking college.
And quitting never entered my mind.
I just kept trying to get better at it because as bad as some of those gigs
were, the great ones were way better.
So you'll have all of these stories just in a literary way.
So without a doubt, you have to fucking do it.
And I can tell you right now, man, like with what you've already accomplished,
like to me, I would be thinking like I can affect way more people and make way
more fucking money and live a fucking dream being a professional writer.
I mean, writer, I mean, that'd be unbelievable, be unbelievable.
So not to say there's anything wrong with teaching, but if teaching isn't your
dream, that's just the job you're doing.
So I'm not shitting on teachers out there.
It's one of the most underrated jobs and, of course, most underpaid jobs ever.
But I'm just trying to amp you up here.
So go out and fucking do it and email me when you get published, because I
think you're going to I don't think you know.
Look, if you're a bunch up against a bunch of other shit writers and you won
one thing, but you got two things going on here.
All right.
Give me a fucking break.
All right.
You just need to push yourself out of the fucking bush, not the bush, the nest,
the bush.
That was oddly gross.