What if Nothing is Ever Funny Again?

It keeps me up at night

Humor. Sleep. Rain.

Like right now. I’m up. It’s night. And I’m thinking, Oh dear God, what if nothing is ever funny again?

Now it’s the next morning, and I’m at my computer and nothing seems funny. Not the group of women chastising the child who is clomping around in high heels, not the construction guy outside answering his text message amidst a plume of — smoke? Steam?Construction work seems like a safe place to get distracted. Not the orange car with trees painted on the side of it.What is that advertising? The forest?

Nothing. Nothing is funny.

As a humor writer, this is a rough place to be. Everything should be funny, shouldn’t it? Every interaction, every experience, every moment contains the possibility of a 750-word satire. There are times when I have so many funny ideas, I have to jot them down wherever I can find space; I have to phone a friend. But now there is a kind of barrenness, like my mind has become a winter desert, like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Nothing is funny in the apocalypse. Look at Station Eleven. Sure they were doing Shakespeare, but they were doing the tragedies, amidst tragedy. It was like they enjoyed bathing in misery. Man, how about a Comedy of Errors, people?

A woman comes into the coffee shop wearing a necklace that looks like Christmas bulbs and it’s not Christmas. There’s a niggle within me: It’s not Christmastime. It’s May. This should be funny, but it’s not. Another man can’t open the door from the outside cause it is stuck. I walk up and yank it open for him. I should say something like, Sorry, we’re closed. But I miss the opportunity because nothing is funny.

Years ago, I stood holding the door to an establishment so long — I think it was a pizza place or something. I found myself in a bizarre situation where I felt like I worked there, but I was just holding the door for the never-ending stream of people who all seemed to get their checks at the same time. I started thanking people for coming, telling them to come back. “Hope you enjoyed your meal!” “Come again soon!” And they started responding to me like I worked there.

God, it feels like it’s been raining for a year.

Day three and still nothing is funny. I even published a humor piece or two in this time, but even the humor feels oddly cold. Maybe it’s the rain;maybe it’s inflation and the impossibility of the job market. Maybe it’s that I’ve submitted to so many opportunities, that I would prefer a stream of rejections to this radio silence makes me doubt that I am a three-dimensional person who exists in the world.

I get into phases like this. I was in a several-month phase of this before I started writing on Medium in January. But I was published in McSweeney’s! In Wit Tea! I was capable of humor. And yet — it’s really hard sometimes in a world shrouded by — what? Lies? Forest fire air pollution? The smoke of the American Dream burning? It can be hard to see through the haze.

Once I camped on Lake Erie. Over the lake, two factory smoke stacks cut a shape in the night like cigars. It was an offensive image, obscene really, juxtaposed with the expanse and beauty of the natural scene.It was a giant middle finger to mother earth against the night sky:See how much we think of your nature. We construct factories at your doorstep.

I was pulling weeds the other day. Really getting into it. The neighbors were walking by with their babies. And I realized I never walked with another someone who had a baby with my baby. I never talked with another someone who had a baby at the same time as me. I felt a great need to prove to these neighbors that I was a human being while my four-year old threaded through my legs like a dog with the zoomies.

Do other people navigate: what would a real human do in this situation? I don’t do that one-on-one, but I sometimes do with strangers, or more than one person. How would a real person act? I ask myself, like I’m a middle schooler on stage for the first time. Is this how you gesture? Is this how an arm works?

But I, I am the person. And I swear I’m real.

My body hurts all the time.

I had a dream about a woman falling down the stairs. She fell down the stairs in front of me. It was pretty horrific; a concrete parking lot staircase of multiple levels. She fell over the bannister to further fall down the next flight. I don’t know how it happened. And I did nothing. Also, it had already happened. I knew it was going to happen and then it happened in front of me as if I were inhabiting two timelines simultaneously.

It was kind of funny I think. Also: awful. But the woman flipped over the middle partition of the staircase to fall down more stairs, as if she were trying to cause maximum damage. No. Maybe not funny. Bizarre. Disturbing. Kinda funny. It took effort, all that self-destruction.

Do you think my subconscious is trying to tell me something?

I’ve been listening to audiobook virtuoso Julia Whelan narrate the Kristin Hannah books. Holy cow. These characters are at war; they are surviving in the wilds of Alaska, eating rabbit hearts and felling moose. They are carting water in to boil to drink and toting bear whistles while they brave the never-ending dark to pee in outhouses. In the middle of the night.

Sometimes I don’t want to roll over cause it feels like too much effort.

Did we use to be tougher? Braver? More frequently devoured by bears on midnight outhouse runs?

The rain is ceaseless. If God is crying because of something we did, it’s a hard cry, a waterfall in sporadic waves that promises a respite that never seems to come.

Maybe I should sit in front of one of those light therapy boxes that promise happiness, but give me a headache.

I wear red boots recently passed down from my mother. They are the most bizarrely uncomfortable construction I’ve ever encountered. They have enough room for the foot, but the length of the boot is so long, they cut into the backs of my knees as if they are trying to cut me down as I walk. It’s like adding an extra challenge to life. They are so irrationally long, it’s as if they are designed for people with extra long calves, or perhaps by someone who has never encountered a leg. Are extra long calves a thing? Is someone out there pining for these boots? And this, of all things, seems hilarious.

Boots for Sale: Do you feel like your tibia never has enough space? Calves feeling smushed? These rain boots are designed for long, long lower legs, — longer than than that— or someone who wants perambulation to be a challenge. Also good for giraffes.

And it’s not. It’s not really funny, but within it is a glimmer, an eye that can still recognize, a heart that still feels. A sacred perspective on a world, even through the haze — of possibility, of promise, of joy.

Originally published in The Narrative Arc.

Rediscover joy.