I’m glad it resonated with you, Stanislaw! And thanks for such a great question. I think I’d say I didn’t decide being funny wasn’t that important as much as I discovered that it wasn’t. It’s a little like how I came to realise I didn’t care that much about sports, so I stopped trying. The main difference is, at least with being funny, I still cared, just not enough to want to make it definitive to who I was.
It was a decision only in the sense that I became deliberate about something that I realised to be true. And that’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself as well: if it’s worthwhile or if it’s for approval. I’ll suggest, though, that you think of it not as a binary, but as a dynamic, because sometimes it’ll be worthwhile and sometimes it’ll be for approval. And if you can learn to tell them apart, you can start to better identify when you’re more likely to be doing which.
So when I say I decided it wasn’t that important to me, I don’t mean I gave it up. I mean that I accepted that I’d be okay at it and not great and that was okay. What I gave up on was being exceptional at it like my friend was. I still enjoy making people laugh but it stopped mattering to me to have a strong reputation for being funny.
