Don’t get bitter

Wisdom from the comedy world

Hello, friends—and please pay no attention to this week’s themed GIF: I’m really glad you’re here!

I’m not a podcast person. I don’t have my own podcast (there’s still time!), and I don’t habitually listen to podcasts as a rule. But for the past couple of months I’ve found myself making a habit of listening to comedian/storyteller/writer/actor Mike Birbiglia’s ‘Working It Out’ podcast, in which Birbiglia invites guests onto the show to work through material they’re thinking of using in future comedy routines.

I found the podcast by going down a couple of different comedy-writing rabbitholes. The first thing I bumped into was Birbiglia’s hilarious account of his worst show ever, which had me laughing out loud on my walk by the lake in Geneva. (And let me tell you, there are few easier ways to make Swiss people look askance at you than suddenly bursting into laughter out of the blue while you’re strolling by a lake.) Eventually I got from there to Birbiglia’s podcast, and I’ve been a WIO fan ever since.

One of the questions Birbiglia asks a lot of his guests is ‘What’s the best piece of advice someone’s given you that you’ve used?’ The answers vary a lot, but I was really struck by the response comedian Sam Morril gave when he was on the show (Episode 82):

SM: Um…honestly, to not get bitter in comedy. Like, cause there are…you are gonna get passed over so much, especially in the early years….

MB: Constantly.

SM: Yeah. I remember Bill Burr once said to me, he goes ‘Don’t ever get fucking bitter. That shit…that follows you…that stink follows you like a fish, and people will smell it on you. […] Don’t get bitter. You’re gonna be all right’. And he was, like, very encouraging, but, uh, I was getting pretty—at a certain point, I was getting, like, I wasn’t, like, bitter, but I was kinda like, ‘What else do I have to do?’ It was one of those things where I was like, ‘What do I have to do?’ […] You see comics that get bitter, and it hurts their comedy a lot.

MB: Yeah.

SM: And it hurts them socially. […] No one wants to be around that energy. No one wants to bring a bitter comic to open for them on the road.

Bitterness is a really specific thing. It’s resentment that sinks in over time, that seeps in if you let it. It’s not like jealousy or envy, which can serve as motivators in different ways (see Roxane Gay’s writings about her nemeses, which have prompted many pieces reflecting on whether or not one should actually cultivate nemeses).

Bitterness is insidious and unproductive.

Bitterness festers. Bitterness stews.

Listening to this episode of WIO as both a writer and an academic, I really felt this advice hit hard. I mean, who among us hasn’t had to fight off feelings of bitterness when we’ve been passed over, or when someone else has gotten an opportunity we’re much more qualified for, or when we’ve ‘paid our dues’ without enjoying any payoff? I know I have. And every time I’ve caught that first whiff of my own bitterness, I’ve immediately sensed how easy it would be for bitterness to take up permanent residence in my heart, and how dangerous that would be.

I wish I could say I’d discovered a way to banish bitterness from my life altogether. But in fields like academia and writing, and in a world where we so often see the bad guy winning or the less-qualified guy getting the gig, I often think that the best we can do is try to keep bitterness at bay. Here are some ideas for ways to do that:

1. Let yourself feel it…but not for long. I don’t think you can really set bitterness aside until you’ve taken a moment to let yourself feel it, to look it in the eye and see it for what it is. So if you need to feel it, go ahead. But find a way to set some sort of time limit on your bitterness. Call a loved one and ask if you can vent for five minutes. Write a long, angry journal entry. Take a day and hole up in your bedroom streaming John Wicks 1-4. Let yourself feel it, and then hang up the phone, put down the pen, or turn off the screen so you can move forward.

2. Seek out people who aren’t bitter. It’s much easier to surrender to bitterness when everyone around you is bitter, too (even if they’re bitter on your behalf!). So when I know I’ve got to pull myself up in order to avoid sinking into bitterness, I seek out friends and colleagues who are optimists, who make me laugh, who help me focus on work.

3. Set goals. When it comes to bitterness, setting almost any goal will do. Your goal doesn’t have to be related to the thing that’s making you bitter—in fact, it might be better if it has nothing to do with the thing that’s making you bitter. This is not about proving yourself to somebody, not even yourself. It’s about focusing your mind on something new. So try to learn a new skill. Write something new. Finish a project you’ve been working on. This will help keep you from brooding on the thing that’s making you bitter.

4. Set higher goals. Finding it hard to pull your mind away from the opportunity you missed out on, or the recognition you weren’t given? Ok, then: think bigger. Go higher. Push harder. Follow Bill Burr’s other bit of good advice: become undeniable. Get so good at what you’re doing that people can’t say no. Instead of getting bitter, get better.

But I’ll tell you what I think is the best way to avoid getting bitter: get really good at seeing all the upsides of where you are. This is a skill, one you can develop with practice. When you have a moment, ask yourself: what unexpected blessings have come to you thanks to that opportunity you missed, or that recognition you didn’t get? What did that make room for in your life?

Funnily enough, just the other night a fellow guest at a dinner asked me quite bluntly whether I was at all bitter about a big job opportunity I’d lost to someone more junior years ago. I laughed, and admitted that I’d definitely been bitter for a hot minute—it was a job I would’ve excelled at, I had a spectacular CV, and I would’ve been a great fit. But I also value the freedom that being a ‘freelance’ academic has given me. It’s a particularly luxurious upside to my precarious employment, and I’m still squeezing everything I can out of it.

I know I won’t always succeed at keeping bitterness at bay. But I’m grateful to have acquired some of the tools to do so, and I hope they’ll be helpful for you, too.

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VB,

M