Following Mitch Hedberg's dreams

Follow my heart, everyone!

Apr 04, 2025

Dear friends,

I’m grateful that you are here!
Thank you for choosing to be here!
And now, another entry in my project wherein I take jokes I love and see if they end up having more profound implications than surface appearances may initially suggest (spoiler alert: the answer thus far has always been yes).

The project began with a piece about one Mitch Hedberg joke, where I assessed Hedberg thusly:

”His jokes are songs, infinitely relistenable. Whereas so much comedy requires surprise to have its desired effect, Hedberg's has somehow transcended that.”

I now revisit another of his gems. I hope you enjoy!

"I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later."
— Mitch Hedberg.

Following our dreams!
We all know this concept.
We often encourage our children to do this.
And even ourselves, if we’re lucky!

It’s similar to following your heart.
But here’s the thing…
Did you realize that your heart is in your body right now?
You made it. You're here. You’re at your heart!
Home is where the heart is.

Let's have a heart to heart.

Of course, the heart is both a literal thing and a metaphorical thing.
Similar to the brain and the mind, but there are different words for those!
The brain is in the head and the mind is where?
Similarly, the heart is in the chest and also the heart is… where?
Somewhere you have to follow?
In your dreams?
Out on the horizon?

The horizon is fascinating to me.
We can look out and see the horizon, and then we can travel to that place.
And when we get there, to where the horizon was, we can look out and there's another horizon.

(That’s how they getcha down at Big Horizon. There’s always another horizon. And if you believe that, I’ve got a horizon to sell you!)

When we get there, “there” becomes here.
And the time we arrive will always be now.
And we’re already here. It’s already now.
We did it!

(I’m reminded of the scene in Spaceballs when they say “when will then be now?” and the answer in the scene is “soon!” but I posit that then will be now NEVER.)

When I started doing comedy, my dream was to be doing comedy.
And technically, the first time I performed on a comedy stage, I was doing it.
I was living my dream.
But then I got off stage and I was like "ok, the dream is to do that REGULARLY.”
For a living.
To get paid to do it.
To pay my rent and buy my food with it.

What an interesting dream I had!
I had a dream to pay money to a landlord?
A dream to shop at grocery stores?

Mitch said he was sick of following his dreams.
Maybe because following them means you're always behind them.
You're never catching up.
You're never making it to that horizon.
You're always somewhere else from where the dream is.

But he figured out a shortcut.
Hooking up with them later.
He let go of the idea of following them, at least if we take this joke literally.
(Which is what we’re doing, because right now we is me.
It’s like how in a dream, they say everyone is an aspect of the dreamer.
So as you read these words of mine, you are a de facto aspect of me!)

And what is the real dream?
The dream is doing comedy.
The dream is living the way we want to live, moment to moment.

On my podcast "Broccoli and Ice Cream," I talk to people about the work that they do (the broccoli) and the joy that they experience (the ice cream).
Sometimes the work people do brings them joy.
Sometimes the things people enjoy, they also work at.

Another framing of this that just came up in a conversation with my mother:

What you do for a LIVING and what you do for a LOVING.

For me, the dream of doing comedy was to get my living aligned with my loving.

I know other comedians who have had the same dream.
The dream to be a professional comedian.
To make their living doing it.
To pay their rent with it.

And one way of doing that is to live in a tiny box of a home, to have the rent be very low, and then to make enough money from comedy to afford that tiny little box. Or for some, to not pay rent anywhere, to live on the road, in a van, in an RV, out of their car, a nomad, traveling from city to city like the circus, setting up your tent and then taking it down and starting over again in the next town.

To some people, that might sound scary.
One person's dream is another's nightmare.

Personally, I do like having a building to live in.
Not that I "have" the building.
But the building IS.
It exists.
I'm in it right now.
I pay rent so I can do that. (The dream!)

The dream is everywhere now.
Sometimes the dream is weird.
Sometimes I wake up and am like "what does THAT mean?" and I don't know.
I don't know what everything means in every dream.
I don't know what everything means in every waking moment.
I don't know everything, I guess is what I’m saying.
I don’t know.

When Mitch said he was sick of following his dreams, to me that means that the dream turned into something unattainable, and that didn't feel good.
And the dream is to feel good.
And sometimes, the way to feel good is to let it go.
Ask where the dream is going and hook up with it later.
And then you might find that just like your heart was in your body the whole time, so was and is the dream.

The dream is everywhere.
The dream is here and now.
The dream is life.
Living. Loving.

Thanks for being a part of my living loving dream, all.
Glad we could hook up here and now.

And now, some jokes from me:

A) is for A dream:

the movie “field of dreams”
could ALSO have been called
“dream of fields.”

B) is for dreaming Big:

”dream a little dream of me?”
that’s thinking so small.
how about, “dream a BIG dream of me!”

C) is for Control:

when you’re typing and you want to undo something, you can hit Control-Z.
sometimes i fall asleep while watching TV late at night.
i wish i could undo that by typing Control-ZZZ

Share Arty Har-Hars

And now, for some questions for YOU!
Feel free to reply to this as an email or answer in the comments or just think your thoughts real hard or whatever you wish!

1) How are you doing? How is your heart? What is new and good?
2) What do you do for a living?
3) What do you do for a loving?
4) Do you have any dreams you want to share?
5) How are you doing NOW?

Arty Har-Hars

Following Mitch Hedberg's dreams

Follow my heart, everyone!

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