Mitch Hedberg's FOMO, the Big Bang, and Teaming Up With Everyone

Or... Mitch Hedberg's FOMO, Sleep No Mo', and Teaming Up With Everyone In The Universe Fo' Sho'

Mar 06, 2025

Dear friends,

Thank you for being here!
You are a hero for making this choice today.
And now, as your reward for clicking and reading, here is the latest entry in my project wherein I examine a joke I love that often ends up having more profound inclinations than its surface appearance may have initially suggested.

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 classics. I hope you enjoy!

”I write jokes for a living, man. See I sit in my hotel at night, I think of something that's funny and then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen's too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny.”
— Mitch Hedberg

I feel this.

I also write jokes for a living.

For the past 20+ years, I have carried a notebook or a digital recorder with me at basically all times, to avoid the very fear that Mitch speaks to here.

I remember the first time I got a massage, laying on a table with my recording device across the room, unreachable for the 45 minutes of what was meant to be relaxation.

I thought to myself, “What if I think of something funny during these 45 minutes? How will I remember it? Would it be appropriate for me to ask the massage therapist if they could write something down with their oily hands or remember it for me?”

I ended up thinking of two or three funny things and clenching them in my mind for the entire time, thus potentially counteracting the benefits of the relaxing nature of the massage in real time!

FOMO. The Fear Of Missing Out.

That’s what I was experiencing, and that’s what Mitch seems to be talking about in this joke. But the thing that he fears missing out on is sharing the joy that he just experienced. The most insidious FOMO possible. A joyful experience turned immediately fearful, not so different from receiving a massage while clenching one’s mind around a joke.

My intellectual thoughts on FOMO: if you have a fear of missing out on ANYTHING, then one thing that you are DEFINITELY missing out on is having no fear.

So, FOMO is always insidious.

Just to be clear, each of us cannot experience everything. Unless we team up with everyone and everything else in the universe. Then we can come closest.

For example, there was this theatrical production called "Sleep No More" which has been described as "an interactive film-noir Macbeth experience by a UK production company in a 5-story 1930s hotel."

I saw it once, but I didn't see the whole thing, because if you only see it once, you can't see the whole thing, because different parts of it are happening in different places at the same time.

You can stay in one room the whole time and see what happens there. You can follow one character from room to room and see what they do. You can do some combination of those things. But you can't see the whole thing.

When I went, they told us that if we came in a group, we were encouraged to split up so that we could have as many different experiences as possible and then when we all came back together at the end, we could share those experiences and all have a richer total experience as a result.

And I think that's a great metaphor for life as well. We were all together right before the Big Bang, and then BANG! every atom and particle in the universe started going its separate way.

Now we're all experiencing things seemingly separately, but it's the same universe, the same show. And eventually, the universe may go through the reverse of the Big Bang, the Big Crunch, and we'll all join up again and share our experiences, learn what we missed because we were in another room in the Sleep No More hotel, or maybe some of us didn't go to Sleep No More at all. Maybe some of us slept more.

Which brings me back to Mitch Hedberg at night in his hotel.

He has two choices, by his own admission. He can get up and traverse the great chasm between his bed and the pen across the room, to valiantly record his funny idea, because he is a hero willing to sacrifice his well-being for the good of comedy, for the entertainment of us all, for art! OR he can stay in bed, rest comfortably, go back to sleep, having convinced himself that what he thought "ain't funny." Which is a funny choice!

Does he sleep more? Or does he SLEEP NO MORE?

I wonder if this very joke is the first one he thought of late at night in a hotel room, the first one that led him on his quest across the room for a pen. Or is it possible that he thought of a joke late at night, convinced himself that it wasn't funny, and then when he woke the next day, he captured this joke for posterity, while the joke that this joke is about has faded to obscurity?

We'll never know, probably!
How many missing Hedberg jokes are there?

Maybe that's the wrong question, because now we're back to FOMO.

I mean, there are massive quantities of jokes that we didn't get from him, just like there are massive quantities of paths that we can never take at Sleep No More or in life. But there are also the paths we DO take. Just as there are the massive quantities of jokes that we DID get from Mitch, that we get to comedically rock out to for as forever as we like, and that is a joy.

JOMO. The Joy Of Mitching Out.

I'm grateful for all the Mitch jokes that he did write down.
AND I'm grateful for all the times that he may have chosen to rest at night.
Because he deserved a good night’s rest, just like I deserve a peaceful massage.

Also, I bet after he wrote this joke, he started keeping a pen closer to the bed.

That’s basically what I do.
In part, thanks to Mitch and this joke.
Thank you, Mitch, for teaming up with me and everyone and everything else in the universe in this way. We’re doing it!

Share Arty Har-Hars

And now, because I like to share my own jokes as well, here are a few sleep jokes!
Don’t sleep on these sleep jokes!

A) is for A movie:

You’ve heard of the movie “Sleepless in Seattle”?
AND you’ve heard of the concept of “eat and run” or “dine and dash”?
Well, please allow me to introduce a new mishmash of those concepts, to describe leaving someone’s home late at night instead of staying over:
”Sleepless and Skedaddle”!

B) is for Boring?:

Some find paradoxes so interesting, they might keep you up at night.
Some find paradoxes so boring, they might put you right to sleep.
Paradoxes, they’re a paradox!

C) is for Control:

Did you know that hitting Control-Z on a keyboard can undo what you just did?
And did you know that I wish there were a way to undo falling asleep while watching a movie, which I call “hitting Control-ZZZ”?

And that’s about it from me. But what about YOU? I have questions!
Feel free to respond by commenting or hitting reply and emailing!
I’d love to hear from you!

1) How are you doing? How is your heart? What is new and good?
2) Do you relate to the experience Mitch is sharing in this joke?
3) What are you thoughts and feelings about FOMO/JOMO?
4) What is your relationship with sleep like? If you want to share.
5) How are you doing NOW?

Arty Har-Hars

Mitch Hedberg's FOMO, the Big Bang, and Teaming Up With Everyone

Or... Mitch Hedberg's FOMO, Sleep No Mo', and Teaming Up With Everyone In The Universe Fo' Sho'

Discussion about this post