Welcome to Wheels Off, a show about the messy reality of the creative life.

I'm Rhett Miller.

Jen Kirkman is not an audience member.

One of my favorite moments in this conversation you're about to hear takes place about

15 minutes in when Jen Kirkman is describing her own origin story and dealing with all of the

people telling her no, mostly just old men,

and explain to her why she can't do comedy and all this stuff.

And she describes a moment sitting in the audience where she realizes,

I am not an audience member.

And I love that.

There's something about the way she sums up that moment of realizing, in a way,

one's own life purpose.

And I think it really speaks to the experience I've had and the experience a lot of my friends

that I know in artistic industries have had,

where we realize there's people that consume art, which is fantastic, but then there are people

that are just meant to make it. Jen Kirkman is one of those people.

She's a comedian.

She's an actor.

She's a writer.

She's a great writer.

I tracked her down at her home in the Los Angeles area.

And we had such a fun conversation.

...