Comedy Brick Wall

I have always viewed the tendency of our over-sentimental Facebook generation to preface comments on current feelings with the qualifier 'sometimes' as pointless and evasive. Sentences like “sometimes it hurts too much to think”, or “sometimes you miss them and you don't even know why”, or “sometimes I masturbate to people's tumblr feeds” are perfectly normal declarations, obscured by the dirty word 'sometimes' which dilutes their power and sullies their meaning. I was tempted to commit this foul sin just now, as I started to write this blog, but instead decided to comment on it which, as far as I have thought in my own silly mind, counts as not doing it. The following are not emotions that happen 'sometimes', no matter what qualifiers I slap onto my sentences out of habit and laziness; the following are things which I am feeling right now.

I am currently finding it hard to muster up the courage (courage really isn't the right word here... maybe strength? Or 'emotional resources'? Something something something, you get the point) to write more comedy and perform stuff, or work on stuff, or whatever I need to do. I'm just finding it hard right now is what I'm saying. It's weird, I know I can do well on stage because I've done so before, and I've had good gigs on nights that other comedians have done poorly – ie. it wasn't just because of a good crowd that my best gigs have happened. But lately I've been dying a lot more... well not dying per se, just not doing well... getting a few laughs here and there but not loads and I'm having a fucking hard time figuring out why that is.

I have been told by a few people that I need to write some self-deprecating material and open with it so that I can get the audience on side and then have license to get angry and rant about whatever else I want to rant about. I've even had a go at writing some stuff like that, but the first crack I had at it led to my worst gig ever, and the material ended up having the opposite effect to what I had desired – almost making me come off a bit conceited and arrogant. God damn it. GOD DAMN IT. How does this stuff work? Sometimes (FUCK! there it is – I'll leave it in a a punishment, come on Tuck, you can do better) I feel like I want to just stop doing the whole comedy thing and retreat behind the shield of approval that is the written word. Behind my keyboard no one can really harm me and if my sentiments or attempts at humour fall flat, no one is around to be silent and stare up sympathetically. It's safe. Secure. Easy. Tame.

But that's exactly why I need to NOT stay back here in safety, because it is good to do one thing every day that scares you. Well I don't have gigs every day, but maybe if I scare myself two or three times a week then I'll meet enough of the quota... I don't get that nervous before gigs any more – not the regular gigs that I've been doing anyway – because they are just that, regular gigs. But maybe I should be getting more stressed out before gigs... I certainly haven't had a really good one in a while (notwithstanding the aristocrats night at Station 59 where I wasn't doing material) so maybe I should be feeling a little concerned that people may begin to see me in a negative light if I keep going this way. These are rantings of a paranoid mind, I know that even as I type them, but I can't help feeling stressed. Comedy is hard... fucking hard... I'm hitting a wall here people, and I don't know how to make it work again.

Frustrated. Scared. Paranoid. Feeling alone.

Peace, Taco.