You know, I really need to start writing my blog ideas now. I must have had at least five really good ideas today for what to write about tonight and now I can’t remember a single one.

Oh well. There is this comedy thing.

It’s called Stand Up For Mental Health, and it’s a workshop style program where people suffering from mental illness learn to do standup comedy in order to boost their self-confidence and so forth.

Sounds perfect for me, doesn’t it? Here I am, a very funny dude with big time mental health issues looking for a way to get around my mental blocks and use my talents, and here’s the program which could do just that.

Admittedly, I am not that keen to do standup. There was a time, back in the Eighties, when I thought being a standup comedian would be the most awesome thing ever. But that was a (depressingly) long time ago, and I find it hard to think in those short, focused comedy bursts any more.

But hey…. I can learn.

I have no fear of performing to speak of, at least in the sense of stage fright. But then again, all my performances have been scripted and all I had to do was say (and emote) my lines. I had a role to play and an entire play to provide context for what I was doing. For me, that makes things very simple.

For standup, however, your script is your set, and you have no idea if people are going to laugh or not. There’s no story to continue. If you tell a joke and nobody laughs, there’s no safety net. And it’s a joke you wrote yourself, possibly that same day, so you can’t blame the writer either. You can go on to the next joke, but you are still really vulnerable in that spotlight.

So it will be a little scarier than what I have done before. But not quite as much as you might think. After all, one of the plays I acted in was one I also wrote and directed.

Does that make me a triple threat?

And that play went over great. Audiences laughed and laughed. So clearly I can make the people laugh.

It’s just that whole “up there as myself” thing that is a little spooky. Perhaps I will develop a comedy persona and adopt a stage name in order to still have something to hide behind.

But then I could get into that whole Paul Reuben/ Pee Wee Herman thing. Or what’s his name that does Dame Edna. I am not really built for that sort of identity conflict. The very idea of it makes me feel a little ill.

So maybe Michael Bertrand As Michael Bertrand would be a better bet in the long run.

It would also give me a chance to try out my theory that if you love the audience, they can’t help but love you back. I don’t mean that in a soppy sentimental way, like the old time comedians bursting into tears about how much all you people mean to me.

I just mean that I think that if you go out there with the attitude that you love all these people out there and want to do your best to make them happy, I think audiences will find it hard to resist that kind of emotional energy.

It won’t always work, of course. And there will undoubtedly be some audiences that are not exactly easy to love. But I still think going into it with an attitude of love is the right way to go.

You have to give to get back, after all.

Colbert ended last night. It wasn’t as harrowing as I thought, probably because it wasn’t a sitcom ending, where you have to say goodbye to a whole whack of characters you will never see again (outside reruns) and you get all verklempt.

I only had to say goodbye to one character, the fictional right-wing version of Stephen Colbert, and to be honest that guy was kind of a dick. The real Stephen Colbert will still be around, and without the character keeping him down, we will see even more of his amazing likability.

The choice to give him Letterman’s job is no mystery to me, especially since I have (almost) stopped resenting it for taking the Colbert Report away. He made his right wing persona, who again was a total dick, insanely likable. Lovable, even.

Imagine what he will be like now!

Today was a therapy day. As usual, I went into it sleepy. I have two choices, have no diet cola and go into it sleepy, or have diet cola and go into it anxious.

Sleepy is, at least, less stressful. So I was Sleepy and my therapist, of course, was Doc.

No big groundbreaking stuff occurred. I suppose it’s that time again where I nudge things towards the darker stuff. I am starting to thing I am, in a sense, too well-spoken for my own good. I lead the conversation without even trying. Perhaps that has to do with charisma too, or at least, power of personality.

And while I hate it when therapists seem determined to do all the talking (grr), if they are spellbound by my dazzling intellect and get swept away by my force of personality, they can’t do me a hell of a lot of good.

That brings up the always depressing thought that a therapist has to be smarter than you in order to be truly effective. If so, ?I am in dire straits. I keep telling myself that no, they just have to see things that you can’t see because you are too involved, but the thought keeps coming back anyway.

I guess no matter what, there’s nobody who can save me from myself. Whatever I didn’t get in terms of emotional nutrients as a child, I am going to have to go find it myself now.

And I am just not ready.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.