Another Wednesday, another White Spot dinner.

Officially starting to get nervous and excited about the orientation for Stand Up For Mental Health (SUFMH) on Friday

Still not sure I actually want to be a real standup comedian, though. I know I can write the jokes and do the act, not so sure about living the life.

Fairly sure I would enjoy the travel, at least at first. Even if it’s Greyhound. I am prety sure I could do Greyhound for four or five hours, probably. If the seats are not too small. And the one advantage bus travel has over air is that they can let you out to stretch your legs.

Trickier to do on an airplane.

But doing the same act, over and over again, night after night… I don’t know. I suppose I could treat it like a one man, one act play. I have done short drama before, as writer, director, and star. And as a comedian, you are all three.

But here is the thing. I have never performed in a play more than three times. Every single time, it has opened on Friday, closed on Sunday, one show in between.

Um, not because the plays were terrible. That is just how amateur theater works.

So doing the same show dozens of times… dunno if that would work.

I think I would have to be thinking of and writing new jokes all the time, as well as tinkering with existing material to perfect it. That is the only way I could stay motivated. I am primarily a comedy writer. A creator. Performance is a lot of fun and I am definitely a bit of a ham, but that is not who I am at the core.

I am a writer. I make somethung out of nothing. I give birth to dreams.

Still, spending some time slogging it through the dues paying part of a comedy career might do me some good. Get me out of me my shell, expose me to novel social situations, get me out and about.

And there is no reason it would HAVE to involve traveling all over. I could be a local comedian. Have jokes, will travel… anywhere my bus pass will take me.

Doubt you could make a living doing it like that. But it would get me some extra cash, And most importantly, it could be the first step in my my real plan : find people for a skit comedy group!

Mua ha ha, thunder crash, etc.

I figure that I would look for the people who have very good material but who seem uncomfortable with the whole performing thing. That would indicate to me that they, like me, are comedy writers at heart, and I only want writer-performers for my troupe, at least at first.

You can talk a talented writer into performing. You can’t talk a performer into being a talented writer.

And my goal would be to make YouTube skits. No live performance. No “show”. Just video skits, so we can do as many takes as we want and tinker with it as long as we need in order to make it as good as it possibly can be.

Fuck live performance. I demand quality!

Plus, the overhead is way lower.

Make the skits, put them on YouTube, promote the hell out of them, hope someone decides to invest in our dazzling talents, fame and fortune ensue.

Or not. Maybe we would make our fortune off YouTube and Kickstarter. Fine by me! Better, actually. I would rather be beholden tonthe audience, who only expect to be entertained, than to investors, who expect a big return on investment.

Enough for now. I grow weary of tablet typing. When next we meet, I will be home.

<--->

Wow, I wrote 615 words when I was at White Spot. That has to be a new record.

That, despite the fact that the keyboard was fighting me the whole way, or so it seemed. I was typing on my Google Keyboard (a virtual keyboard replacement) just fine for the first hundred words or so, then something happened and I just could not get back into the groove with it.

All I had to do was slow down and take it slow until I got up to speed. But I just couldn’t seem to do it. The Diet Coke I was drinking probably didn’t help.

Oh well. This is not the first and not the last time I will look back on a situation and say “If only I had taken a second to calm down and collect myself!”.

Which is a very easy thing to say…. once you are already calmed down and collected. But situations have their own momentum and create their own limitations sometimes, and sometimes, the idea you were looking for so hard when you were all hot and bothered and trapped in the moment falls right in your lap the minute your mind relaxes.

The trick is to not let these petty little things change your basic self-worth. That is, I think, one of the key differences between the healthy and the depressed. For healthy people, little mistakes might piss them off or even make them feel like an idiot, but the core of their self-worth is not changed at all.

For the depressed, it’s always all on the line. And when one little mistake, the kind that healthy people don’t even think about and just correct along the way, like fixing a typo, can send your self worth crashing through the floor, it’s no wonder we end up so far into the red.

The house always wins.

So there must be a way to wall off some of your self worth and take it out of circulation. Decide that you are basically okay, maybe not perfect but good enough and no worse than the next person, and the little petty things don’t count.

Learn to just ignore the little bumps and bruises and build a much, much higher standard of proof for detracting one iota from your self-worth and self-esteem.

It has to be possible. Others have done it.

I will find a way.

And I will talk to all you nice people again tomorrow.