Well this is it. I’m going to do it.
Tonight, when I go to the open mic with Felicity, I am going to get up and perform.
Needless to say, I am freaking out over it. Right now it’s at medium intensity but I am sure that was the time approaches, it will get much, much worse.
And I don’t fucking care.
Let it come. Bring it. I will go on no matter what. I am determined to lose my standup comedy virginity tonight, and so all the anxiety in the world doesn’t matter.
And that means my performance doesn’t matter either. I might just stand there in a stupor like a drooling idiot while soiling myself. Doesn’t matter.
I just want to get it over with. After that, I can start refining the process. Right now, the whole deal is to just get that shit done.
And really, I have no reason to fear. Many people have told me I am a very funny dude. I know I have the talent, the presence, the wit, the charm, and the skill to pull it off.
So it’s just a matter of actually doing it.
I will fill you in on how it goes tomorrow, or maybe later tonight.
Beat Fallout New Vegas this morning. Got the “independent New Vegas” ending because in the end, I sided with Yes Man.
Not that I was happy about that. I had intended to back the NCR the whole way but somehow ended up allying with Yes Man and turning on the NCR at the last minute and taking over Hoover Dam for myself instead.
It’s darkly funny how naive I remain in these games. Time and time again, I try to avoid picking a side and instead go as far as I possibly can and then I am thrown into deep conflict when the game forces me to choose.
Can’t we all just get along?
I’m going to start a second playthrough. There’s so much to do in the game that it would be crazy to only go through it once.
This time, I am going to try being a melee fighter again. It’s stabby time! I am going to install a few mods that enhance melee combat with more weapons and melee related perks and so forth and so on first, though.
Plus I downloaded a massive mod called New California that is practically a game unto itself, according to the hype.
So I got lots to keep me busy.
And when I am through with Fallout New Vegas, there’s the previous game, Fallout 3, for me to dive deep into.
And when I am done with that, I plan on going back to Fallout 4 because while I have played through the whole game PLUS all the DLC, I have never really modded it much, and I am sure there are tons of mods for it, too.
There’s DLC for New Vegas. Quite a bit of it, actually. I could get it all for around $21 CDN, which I could afford.
But for some reason, I don’t feel like it.
More after the break.
Well, it’s official. I have now done standup.
And it felt so very, very good.
Really really good.
In fact, it didn’t just feel good, it felt right. Like for once, I was in the right place at the right time doing what I was supposed to be doing.
And I loved every minute of it. The whole time I was up, I had this warm glowy feeling, and the tension dropped off me like raindrops, and I felt amazing.
Needless to say, I want more. I will be going back up next week and the week after because I loved my time up there and I need another fix.
But I will continue to take it easy. The danger now is that I will charge into writing tons of jokes with great enthusiasm and end up getting tangled up in the minutiae of the process and bogged down with self-doubt and worry and the next thing you know, I am out of gas in the middle of nowhere and hopelessly loss.
So I am not going to sweat it. If jokes come to me – and they will, because without quite realizing it, I have been writing jokes in my head for decades, plus of course I will come up with new ones – I will write them down but otherwise I am not going to worry about the next show because that’s just the inroad my overweaning superego needs to run me ragged with stress and anxiety until I have to stop.
Fuck that noise. I will do this my own way, a way that would seem to others to be the worst possible way to go about anything, but it’s what works for me.
For example, before tonight’s set, I borrowed some paper and pencil and wrote down a list of jokes in bullet point form. Just a few words to remind me of the joke.
The normal, sane, organized, focused, purposeful thing to do right now would be to type those jokes into this blog in order to save them.
But I'[m not going to do that. Right now, my jokes exist only on that piece of paper and I am fine with that. Maybe the piece of paper will get lost of destroyed. Whatever.
What matters is keeping my hysterical (crazy) mind from fucking with my hysterical (funny) jokes and turning this whole thing into a frantic clusterfuck of anxiety ending in a swan dive into self-defeat and a resulting depression deeper enough to drive a truck into with room to spare.
Until next week, I will go about my life as usual, and let whatever feels natural and relaxed happen, but at no point will I let the demon Pressure and all its flunkies and retainers latch on to me.
I would rather stay loose and fail than let Peessure flail me into a very costly and ultimately counterproductive form of success.
Besides, pressure and self-flagellation have never worked for me anyhow.
I always do best when I am relaxed and loose and confident.
And that is how I shall remain.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.