I really don’t feel like doing comedy tonight.

I’ve already talked about why. No new material. Don’t feel like doing the old stuff, assuming I could find my little joke list. Panicking about it like a mofo.

And there’s that evil little voice in my head saying “Skipping one week is no big deal. You’ll just commit to next week twice as hard. And that will give you plenty of time to work on new material. You will actually come out ahead!”.

Then again, I had plenty of time to work on new material before today and all I did was play video games all day like normal.

I even have an excuse not to go : I’m broke, so I won’t be able to get a meal like I normally do, and that will make me feel guilty and/or weird.

It’s not a very good excuse. After all, I could probably borrow the money from Joe or Felicity, and thus solve the problem.

I don’t like borrowing money – I hate having some of my check disappear the minute I cash it – but it could be done.

Or I could just eat before I go. That would also solve the problem, kind of.

So right now, I am conflicted about the whole thing. I know I don’t want to go. And I know I could “get away” with not going. I even have a plausible bullshit excuse.

And I also know that skipping tonight would be a bad idea. Giving in to the fear only makes it stronger. And I know that if I skip it, I will feel bad about it, both from feeling like I have failed big time and from knowing Felicity and the gang are off there doing that and having fun while I am home alone wasting my life like usual.

So all I can do is steer into the skid by blogging about it and confronting this issue head on instead of just burying myself in video games et al like usual.

I could probably work up some new material before tonight. I even have a plan of sorts : get out the pen and paper and go on Facebook looking for news items and whatnot to riff on, and work from there.

Kind of like doing desk jokes for a talk show.

That even sounds kind of fun. Scary too, but what isn’t?

So the only thing between me and actually doing the thing tonight is all this anxiety. And I think I can get over it. It’s really just a matter of pushing forward instead of withdrawing and letting the whole thing fall apart.

I can do this. I’m a super funny and talented dude. I have a ton of jokes floating around in my head that only need a little random input to liberate.

So here’s the deal : before I can play my game (Divinity : Original Sin 2), I need to come up with ten solid desk jokes that I can take into comedy tonight.

Maybe I will borrow money, maybe I will eat at home.

But I am writing those jokes. And I am doing them tonight.

Yeah. I can make this work.

More after the break.

---

Yeah, so, I did the thing.

The comedy thing, I mean. I got up and did the jokes I had based on funny or interesting stuff I saw on Facebook today.

And it went okay. Not a lot of laughs, not a lot of people.

I might try to just keep a pen and paper handy when I am book face on Facebook so that I can write down desk joke type jokes when they occur to me.

Then again, by basing everything on stuff I got off Facebook today, I at least could be assured that my material was fresh and topical.

So… there’s that.

I will also try to keep comedy in my mind all week instead of blissfully ignoring it until the last minute like I have been doing.

I guess it all boils down to how seriously I want to take this standup comedy thing. Seriously enough to work on it every day? Seriously enough to work really hard at it? Seriously enough to make it a big part of my life?

Because the thing is, for me, standup comedy is not exactly a calling. True, there was a time in my life when I dreamed of being a standup comic, but that time was “the 80s” and I have dreamed a lot of other dreams since then.

Soi I have to ask myself : do I want it bad enough to go through what I will have to go through in order to get good at it?

And the answer is, I don’t know. Possibly not. I admit that I have all the requisite skills in order to be good at it. But I don’t know if I have the passion for it.

I don’t know that I have the passion to succeed at anything, to be honest. I thought I had the passion to be a TV writer but that fell through due to my mental illness. At one time, I thought I had the passion to get a psych degree. That never happened.

I honestly can’t imagine anything that would motivate me enough to keep me trying over and over, even when things get scary and hard and requiring a lot of sustained effort.

I am not good at sustained effort. Especially when I don’t know how long I will have to sustain it or whether it is going to get worse.

And I hate that. I hate that I am so weak and flabby and flaccid. I know that somewhere inside me is a might engine capable of astounding amounts of work, but I just don’t have to ability to harness that energy and make it work for me.

I need someone else to provide the substance, structure, and stability.

All I can provide is the genius.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.