Friday 9th February 2018
Reading time 3 minutes 02 seconds
Fear.
I recently saw this Acrostic [I’ve moved on from Google to my mate Alex for this type of information] and in it there was a quote about the feeling of Fear which rang true.
False
Evidence
Against
Reality
What this means to me is that my fears are not real, even though they feel real.
I have one major fear which is at the core of my comedy career and it completely and utterly affects my behaviour on the days I am performing. That fear is known as my audience.
I fear the very hand that wants to feed me and the people out there that I want to come along and enjoy themselves. The very same people, and reason, why I got into this game in the first place.
I recently read that you need to name your fear to help banish it. So there you go, fear named and banished. Well perhaps not entirely but it feels good to say it.
What am I afraid of?
I’ve died/failed before onstage before (many times) and I will die/fail on stage again (many times). Similar to life itself we all fail many times at many things but am I fearful of life? No, of course not.
So back to the question “What am I afraid of?” Not being laughed at is one. My ego can’t handle it when my routine doesn’t work so I need to stop being so precious and remove my ego when I’m on stage. If people don’t laugh I’ll get over it, I’ll dust myself off and write and perform better material. You cannot be a good stand-up comedian and be so afraid of failure as it just doesn’t work.
I feel like that guy [I should have asked Alex his name but he told me the other week so it would look like I’m not paying attention………..] who was cursed to spend eternity pushing this huge rock up a hill only for it to roll back down once he gets it to the top. He then had to repeat this process for eternity. That dude was lucky because he lacked hope and I think hope is killing me because I have hope, lots of it.
The hope to be good at comedy. But hope is not enough and like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (we get confused for each other constantly) I need to just get some attitude and get on and do the job.
I am a positive person contrary to this read but I’m also pragmatic and because I want to succeed at being a comedian then I need to figure out what is missing, and what is really required.
So this week I am inspired by my mate Jim who stopped being one of those regular Schmos with a degree and masters and achieved his PHD with distinction.
I cried a bit when he told me as it’s taken him 4 years and I’m very proud of him. He achieved this with just sheer hard work. No titting about he just put the hours in and had a job done result.
So I’m copying my mate Jim!