Friday 23rd February 2018
Reading time 2 minutes 49 seconds
Recently I’ve been lucky enough to be back at my old company. I only do few days now and again but I like the feeling of being based in an office although at the same time it makes me appreciate how fortunate I am to be able to try and follow a crazy dream.
At my old company;
· The people are supportive of my career change
· I don’t mind the work
· It pays better than my comedy career
· The coffee is great & free
· There are over 50 places to choose lunch from within a very small radius. [Which is actually irrelevant as I always go to the same place and my order never changes.]
· There is a comfort of being with other human beings as you can go a bit crazy on your own day after day.
I’ll be honest I struggle with the transition of being the ‘at home Comedian in the making’ to ‘that guy who works in an office’ as I find that I’m not always able to turn off the person who wants to make people laugh and sometimes, just sometimes, this is not always appreciated in an office where people are trying to concentrate and do stuff. My Dad always said no one really knows what Office workers do, hence the Stuff comment.
Here are some recent examples;
Example 1
I was with a colleague in Tesco and we were buying some Champagne. What it was for isn’t relevant but it wasn’t for either of us. Anyway we had paid for the expensive booze and as normal people do we went to leave the store as the transaction was complete. As we exited the store past the security guard, I felt compelled to shout “RUN!” and because I said it we both legged it like not so common criminals [we had Champagne!] except we weren’t and no-one really cared.
Example 2
Occasionally I sit next to someone who has a horde of chocolate in their pedestal. She warned me that I wasn’t to go in there, under any circumstance, and that she was doing me a favour. When she left five minutes later to run an errand I promptly replaced her pedestal with an empty one. One of us found it funny.
Example 3
I work with a person who is a bit of a germaphobe and when I say ‘a bit’ I mean he full on freaks out if any sign of unwanted dirt comes anywhere near him. One day he handed me his phone to speak to another colleague and once I had finished he asked me to get the anti-bacterial wipes in order to clean my germs off. I was slightly offended so I did the only option open to me, licked his phone and walked off.
These events really tickled me as it plays to my sense of schoolboy humour and now I work on my own I often don’t get a chance to be stupid like this at home. Well actually I do but it doesn’t count if no one is watching………….Right?
And therein lies a dilemma.
When I’m in the office I’m paid to do a different job, which doesn’t include being a fool, and my suffering colleagues are not my audience members. Having said that I need my mind to be free and unhindered in order to create.
Comedy, like office work, is a serious business and all the while I’m doing both I need to be able to find the switch from one to the other but also I should allow my office work to feed my comedy and not feel like I need to be Mr Serious all of the time and whatever line of work you are in there is an absolute requirement to have fun. Especially if you are a budding Comedian….
The photo is of my neighbour and me [he wore shorts, I wore pyjamas]. It makes me laugh as I genuinely forget how tiny I am. Our entire street comes out to clear the road after it snows which is lovely and spits in the face of the community is dead argument.