#saduation

I've literally been doing stand up for just over 365 days now. Not in a row, I'm not that lucky. I come here nearly every day though to read everything you guys and girls post and I absolutely love it. I've done close to 90 gigs total and am amazed that I've gotten any opportunity to do any of them.

Here are a few things I've learnt from my first year in comedy and I'd love to hear your feedback or things you learnt in your first year, things I should look out for add to my skillset, etc

1. Be grateful and be humble.

I've always felt that those who do really awesome on stage are the one's who respect the room, the MC and the audience. Sometimes things can go wrong or I completely misinterpret a reaction in a room but I always thank whoever gave me a gig and apologise if I've truly fucked something up. This happened one night where I inferred to a girl in the audience that a bunch of leftover birth control pills left in a room "were definitely not hers."

This then caused an altercation I wasn't present for and then I apologised to the roomrunners afterwards for setting off the incident. I play their room regularly and it's one of my favourite rooms to play in and they admitted the audience members were being "shitful".

Humility can be definitely awesome and honestly, if you're an arrogant prick, especially only a year into doing stand up, most people will think you're a bit of a dick anyway, unless you're fucking hilarious. Only a few people I've seen definitely get away with this.

2. Always record your sets or at least when you're definitely trying new material.

Holy shit, I have recorded 90% every set I've ever done and it helps so much. Finding points where you've played with something or riffed on something, finding where a joke just flatlines or bombs, learning when you use a certain word or a phrase here and there, it's amazing and having a record for it helps so much.

I cringe sometimes when I have to listen back to a set, especially when it's bad or I've fucked up something royally. But I heard a quote from Kanye West, yes, the most beloved and humblest person in the world, which was you don't always win or lose, you win or learn and I think that's definitely true as failure has held me back from so much in my life and that I now think when I try something, I'm either going to learn to tweak that or completely drop it.

No one gets it right on their first try...but if you do, at least you got a record of it.

3. Experiment the fuck out of everything you do.

I've tried everything in the past year from one-liners to improv to writing back and forth to storytelling nights to writing for Community TV to being half naked on Community TV and while I've loved all of it to pieces, I think performing on stage and experimenting is so damn incredible, especially when you're trying to find your voice.

I have no idea what kind of comic I want to be or what I'll be like a year from now or even three months from now but I love that I've taken that time to explore those options and try things out. I know that doing and writing comedy is what I love, but what kind time will tell.

4. Keep Writing and Don't Worry If It Sounds Dumb

I think this is more of a personal thing, but as I've mentioned before, I've been afraid to do so much and honestly, the last six months I've explored and done so much through stand up comedy that I can't think of anything I've done that's been more helpful other than learning to write, crawl, walk, learning how to eat, learning how to cook...it's somewhere in that essentials list for life for me.

One of the biggest things was being afraid to write. I used to write all the time in University and I'd write things at the drop of the hat on napkins, in books, on receipts and on other people's napkins when they weren't looking but eventually I got afraid of writing and writing anything that wasn't brilliant or amazing or insightful felt pointless or dumb.

Eventually, I just sat down one day and I told myself over and over again, you don't get better by doing nothing. Eventually, I started a blog where I just put everything. Every dumb idea. Every bit of hope. Every bit of fear. Every notable experience. Every tiny bit of sad or frightening notion of my life and make it a minimum of 500 words and I wrote like that for a month and it felt so honest and freeing and stupid but fun and eye-opening.

While I'm slowly transitioning over to that voice from page to stand up, I've had fellow comedians read it and tell me that that's what they want to see me do and say on stage, "all that weird, true stuff". It's weird and I'm working on it, but I need to make sure I'm ready to stay that stuff on stage, make sure it's funny and that it really sounds like it's coming from me.

5 Take every opportunity and fucking run with it.

I'm a guy still begging for gigs. I'm not that good. I'm not even close to good. People look at where I am and they look at good and they compare it to the way that people thought the horizon was people falling off the earth...but the times when people have asked me to do gigs, I jumped it at the drop of a hat. Well I do now.

I was performing nearly every other night during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, doing spots or opening for a mate when I suddenly got a message on a rainy evening, from a fairly prominent local comedian who was building a huge following. He'd seen me during a competitive heat and loved what I did. We'd stayed in touch and he was doing a trial for his solo show about an hour out of the city.

I was on the fence about it until I met a bunch of other comics who were dumbfounded at me not taking the opportunity because I had another gig that night. Most comics understand opportunity. They understand the chances we get are 90% luck and 10% being good enough to be called upon to do something.

I messaged the comic and I was on the first train out before he asked someone else and had one of the best gigs I had during the Festival. I played to a full room in the back of a pub and got solid laughs while I told a weird story and a bunch of jokes about an ex. It was brilliant and now that comic is touring Australia and has one of the most amazing podcasts online and we still try and line up gigs together and hang out. It's awesome. Unless you're sick, injured, something terrible has happened, assess your situation, go for that gig, because you never know how much fun you'll have and how far you'll go when you have a great gig.

6 Get Confident, stupid.

I'm not the most confident guy. I'm a bit overweight. I know male pattern baldness runs in my family. I live alone. I work a pretty good job and I was bullied a lot in school. But on stage, I am God, and the room is Heaven's Waiting Room.

Now, I'm also aware I'm not good (See: Horizon gag above) but I have to remind myself up there that the audience more or less is on my side. The microphone isn't going to drop out if I'm not funny and that there silence in the world; it is a ying to the echo of booming laughter, yang. I need to feel confident though on stage. I need to sound it. I need to project it. When a joke lands well, you can be humble, and enjoy that laughter as it flows around the room and wait before you deliver the next one, but my God, the feeling of knowing you can do anything in a room and having the audience come with you on that weird journey is amazing.

I've done everything from listening to music to pump me up beforehand, positive affirmations backstage and even reading and watching video tutorials about projecting your voice and breathing techniques and it all works and adds up to it. At the beginning of the year during a competition, my hand was shaking so much during the heat I didn't think I'd even get through the first round, but now I hold it confidently and while sometimes I need to pee like 3 times before I get up on stage, I know that when I'm up there, I say stuff, it's awesome and if it's not awesome, I have time to work on it and fix it and make it awesome.

7 Stand and Deliver.

One thing I definitely lack in on stage is the performing aspect which kinda sucks because I did the performing arts as a kid and my parents forked out thousands of dollars to do that. Delivery is also not my strong suit either.

I rush too much. I speak so fast. I always have the timer on my back and I know I have to do a tight five and my fear is that there is so much I need to get through that I won't get through anything funny. However, I often forget that that "tight five" is actually a really solid 3 minutes if I slow down. I know I always speed through my new bits because that fear and adrenaline kicks in so hard that I sometimes can't control it and it makes me sound unintelligible to the point where it sounds like I've done meth beforehand and want to deliver a newly found piece of a Manson Manifesto.

I do know now to slow it down and to move about on stage. I used to just hold the mic tentatively and not use the space around me. The performance in stand up comedy is often underrated. Whether it's Eddie Murphy pacing on stage or the way Dave Chappelle would act out a scene that would be so vivid and funny or how Dave Gorman adds tiny bits of emphasis to his voice and widens his eyes in surprise as if it's the first time he's telling you the story, even though he's been touring with it for nearly a year.

That dedication to stage work and owning every single step and movement you have on stage is a joy and it's something I hope to get better at on stage.

8. Get outside your comfort zone at almost every chance and see where it takes you.

I am so comfy. I live a very comfy life. I eat well, albeit poorly. I live in a one bedroom apartment alone. I work a full-time job in an industry I love and I go home most evenings to sleep for 30 minutes so I have the energy to head out to do a gig that nice after working 8 hours. I am comfy. I may have a lot of discomfort from illnesses and am awkward as fuck in most conversations, but I live a comfy life...but when I get the chance to talk about weird stuff on stage, I fucking go for it like there's nothing else.

I'm not a room's favourite comic. I sometimes go weird and dark. I once told the story about how I did such a poor job cleaning up after masturbation I ruined the logic boards in my mac and spent $150 getting it fixed or a joke about vaccinations where the punchline is implying I'm autistic because I've recently had a shot or if I kill myself with a Lady Razor, will Mens Rights Activists be more or less annoyed? I feel weird saying stuff like that on stage or telling those stories, but that reaction is always priceless. I've had people laugh uproariously, I've had people gasp or be non-plussed by it completely, but I know that its stuff I think and am otherwise afraid to say.

I know there's some "boundaries" in comedy, but I always believe there's a way to phrase something and a way to make everything funny, you just need the right way to make people sit up and think, yeah, that's kinda fucked up or yeah, how come we still do that? or even, yeah, I've never thought about that before.

9. Everyone moves at their own pace.

Jealousy is a horrible goddamn emotion. It feels inhuman to me even though it's something we all feel. I've seen comedians I've gigged with at the start go from doing rooms only performing to comedians to being on TV in less than 8 months. I've seen comedians get international praise or a massive fan base in only a matter of months and doing sold out shows in less than a year...and you know what, I feel awful.

I think why am I not working that hard. Why am I not funny. Why am I not doing anything. I am just starting out, but so are they, but they got further faster. Maybe they had better opportunities, maybe they had the right people on them, maybe they're just funnier and that's all okay. I'm on my own journey. Honestly, this time last year, I was in a shitty apartment with a fiancee who was falling out of love with me and 900km away and I was going home browsing Reddit and 4chan and masturbating every single night and going to bed at 1am and doing nothing in my life. Every night now, I go out, I socialise, I talk with some of the most charming, coolest, funniest and happiest people I've ever met and I love doing it. I sometimes am having such a good time that I forget I'm performing that night and get giddy and excited all over again. That feeling is more powerful and more hopeful than all the jealousy in the world

A good friend and comedian told me "Hey, at the end of the day, we all level out and when heaps of us are good, the water rises and the best float to the top. Especially those who work hard. Are you going to stop working hard now and drown or are you going to float with the rest of us?"

In the quietest moments at night, I hush myself with the thought that neither myself or my most successful friends wish any ill will on anyone and we're all doing our best, we're all just moving at a different pace and one day, we'll all float together and until then we get to make each other laugh and audiences no matter what size. Whether it's five people or a whole room of literally tens of thousands and broadcast on TV, we're going to be there for one another and it's going to be fucking awesome.

10. Have Fun and Be Funny.

This is honestly the biggest part of it. If you're not enjoying yourself, enjoying the process of writing or performing or looking at things in the long run, then what are you doing? I'm not saying it as a dissuading thing but doing what you love is the best thing in the world. I've worked in jobs where I've made 70k a year and been absolutely miserable, about 70% of the time and hated nearly everyone I was working with.

I've not been paid more than about $100 in the past 12 months from doing stand up (Free drinks and meals withstanding) and I have never felt more like I'd done a good job than spent a good 5 to 10 minutes on stage doing bits and speaking with the crowd in between gags. It's felt so amazing to interact with people and make them laugh from something I thought while waiting in a waiting room, stuck in a meeting or on a tram to or from work.

So yeah, that's it. I know there's a lot of blank platitudes in there and I'm sure 90% of you don’t care. I’m now going to sleep but when I wake in the morning, I’ll be working on my upcoming Fringe Show, Saduation and working on being a better comic.

TL;DR Be funny. Write heaps. Record yourself. Work on yourself. It's okay to be jealous, just don't be a cunt. And from Ralphie May, "Don't fuck anyone in the comedy scene or bar staff."