I need a vacation
Right now I really think I need to just drop comedy for a few months and then see if I feel like coming back to it. I was feeling that way before, but not as much as I am now. I just got forgotten about at an open mic. Waited around for almost 3 hours. Bought food at the place. The host felt bad about it when he realized. Made me feel better and worse at the same time. It’s all just bad. I guess it’s good that it’s sobering. It’s really sobering.
I just don’t know what to think anymore. I have this dream of how I want to do comedy. Some people think it’s interesting. Some people think I’m a genius I guess. That’s what they say. Other people hate my dream. Sometimes people forget about me. I don’t know how much that happens to other comedians, but it’s happened to me a few times. I think some people wonder why I stay in Sacramento. It seems like some of them think maybe I have too much potential to be wasting my time here. But I feel like if that was true, then I would have more success here then just a few people telling me they think I’m a comedy genius after 9 years.
9 years is a long time. This June I will have been doing comedy in Sacramento for that long, with not much to show for it. And all I’ve really wanted that whole time, is for just even one club to give me a shot at some real work, but it never happens. There’s this one club, I’ve called it a C club before, not meant as an insult to the club. They rarely have anybody who’s big right now, mostly older headliners from the 90s. To me that’s a C club. And I’m not saying those comics aren’t any good, it’s just that they’re not as popular any more. But it really hurts, when month after month for for 9 years, you watch as countless new comedians walk in, and after a few months they’ve gotten a week hosting. I still haven’t gotten that, from a C level club even. I think most people would say it was time to quit a long time ago.
Of course I haven’t always tried to work there. For the first few years, I felt like if I wanted to maintain integrity, I shouldn’t try to get work anywhere until I felt like I was both good enough, and until people above started suggesting I try. But then I had an unpleasant encounter with the then owner of the club, and decided I did not want to work there as long as he was there, and hoped he would sell it to someone better. Eventually that did happen, but still, despite the fact that I have routinely done very well on their open mics, they don’t think that my style is a good fit for their club.
A friend pointed out that if I was getting a standing ovation every time that I performed at the club, then that would really be something, and of course I’m not. But neither are most of the people they do give work to. Why should I have to be a 10 to get work there, when they’ll give a weekend to a 5? And here I don’t mean to insult any comics who might be a 5. Maybe they’re just new. They’ll get better. And I’m not saying I am a 10 either. Maybe I’m just a 5 still. But am I really that bad, that I’m not good enough to work there? I just don’t get it I guess.
It’s killing me. My friends mostly think I’m good. I think I’m good, at least enough to keep going. But I still can’t seem to get anywhere. And I know I have some work to do. Do I have a press kit? A good recent video? Not really, that’s on me. I get that, and will work on those things. But the rest, I don’t know. I feel like it would do me a lot of good to be able to get some work at some club, somewhere, just to give me some real validation to go along with the compliments. It would help me grow a lot, I know that.
And then there’s the fear of having to decide to just give it all up and find a new dream. That crosses my mind. But if I just take a break for a while, I can always come back. So I guess that’s what I’ll do.