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I had work to do this afternoon, but my brain was not going to play ball. My entire body went on strike and went to bed. But I fought back against them and didn't really sleep much. So that would show me. It was the perfect compromise. I didn't do any work or get much sleep, so nothing had been achieved.
It's going to be tough doing all the things I have to do for my daughter and my job. I have already had to put self-playing snooker and the audio version of Warming Up on the back burner, but I also wonder if Warming Up itself might finally have to bite the dust. Partly because of the time it takes and partly because there's only so many times that you can write I was tired and cleaned up some poo.
Mind you being boring had never stopped this blog before and I am really only aiming for a hit rate of one Metro-able idea a week and one stand-up-able routine a month. So if tiredness stops me coming up with good ideas or doing anything to write about then maybe I just have to fill the blog with blah blah blah just to keep it going, so that I might one day claim the title of longest running daily blog in the world. It's already pretty incredible/tragic that I have managed to maintain the blog through very busy periods (as well as holidays and Christmas) and I think overall it still is a positive and has really also helped me turnover a brand new stand up shows for most of the last 12 years (though interestingly there isn't too much stuff that is usable from it for this year's show - or not that I have yet discovered). It's always hard to know where to focus and doubly confusing for me as the free stuff I do is almost certainly responsible for the current state of my career (i.e. that it is viable, not that it is disastrous). Hopefully I can stumble onwards and keep up with this, but it has to stop some time.
Tonight I gigged in a tent in Milton Keynes -even though I have been trying to keep previews within the environs of London there have been some tough drives this week to Walthamstow, Cambridge, Milton Keynes and tomorrow a festival near Southampton. It's a good opportunity for me to listen to the old shows. Sometimes this makes me feel positive as I more or less still know the scripts (Talking Cock is almost all up there) and other times, as tonight I feel a bit scared as I realised how much of Christ on a Bike is still unfamiliar. The gig felt like it would be a tricky one. It was the start of a mini comedy festival and I knew that much of the audience wouldn't know who I was, we were in a tent and the mic kept feeding back, but it turned out to one of the best reactions I've had to a regular stand up set.
Sometimes I don't know where the energy comes from. But once I did a (short) set with food poisoning. I was lying on the floor in the wings 30 seconds before I stepped on to stage and was similarly poleaxed straight afterwards, but the ten minutes in front of the audience were fine. I was much younger then, but I was only tired tonight.
