When I grow up

What I would like to be, when I grow up? I remember asking myself this when I was 5. I was looking at some of my primary school work a few months ago and I came across a piece of work that dealt with ambitions. It said 'when I grow up I want to be a financial advisor'. I don't know why I didn't laugh. It was unnerving. It made me wonder where I got such an idea from? What influenced me to think that? I wonder how much of an affect such influences have had on my life. Probably not too much because for me personally, being a financial advisor is about a million miles away from what I want to do now. But whether that was a real suggestion from an adult, something I saw on television, or something else, I don't know. I know as much about being a financial advisor now as when I was in primary school. 20 years later, I am still asking myself the question 'what do I want to be when I grow up'. The difference now is that I am grown up. There is another difference - I do have a desire for a profession now- but it has only recently taken a strong hold in me. This desire is to be a stand up comic. This urge has been building up for a while, probably since I was in my second year of university in 2006, but its only in the last 2 or three weeks that I have really thought to myself that it is possible to make a living this way.

I have been noting down funny things that happen for a while, maybe a year. I attended comedy improv workshops a year and a half ago in Toronto. Its very different to stand up, but it has a similar vibe about it. The whole standing in front of people and trying to make them laugh is great. Though with improv, its not just about laughs; people do whole improvised structured shows. This requires incredible skill to do well. Whereas stand up comedy is usually meticulously prepared. Although a lot of skill is involved in stand up performance, its something that is prepared thoroughly, rewritten and learnt off by heart. This makes it easier for the comedian to get a laugh out of the crowd much more often than someone doing an improvised piece.

There is a spectrum, from going up on stage knowing everything, to knowing nothing that you will say. At the rehearsed end, you can work on subtle nuances and gestures, at the other end, you have to let things come out naturally, as you cant concentrate on movement, expressions, emotions, words and structure at the same instant. But good improvisers still do get things to come out beautifully, naturally almost as if it must have been rehearsed. The difference between the comic and the improviser can be seen as a parallel to the way people live their lives. Some will spend a lot of time rehearsing things while others will learn to live on the fly. Both can produce great results. A designer needs to keep refining a product, whereas someone with a business head is looking to continually make deals. The business person may always be refining their technique, but it is always with a goal to move on to something new. The best comics are the ones who can balance the rehearsed with the improvised riffs. This is the ultimate; preparedness and flexibility, which makes the best practitioners in any profession.

This is what I want to be, and it is a stronger desire than the one that took me to university to study environmental issues. So, the only way for me not to feel regret when I'm 70 is to give it my best shot for at least two years. Though speaking to one girl, she said it has taken her three years to turn it in to a profession. I'm sure I can do it too.

I hope to post the steps I have taken and the problems I face along the way, so that if I ever when (lets think positive) I achieve my goal there will be a trail of all the actions and thoughts that got me there.

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Entry one - Will it last?

This must be a question that about 99% of people ask themselves when they are first beginning the first blog post. The new blogger has decided that it is the right time to expose their thoughts to the world, and they may have been planning to do it for a while. But will it last? When I do something that is new to me, its often because I think it might lead to me discovering that I will want to pursue the activity further. So if I go ballroom dancing, its to see how much I like it, to find out if I will like it enough to want to explore it further. There is nothing wrong with trying things that you know you are not going to want to devote your life to, things like zorbing, or going for a date with someone you know you are not compatible with. But most of the time, when you are trying new things, its to see if they are any good. Its to see what potential they have to play a part in your life.
With a blog, a writer is not likely to be interested in the one off high that you get from writing a first blog post. That is because there is no high. I know, I have attempted a blog before, I wrote about two or three posts before it dawned on me that my previous self, the person who thought it would be a great idea to start a blog, was not aligned with who I later became. I realised that the decision to spend time writing posts about my thoughts and feelings about, well, anything, were not going to be too beneficial for any reader, and the time spent could probably be spent better doing other things. You see, the problem was, it that there was no real reason for my writing, other than to keep a journal for myself. That in itself is a good enough reason to have a blog, but it was not what I was interested in at the time. So without knowing what you are doing something for, there is little chance that you will see any benefit in carrying something through to its full conclusion.
Now, I have taken the decision to try again, and I wonder what the future me will think about this. I wonder if he will say 'no, I don't think so' in a weeks time when he looks at the note I have sent him to let him know that its time to sit down and write a piece for the blog. Its a bit like having a split personality. People with dissociative identity disorder (DID) display at least two distinct personalities, with different ways of perceiving the world. It also involves forgetting some or all of the memories of the other side of the personality. This is what separates healthy people from people with DID. I feel like I swing from being one person, with certain hopes, ambitions, and contentment, to someone else who wants to do completely different things. However I can remember being both of these people pretty clearly and the only thing that changes really is my thought processes. So a problem may arise that I become my other self after this one post, the I who is not interested in doing things like writing a blog, going up on stage, making friends, working hard. There is the chance that I will go back to the other me, the one who is happy to sleep as much as possible, spend most of the day reading the Internet. This other self if often referred to as the emotional self, or the id, the part of the person who wants to fulfil pleasurable desires, the desire to have sleep, food and sex.
I guess most people face this problem. We all need to sleep, eat, and have sex, but we don't need to sleep for 11 hours, eat when were not hungry and masturbate at 2pm. I'm making this sound a bit like its just a battle between my id and my super ego, my subconscious drives and my duty to act responsibly as a member of society. The only problem with this is that I'm not too interested in the responsible member of society part. I think its a great and sensible way to be, paying your dues by working hard and being honest. However I do not agree that it is essential. The prime minister and my mother both said that people have a responsibility to work. And by this I think they meant get a job. But how can that be something that you have a responsibility to do? Its saying its morally wrong not to have a job. While I am eternally grateful to my parents and family, I believe that we have no body that we owe our lives to, being born into a society does not mean you are indebted to it. I do not expect hand outs from the government, but I do not expect them to dictate that people must work. Being a free living thing is an important thing. Without trying to be too hippy about it (and failing), I belong to this earth, and nothing else. If I can eat and have shelter, then I can live free. Of course there are so many benefits of this society and they are great, health care, provision of goods, I am lucky to be free and I will try to make the most of it.
I think I've gone off on a bit of a tangent there. I need to prove to myself that I do not owe it to anyone to go and work in a menial job, because you know, you only live once, so you have to try to do the best for yourself. The point of this post was to convince myself that I do indeed want to actually write a blog and keep it going. It will not mention the news very much, I want to get away from linking to things of interest, not that I was ever doing that, but a lot of the blogs I read do this, and overall, it does nothing to help me achieve my goals. It is hard to strike a balance between being productive and learning about the world, but after 25 years of doing not a huge amount, I think its time to focus on outcomes for a while. So out with the news and info crack, and in with the self obsessed, productivity focused actions.