All comedians can’t be the same
Stop with the Expectations Already
There’s no formula for success in stand up. If it were, everyone would be applying it and we would all end up having the same success. Worse, we would have more stand up comedians springing up and soon everyone is a comedian. Sure many of us are funny people and we have that in common but stop expecting success to come at the same pace as it did for other comics! You are not them!
You are funny in your own way. The way you make your colleagues, friends and maybe family laugh is unique. Your sense of humor is different. But we do this a lot as comics, where we expect our careers to take the same amount of time as other successful comics. Life changes every year. There are more people who come into a field, there are newer ideas, newer updates on old ideas, audiences change and most importantly you change as a person. Life isn’t the same for everyone, our journeys are different and we all get our breaks at different times.
We honestly cannot expect success at a predicted period of time. Sebastian Maniscalco, one of the highest earning comedians spent two decades doing odd jobs including waiting tables while pursuing comedy. Twenty years yet he still kept at it. You are hardly a few years in. You’ve got to be easy on yourself while pursuing comedy diligently. I am not giving you permission to be half-assed. I am only asking you not to beat yourself up for not making it in your time-estimate.
You will be surprised at how mental health issues are so closely related to you being anxious about not making it in a career. Why would you risk your sanity over not making it in an estimated period of time? Firstly, who are you to estimate how long your career would take? The ones who say life is short maybe correct… but have you noticed mostly only old people say that? Things take time and you have to be cool with it.
Success is not under your control. What is under your control is how hard you work. How best you kick ass in the opportunities that open up for you. What are you doing to re-invent yourself to stand out of the 10,000 people who are are in the same field. Ask yourself if you are doing enough and put out a lot of work.
I’ll quote what Neil Gaiman said in his speech, ‘Make Great Art’ [look it up on youtube], “A life in the arts is like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island and hoping that someone would find one of your bottles and open it and read it and put something in the bottle that will wash its way back to you. It could be appreciation or commission or money or love. You have to accept that you might have to put out 100 of things, for every bottle that winds up coming back”.
Don’t worry too much about success. Just worry about working and putting out work. Even if it bombs. EVEN IF YOUR PEERS SAY YOUR WORK IS SHIT. The reason why many funny people do not become comics is because they are afraid to bomb. So they sit and just be the funny person in office without trying comedy on stage. If you are a comic, you risk bombing on stage. Once you bomb you slowly improve and eventually you find a way to make your act work. The same is the case with the work you put out. It may bomb. You can’t put out work and expect it to become viral. There’s a huge clutter of work that’s on the internet. It may take time for you to get noticed but keep doing it. Do your part.
I feel success comes unannounced to people who work hard and are prolific with their work. However long it may take, in whatever way success means to you, just waiting for success to happen is not worth losing your sanity over. You’ve got to toughen up and learn to bomb before you kill. My dad quotes this guy called Martin Lloyd Jones, “ The worst thing that can happen to a man is to succeed before he is ready”.
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