Beyond a Joke 3: I'm tired

This post comes all the way from some place in Scotland. Yay friends in far flung places!

This week in class there was a general feeling of being really, really tired. None of us are professional comedians and writing jokes (for me) still feels like something I should only do in my sparest of spare moments. I've got more important things to do, like find a job, get a new place, and try to vacuum out the specks of cat shit that are embedded in the bath mat.

But obviously we all have admitted a desire to commit to this, thus 50 quid and six weeks of classes. I spent Tuesday afternoon trying to get my crying two month old cousin to sleep while practicing three minutes of material (about codfish and cellotape, or something, I forget). I hoped I could trick her into thinking it was a tuneless lullaby, like white noise, which failed when I got to the shouty jokes.

After I performed in class I assessed which jokes I thought worked, and have concluded that two are salvageable. Looking further back at what I did week one I realized there was only one joke that stands out in my memory. That's three jokes out of four minutes of material; it's not bad but I'm definitely hemorrhaging gags here. I'm starting to possibly set the framework of what might, someday, begin to look like an actual set. I hoped I haven't phrased that too strongly.

I'm looking forward to it. If I work at it, I'll have routines and collections of jokes that I can produce at will, for any occasion. My sets will be like tableware: the good company jokes, paper plate jokes, jokes in pint glasses stolen during drunken nights out. Something suitable for everyone.

At some point during class I began to wonder, how do comedians do this full time? If I had a job that paid a decent wage I probably wouldn't have time to write jokes. Plus it's draining! After class I'm exhausted, like I've completed an interview while running on a treadmill - how will I handle the real thing? How far, exactly, do I want to go with this?

Because this is a lot of work. I can see now that this is a shit load of work. I don't think I've ever had to put in as much effort as a career in comedy requires.

I mean, I'm gonna do it anyway. I don't have any other marketable talent, so I better make this work.

Sorry this post isn't very long or well written. Did I mention I'm frigging tired?