Sunday Ramblings 1/8/17

It's about 4 pm on Sunday, January 8th. It's about 30 below outside, and I'm camping out on my couch with my dog. So far today, we've churned out a podcast, (painfully) listened back to the week's sets, worked on some new bits, and now we're blogging out a blog. All while doing laundry. Not to blow my own horn, but damn.

It's been a fun week. Anyone that listened (or is going to listen to my podcast, which you can find HERE) knows that is was my first week back at the grind after a couple weeks off for Christmas. I got to do a couple shows at the Comic Strip in West Ed, tried out a bunch of new material (mostly successfully) at Underdog, and got to do my first show in Morinville, which was an adventure in itself. But it's good to be back at it.

Click here to see a clip from my set at the Comic Strip on Tuesday.

I'm as focused as I've been in months, the new stuff is coming along great, and I've hit the ground running on my goal of reaching 60 minutes of material (that I'm happy with) by the end of 2017. I have a long way to go, and a lot of polishing to do, but it's a really satisfying feeling to see that I'm making progress.

I have less than 2 weeks to go until my 1 year anniversary (Jan 21), and I plan to write a specific blog about that when the time comes. As I've said a million times over the last 50 weeks, this has probably been the best year of my life. I just wake up in the morning full of positivity, it's like an energy I can't explain. I'm just ready to go and see what's going to happen today. There's no stress, nothing to be upset about. This is how life is meant to be lived.

I have a bunch of out of town shows coming up that'll see me traveling to Kelowna, Penticton, Cranbrook, Bashaw (I don't know where that is), Lethbridge, and the one I'm most excited about, Cold Lake. I lived there for about 10 years, and I can't wait to go home, see some old friends, and tell some jokes. I know it isn't New York or England, but it still seems pretty surreal to me that someone would pay me to go somewhere and make fun of myself.

Shay and I are taking off to Vegas for a few days, too. We've never been, and I'm looking forward to getting away from the Edmonton January weather and playing some poker. We've reached an agreement that a January vacation should become a household tradition moving forward.

The podcast is coming along, I'm getting better at sticking to a strict schedule. I still have intentions of upgrading my equipment in the next few months, the only thing slowing me down right now is doing my homework on what I want to get, and I plan to have it all up and running by spring. I want to start shooting video of my recordings as well, to get them up on Youtube. I don't know if the podcast will ever be anything other than a hobby for me, but I'm excited about it nevertheless.

And finally, some of you that know me know that for years, I've had an idea for/have been casually working on an animated show. That's *very* slowly coming along. Much like the podcast, I have no idea what I'm doing, it's just something I've always thought would be a fun project. The concept has changed several times, but it's been a cool side thing to work on when I have time. I like doing it solo and not having any deadlines, there's no pressure and I can do it when I want to. Growing up a huge Simpsons fan, I'm really enjoying my attempt to create something like that of my own.

I guess that's it for now. Thanks as always for reading and supporting me. I can't wait to see where 2017 takes us.

Adam

Put in the work 9/17/16

Stand up comedy is hard work.

But like anything in life, I think you get what you put in. If you work really hard at something, you'll eventually get rewarded for it. I firmly believe that. I've spent the better part of 15 years working in warehouses, and as much as I hate it, I've always worked really hard, and it's usually turned into promotions and opportunities. The problem is they were just opportunities I didn't really want. I've always thought "what could happen if I put this much time and energy into something I actually wanted to get good at?"

So that's what I've been trying to do with comedy. More than just going to open mic and shows now. I try to write as much as I can, and as I mentioned a blog or two ago, I have a few new ideas I really want to get off the ground.

The podcast is happening. I have the mic and everything I need now, I'm just playing with settings, recording and editing right now. (Massive thanks and shout out to my friend Patrick for the recorder recommendation). Now Im just trying to decide on a final format for the podcast. The world needs more podcasts people don't listen to. I also have a camera on order right now to start playing with Youtube. I have a couple ideas for that channel as well. As of now, I think the plan is for the podcast to be co-hosted by my friend Dave. It'll be just the two of us talking about anything we want. I'm going to touch on stand up and what I have going on as well, but I don't want to dedicate the podcast to it. The Youtube stuff I want to get going will deal more with that, along with my personal opinions on things. An open mic comic doesn't have a ton to talk about. But to me it's partially about just having fun and trying something I haven't really done yet, and partially about trying some of this stuff now, and working on getting better at it so that if I ever hit a point where any of this stuff could help my career as a comedian, I've already gone through some of the growing pains. I fully expect the podcast and video to suck, at least at the beginning, but you have to start somewhere. This kind of stuff has fascinated and interested me for a long time, so why not?

And I'm going to try and post on here more often as well. I think my end game is a hopeful weekly podcast, a couple youtube videos a week, and a blog every 7-10 days. I'm still working some long hours at work right now, and most of my evenings are dedicated to actually writing and performing stand up, so I don't know if those goals are realistic, but I'm excited to try.

I've been told that to make it in comedy, it's going to take a ton of hard work. Sacrifice. And I understand that. Maybe I don't know what exactly that's going to entail, but I know that I've spent about 1/2 of my life working at something I don't really want to do. So if I'm going to have to put in some hard work anyways, why not put it toward doing something fun? If I can't make a career out of this comedy thing, it isn't going to be because I didn't try hard enough. I'm having more fun with this comedy stuff than I have doing just about anything. I look back at my first couple sets of comedy, and Im proud of how far I've come. My early jokes and sets that seemed good at the time suck now. I hope in a year we can all look back at my jokes, blogs, podcasts, and videos, and agree they sucked, too. It means they're getting better.

If you come out and support our comedy shows, thank you. If you decide to follow the podcast or youtube channel, thank you. And if you're reading this, thank you. I'm doing all this for me and my happiness. But knowing someone else out there is enjoying it too makes it 100x better

Adam

I love this quote.