As of Monday night the clock has officially started ticking, counting down the hours until The Moment I Have To Get Up On Stage In Front Of Hundreds Of People And BE FUNNY! (Otherwise known as March 26th.) On this day I will take the stage at The Punchline and perform a 4-minute routine I’ve created, and hope against hope that the nice people in the audience will at least pretend that they think I’m as funny as I do.
All of which is great, except that seriously? I have never felt less funny in my entire life. I have to write one joke for next week’s class-one!-and it’s as if some external invading force has leached all of The Funny out of my bones and replaced it with Humor Kryptonite.
Every idea I have is immediately smacked down by my internal White Hot Hammer Of “I cannot believe you think that’s funny!”
I open my mouth to speak, and instead of words, giant slimy slugs tumble out, which I guess is nice in that it saves my tender, precious words the trouble of being born into this cruel, cruel world, and then shriveling up and dying a painful, humor-less death.
I go to the keyboard to type and from my fingers fall huge lead weights, each one burdened by the weight of all my Un-Funny Ideas.
It could be a really long six weeks.
So…how was your day?
Oh i totally feel your pain. My friend just asked me to re-send something that i said that she thought was totally funny. Except i deleted it and what i remembered was apparently so un-funny she could not even reply
Ohhhhh good luck to you! 🙂 If I lived nearer, I’d come watch you and be your very own personal laugh track/cheering section. 🙂
In my experience, a deadline is the most inspiring thing you can have. It’s cool to see the amazing things that people will create when they’ve got a deadline that they HAVE to meet. Some of my favorite stuff I’ve written has come out that way. Best of luck to you!
There is NO way I could get up in front of anybody and be funny. If I stand up in front of a crowd and have to be me… I freeze, my brain doesn’t work, my mouth becomes disconnected from everything, and … well, it’s just not a pretty picture. God help us all if I ever DO sell a book and have to give talks to library groups and such. Now, if someone would just write a script and let me PRETEND to be an author giving a talk… hey, that I can do.
You’ll be fine and I wish I could be there. Is someone going to video you so we can see you on YouTube? 🙂
One thing you might do for inspiration is go back through your blog posts. I have gotten so much entertainment out of all of them. I know it’s hard to look at your own stuff sometimes and see humor – especially when there’s this kind of pressure – but you really are funny 🙂 Your outlook on life is delightful and entertaining.
The other thing that occurs to me is, I’m really bad at being under pressure, so I can totally relate to your story here. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself – it’ll come to you. You are naturally good at this kind of stuff. You go girl!
If I were close-by, I’d be in the audience. Seems everyone is saying that… maybe you should go on tour 😉
Dude – give that inner censor the old what-for, the old heave-ho, the old quit getting in my way, the old Italian gesture, the old finger, the old sticking out your tongue, the old I’m going to do it anyway. Cuz you will so rock!!!!!!
I’ve got no advice, but I admire your courage and I suspect you’ll do just fine. Some day maybe I’ll have the guts to try it.
Umm good luck with that. I’m sure you will come up with something real good. Me on the other hand, I think I would rather have a root canal that get up on stage to do ANYTHING. I have low self esteem issues though.
Thanks, everyone for your wonderful words of encouragement! They are MUCH appreciated.