Me 'I'm having a day off today'
Rest of The World 'What do you mean? You do stand up, every day is a day off for you dickhead.'
In a way I'm jealous of 9-5ers...you have set boundaries for your working life. You clock in, you do your stuff...you tit about on facebook for the last hour on a Friday and then you clock off into pure funtime.
Massive generalisation I know, but here's the thing. If you are a stand up or a self employed person, you have to set those boundaries for yourself, which is a lot harder than you think it will be. Time spent not working (writing, planning, gig booking) is plagued by the notion that you should be working...the kind of work stand-ups have to do when they're not gigging is hard to quantify and can also be at the whim of inspiration.
So you can have days where you feel you should be working but there's no mojo there...there's nothing to write and it's hard to just settle into accepting that you're going to have an unproductive day. Why do you think I started this blog???
I can't quote the study properly but I remember reading that the human brain has an intrinsic need to work, to the point where if someone is doing no 'work' for long periods of time they will automatically define certain periods of leisure in their sub-conscious as 'putting a shift in'. The brain needs to feel it is exerting some form of effort, which is presumably a sub-conscious survival instinct.
So an unemployed person might put in a gruelling six hours on their x-box, which the sub-conscious will define as a 'work shift' thereby righting that wrong.
The way this manifests itself for me as a comedian is constantly trying to think of new material, new directions and spending gruelling six hour shifts on my xbox. Seriously.
But the stress of constantly trying to think of shit I should be doing (xbox aside) is kind of like a workday in itself, with an inbuilt nagging boss that sometimes you have to tell to back off, hence the statement at the beginning.
The answer is simply good organisation, goal setting, discipline and when the time comes the ability to shut yr mind off for a day or two and simply enjoy the fact that you're lucky enough to do a job you love. Even if your boss can be a dick sometimes. Today I've spent about three hours worrying about not writing, two hours putting writing off and about an hour writing. I'm exhausted.
Rest of The World 'What do you mean? You do stand up, every day is a day off for you dickhead.'
In a way I'm jealous of 9-5ers...you have set boundaries for your working life. You clock in, you do your stuff...you tit about on facebook for the last hour on a Friday and then you clock off into pure funtime.
Massive generalisation I know, but here's the thing. If you are a stand up or a self employed person, you have to set those boundaries for yourself, which is a lot harder than you think it will be. Time spent not working (writing, planning, gig booking) is plagued by the notion that you should be working...the kind of work stand-ups have to do when they're not gigging is hard to quantify and can also be at the whim of inspiration.
So you can have days where you feel you should be working but there's no mojo there...there's nothing to write and it's hard to just settle into accepting that you're going to have an unproductive day. Why do you think I started this blog???
I can't quote the study properly but I remember reading that the human brain has an intrinsic need to work, to the point where if someone is doing no 'work' for long periods of time they will automatically define certain periods of leisure in their sub-conscious as 'putting a shift in'. The brain needs to feel it is exerting some form of effort, which is presumably a sub-conscious survival instinct.
So an unemployed person might put in a gruelling six hours on their x-box, which the sub-conscious will define as a 'work shift' thereby righting that wrong.
The way this manifests itself for me as a comedian is constantly trying to think of new material, new directions and spending gruelling six hour shifts on my xbox. Seriously.
But the stress of constantly trying to think of shit I should be doing (xbox aside) is kind of like a workday in itself, with an inbuilt nagging boss that sometimes you have to tell to back off, hence the statement at the beginning.
The answer is simply good organisation, goal setting, discipline and when the time comes the ability to shut yr mind off for a day or two and simply enjoy the fact that you're lucky enough to do a job you love. Even if your boss can be a dick sometimes. Today I've spent about three hours worrying about not writing, two hours putting writing off and about an hour writing. I'm exhausted.
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