Lately my stand-up has been underwhelming. Whilst I haven't actually been 'dying' on stage neither have I left my audience clamouring for more. Sure, I've only done two gigs since the month-long ash-cloud-extended sojourn in Asia and Australia but there's a deeper problem than lack of stage-time, which is my usual diagnosis for a malaise like this.
Instead it just feels like the end of the arc.
In late 2006 I kept a long-standing personal promise to try stand-up comedy. I was 39 and rather than aiming for fame'n'fortune I gave myself the more realistic goal of attaining what I called 'journeyman status'. In 2010 I get paid pretty well. I get asked back. I have bit of a reputation as a solid, reliable comic for either 'Opening 20's' or compeering. If I stopped today I'd leave the industry if not a success then certainly not a failure.
Job done.
The end of an arc like this is a time of extraordinary vulnerability. When our business began to take off in multiple markets around the world my then partner's enthusiasm demonstrably waned. The minute the market wanted him he lost interest.
He explained the paradox by describing a dinner party with old friends from medical school. Because their services are always in demand very few of the doctors he trained with were in any way entrepreneurial; why start your own institution when there are plenty who will bend over backwards to make sure you're happy? Around the dinner table my partner's decision to start a pharmaceutical consulting firm was regarded as either brave, laughable or contemptible. Yet within a few years he was a founding partner of a growing business with strong prospects and an already impressive record in markets as different as the US, Spain, Singapore, India, Taiwan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.
Job done.
By then no one was laughing behind their hands at dinner. But once he reached the end of that narrative arc from risk to assurance he lost enthusiasm. I was driven by less easily sated demons. It was this misalignment of motivation more than any disparity in contribution that led to the decoupling of the business a few years later.
If I cannot construct a realistic and satisfying narrative of my future stand-up career then every gig from now on will feel like an unsatisfying postscript because that's all it will be. The storyteller in me has some work to do.
