(Part one of this entertainment is here.)
The second isn’t fit for publication. It’s something I’m working, but…well, my approach to some things is that I minimize my risk as much as possible, but to the outside viewer it’d just make me look kind of stalkery. Always the risk of it blowing up in my face and making me look completely creepy. Whatever. But that’s going. But not really all that well.
The third is going to different get togethers/meetups/whathaveyou and just trying to meet people. You know, like lame-ass self-help books on making friends.
Q: But how do I meet people?
A: Join a book club! Look into knitting circles in your area. Ask your local butcher!
Et cetera. Feels kind of artificial and pathetic, but 42 years later it’s pretty clear this isn’t gonna work for me organically, so fine.
I tried a few groups but nothing was really clicking. There was a Mensa game night thing, a different random person game thing, an MST3K-viewing thing…I mean all nerdy to be sure, and I figure these are My People, so. But I guess I forgot I don’t really have a tolerance for nerds.
Finally I found a list of open mic comedy nights around the city, started going to those, and felt like this might be my In. Of course Debb spotted this long before I did — she figured I’d get along better with people in a comedy-based situation. And last night, talking it out with her, I realized of course that would be true. I’d prefer to be around a bunch of funny geeks, but if I had to choose, I’d much rather be around funny non-geeks than non-funny geeks. Just picture a stereotype for each group, and you’ll probably agree it’s an obvious choice. Well, maybe you won’t, but I guess I’m picturing my own stereotype of the people who are likely to be reading this at all.
When I say “going to” I mean just watching. Partly because, hey, free comedy. But partly because I was getting to see people, and in fact in much tighter situations than I’m used to. Well, stuff like the game nights was a lot more direct interaction, yeah. But still, it’s hard to fade to invisible when you’re one of 12 people in the back room of a bar. And really, despite what I said about preferring funny over geek, the truth is I identify a lot closer to geeks than non-, so being in tight quarters with several Normals is actually more outside my comfort zone. Especially since “tight quarters” is usually a bar, and bars are foreign places to me as well.
But over the course of a month I saw enough mediocre sets that I started getting the urge. Pretty much, I’m convinced that anything I want to do, anything I spend some time on, I will be above average at it. (corrolary: I won’t be really great at a thing. Or I’ll never meet my standards for where I would want to be.) Not to say I’d be better than half of those I’ve seen performing, but I was pretty sure that if you took 50 random people off the street, I’d be better at stand-up than at least 25 of them.
And then: blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah. Here’s the problem: I write so much that I can easily outpace my upset while I’m writing. End effect is that, before I get my full screed done, I’m already over it.
So the quick version is: I did some standup, the first time went pretty well, but the second time really failed to come up to my expectations, and I spent half a week being really upset about it. But the big problem in my head wasn’t really that I didn’t get reaction to comedy; the big problem was that I was feeling like I was being rejected from a community. It’s not rational that I jumped to that conclusion, but that’s the thing, all this emotional stuff wasn’t rational.
I’m working through it, but certainly not so panty-bunched as I had been. If you haven’t taken enough punishment reading through all this, you can get the full story in Keep Being Awesome #11, but that’ll be a tough slog to haul through, so good luck.
