An Ultimatum — What You Do With It Is Up To You

Tags: The Stand-Up Diaries, trevor dean

This past week has been difficult.  While I will NOT reveal any personal details, it’s suffice to say that if the comedy doesn’t improve, I will either pack Trevor Dean in for good or take a hiatus.  I would rather not take time off, but I can’t see my stand-up continuing if the same results keep occurring while my personal situation tries to remedy itself.

If I was doing better and getting a more consistent response from an audience, it would be a no-brainer, I’d continue doing the comedy because it would serve as a necessary distraction, that and I could use my current difficulty to my advantage by using it onstage.  However, I am not that funny as of right now.  If I was, that’s a different story but as is stand right now, I do not have the necessary tools to be able to turn my difficulty into comedy, much less take the material I have now and make it work better.

For those of you who get on my case for being negative, I have a few things to say to you.  First of all, I haven’t seen anybody come out to all my shows.  There are a select few who have seen me perform, and the ones who have can tell you that I am not that funny.  Sure, sitting around a group of my friends it’s easy, but you try to get up onstage and do what I have tried for the past several months.  It’s no fucking cake walk.  It’s TOUGH.  Sure there are some people who can get up there and it’s just natural for them, where they can tell a story, not add anything comedic to it, but make it work because they have the tools necessary to bring about success on a comedic level.  I do not have these tools yet.  Like I said, you guys are interested in my progress, and I tell you the truth.  I am NOT being negative, I am simply being honest, so for those of you faggots who haven’t been to a show and like to chirp from the cheap seats, go fuck yourself.

Am I good?  NO.

Not yet, at least.

Trust me, if I didn’t think I had the ability to turn this thing around, why the hell would I keep trying every week?  I am going to be 39 next month, I sure as fuck don’t have the time or the patience to continue with something I know won’t fucking work.  This is why I have deleted my profile from a dating site, and it’s why I quit bowling two years ago.  I mean really now, bowling like shit in a league where you bowl with people you see week after week is one thing, but to keep getting onstage in front of a different group of strangers every week, only to get the same reaction every time (which isn’t much of one)…… why would I do that?

Having said that, I am hoping I can turn this around.  Note I used the word hoping and not the word confident.  I used to be confident a couple months ago when I had one of my two good nights onstage. Well, maybe I should change that.  Of all the nights onstage, I have only had three that were better than what usually happens.  Three nights out of seven months worth of material.  But after the meeting this week, I am hopeful, and not confident so much.  Getting onstage and looking confident is one thing, but I am getting sick and tired of my life spinning its fucking wheels and getting nowhere.  Again, some might think it takes time, and you are right….but I should be better than what I am after having been given the opportunities that I have week after week after week.

So, in conclusion, I don’t know when I will be able to get my comedy coaching,but it should be within the next couple weeks.  Oh what the hell, you might as well know I am unemployed, yet again.  I won’t get into the details except to say that I have found myself in jobs recently that aren’t a good fit for me, these last two were such a bad fit that I didn’t make it through my probationary period in either of them, for entirely different reasons.  So now that I don’t have a job, my days are free to get this coaching done a lot sooner than I first anticipated.  Having said that however, once I get coached and revamp things, I’ll maybe give myself a month after that to take what I have learned and apply it to the stage.  That is why I am giving myself an ultimatum til the middle of June at the very latest to turn this thing around.  If I don’t get an indication from either the audience reaction, or from my comedy coach, that the changes to be made are working, or if my comedy coach doesn’t believe he can work with me to make things work, then I just might pack it in.

There will be a two week window I will give myself, from the end of May to the middle of June where I might pull the plug on this, either for the rest of the summer, or for good.

I’ve told you I have only got about six weeks left to get this thing figured out.  I can’t do this and continue to not be good when I have unemployment lurking over my head.  For those of you who haven’t come out to see a show, don’t be in too much of a hurry.  You aren’t missing much.  Do with it what you will, I feel like I’m alone in this anyhow.