Weeding Out The Garden Of Life

Tags: amateur comedians, bullying, determination, failure, persistence, Saskatoon, Saskatoon comedians, stand-up comedy, struggles, The Stand-Up Diaries, trevor dean, Trevor Dean comedian, trevor dean saskatoon

The start to this post may sound like a Joel Osteen sermon, so forgive me in advance.

For the past month or so I have prepped my garden to be planted.  I tried to get a couple people to help, but to no avail.  I turned the sod over every inch.  There weren’t many weeds over the last few weeks.  I might have to weed maybe a couple times a week but they were small ones, easy to pull out.

Fast forward to this past week.  I couldn’t wait any longer for my friend to help, so I bought the remaining seeds and planted the garden all on my own.  It was a nice, sunny day and took the afternoon.  There were several different types of vegetables planted, and I even planted flowers in the flower bed in the front yard.  It was hard work, took lots of organization and planning but it got done.

It got watered a couple times this week, I thought things were going well.  I thought about what the plants would look like in full bloom, was kind of excited to add some nitrogen to some of the plants to help them grow.  This year I educated myself on gardening, did soil testing and asked lots of questions.  I felt like I was prepared to grow a more successful garden than I did last year.  Then I went to water the garden this evening, and what I saw shocked me.

There were weeds.  We’re not talking just one or two weeds, more like a holy shit where did all these come from number of weeds.  They looked different from the ones I pulled out of the ground in the weeks before I planted the seeds.  Some of them were a good inch or two in height and it took some careful removal not to disturb the seeds that were planted.

It’s funny, but the moment I saw those weeds en masse, it put into perspective the hateful and sarcastic comments I received today.

Whether it be gardening or life, the moment you plant a seed and start to feed it for growth, that’s when the weeds will start to grow all around that seed.  These weeds will sprout out of places you didn’t expect weeds to be, and they are bigger and more difficult to remove than the ones you dealt with before that seed was planted.

Today I was told that the interview I attended came down to a “difficult decision”, but in the end the company I interviewed for went in another direction.  I always get told no, so that didn’t surprise me. I’m sure the decision wasn’t that tough because let’s face it, people simply do not believe in my ability to do a good job doing anything for pay.

So this jackass, he’s from Calgary.  I’ve never heard of this dipshit, don’t know why he chose to pick on me and make my day worse, but he did.  This guy commented on my post that talked about me going to Los Angeles eventually to perform at the Comedy Store.  This guy said that he’s been in touch with an Arabian prince (scam email) and he’s been guaranteed a large fortune.  He went on to say that when he goes to Los Angeles to collect his fortune, we can go together and stick it to all of our haters.  Even though this jerk has been banned from the comedy page and blocked altogether, you can still read what he wrote on my comedy page.  For some reason he took it upon himself to comment on something he knows absolutely nothing about.

I will admit that the way I eradicate the weeds from the garden of life are completely different than the way I eradicate weeds from my vegetable garden.  Completely different.

With my veggie garden I don’t use chemicals, I just get in there with my hands and remove them as best I can.  Now, when it comes to the garden of life, well……. I kinda liken my technique to using round-up and dynamite at the same time.  I get extremely defensive, nasty, threatening, rude, arrogant, ignorant and foul-mouthed.  I go after the person by whatever means necessary to get my point across to get rid of that “weed”.  The result is lasting carnage that I’m left to deal with, all because the dynamite was a bit over the top.  Am I making sense?

There are times when dynamite isn’t quite necessary and I am the first to get that.  Until I get to go to L.A. there won’t be many positive developments or successful shows either.  Most of what I do is fail, anywhere from 75 – 90% of the time.  What makes it worse is that I believe I’m not given an honest chance to try and succeed.  That makes it tough and you feel left out and abandoned by the very people you so desperately need help, mentoring and guidance from.

On my birthday, it was supposed to be the day where the people who I thought were my friends were supposed to lift me up.  It’s not that much to ask for just one day like that in the whole year, is it?  Well, apparently it is.

I am normally not a very assertive person in the real world.  Not saying I’m a pushover either, but I don’t stand up for myself in a lot of cases, just let people say what they want and move on because I don’t need to create a situation.  Then the times when I do want to stand up for myself, it’s usually done in the form of a blog post where the language generated from the emotion at the time of writing, is far worse than any of the actions of violence that I may describe to harm certain people with.

The last post prior to this one I was told had the police involved due to the over-the-top language that I used towards one person in particular.  For this I apologize.

The person I originally directed my language towards is a friend and a fellow comic.  I don’t think he believes in me to be honest, but that’s a discussion we can have for another day.  In the end, the wording was a bit much and I can see why he raised several red flags.  To his credit though, he was gracious enough to talk about it with me, as he initiated a dialogue.  We have since talked, and hopefully with this explanation of things, I will be able to take the summer to write new material and hone my act for the busy fall schedule.

Not only should the language from my last post have been toned down, but my anger and disappointment should have been directed towards the woman who tried to suck the joy of doing comedy from me with her drama.  I thought she was a friend, a fellow comic.  I tried to help her, went out of my way to be a friend and welcoming and what did I get for it?  Someone who daily dragged me down with her constant whining of drama and trying to pit certain people against each other.  She came in like a hurricane, left a lot of collateral damage then left.

So I will simply say this to her, because I know she will read this.  You’re a miserable human being and an even worse friend.  I was warned about you from the start, but I chose to give you the benefit of the doubt, and your way of repaying me was to singlehandedly take it upon yourself to break promises to me and fuck up my birthday, leaving me that night to feel unwanted, unappreciated and not valued.  I didn’t get a single card, no cake, no gifts, my family didn’t want to spend my birthday with me either.  Nobody even offered me a cookie.  That’s pretty sad.

But at least I know who you truly are.  I know you and the other comics you “recruited” laugh behind my back and say you feel sorry for me which is why you pretended to like me to my face.  God will have a way of evening the score with you, and that’s a fact.

I need help and opportunity.  Since nobody around here is lining up to help me, I sourced out my own help in the form of my comedy coach and people shit on my head for it still, three years later.  So I pretty much suffer in silence.

The bars are a different animal for a comedy crowd.  I’ve never been able to have any success at the bars, for whatever reason.  I might have a good night, but it’s not consistent from set to set.  The comedy clubs I’m doing better at, at least there you can see the improvement and that I am getting a positive reaction.

It’s funny.  The people who run the comedy scene here don’t give me a chance to do anything other than open mics, aside from a couple shows in the comedy festival and comedy contests.  But that’s it.  I’ve done fundraisers in Regina, but no fundraisers here in the city.  No corporate stuff either.

I am the only one of the local guys who has never been asked to do out of town gigs, and this is almost five years later.  Yet, the agency at the pro comedy club I’ve done, I told them my story, said I hadn’t performed in Saskatoon in 18 months, the stage time was once a month at that point, yet all it took was one phone call, and the person on the other end asked me if I wanted to host.  I still had to send in my video to get approval, but still.

Isn’t that amazing how it took somebody from another province who has never seen, nor heard of me before to give me a chance that the Saskatoon scene is unwilling to give me?  If people here believed in me, you would think that somebody, whether it be the people who run the local scene or some of the more established acts, would have reached out to offer me the same chances they got.  It’s like Kevin Spacey said:

If you’re lucky enough to do well, it’s your responsibility to send the elevator back down.

Well, here I am.  It’s almost five years later, and the only person to send the elevator back down isn’t even from Saskatchewan.

That’s really sad.