Shifting Sands

Tags: Saskatoon, Saskatoon comedians, stand-up comedy, stand-up diaries, standup diaries, The Stand-Up Diaries, trevor dean, Trevor Dean comedian, trevor dean saskatoon

As a kid my friend and I used to love writing letters to sports teams and ask for autographed pictures.  I amassed quite a collection of autographed pictures from players who took the time to reply.  I received autographed pictures among others from Wendel Clark, Mario Lemieux and the most prized one of all was an autographed picture of the NHL superstar known as “Stevie Wonder”, Steve Yzerman of the Detroit Red Wings.  It was his autograph, I think it was a picture from his first year or two in the league.  I got it laminated some time ago.  I even used to have an awesome cartoon caricature shirt of him that I’m pretty sure my mother gave away when she thought it outgrew me!

Do you think I could find that picture today?  In packing up when I moved from my last residence, I found the majority of pictures, but not Yzerman’s.  If I found it tomorrow, I would give it to a good friend of mine who is a huge Red Wings fan, didn’t think anyone I knew loved Yzerman as much as me but I would be mistaken.  I also had a bunch of karaoke discs, well over 120 that I used to take wherever I went singing.  They got stolen from my vehicle.

All of that doesn’t seem to bother me these days.  I’m not broken up over the fact I can’t find the Yzerman picture.  The karaoke discs don’t bother me either, since I have only been out a few times to sing since the start of the year.  I have seven movies sitting here from the library that I really want to watch.  I’m only working part time at the moment, so I would have nothing but time to watch them.  So what do I do mostly with said spare time?  I go for walks, bike, or go to church or the open mics.  There isn’t much I am able to do at the moment due to my living situation and finances, as I had to move from my last residence and staying with a friend’s mom at the moment.

I usually stay in my room for the most part if I am “home” and have a lot of time to think.  It should be exciting but it seems to be anything but.  I used to look forward to sitting down and writing material.  In fact, I do remember mentioning that I have ten pages of Christian material that I need to hash out that would take probably a couple of weeks to properly put together.  I also have a few pages of really solid premises to talk about that aren’t Christian related but clean nonetheless, but I just do not have the motivation to dig into them.

For the last couple of months all I’ve really done is receive mentoring from my church family and work towards the show’s debut, and nothing more.  It’s as if I forgot that I do stand-up comedy and am solely a radio host.  At open mics I go through my old material and find stuff to put together, but it doesn’t enthuse or invigorate me to do this.  Preparing for this show has taken far too much out of me, and the closer the show gets to air, the nerves, anxiety and questions will only multiply.  I am pretty sure that the night of its debut I will head to prayer night at church first in an attempt to calm my nerves and help me focus a bit better.

The training is about 95% complete but there is a ton of stuff left to accomplish before we get rolling.  I just want to wave a magic wand and have everything the way I need it and for the planning to be over and done with.  It looks as if the first month will be all local interview content because I haven’t had the ability to do a few test runs of the off-site interviews that I have other comics confirmed to participate in.  I need a quiet place to accomplish this with next to no background noise at all.  Either moving into a place of my own or at the radio station will suffice.  The website is not completed yet, still need a logo along with photos and bios of the first couple of guests.  The Instagram, Facebook and Twitter pages are up and running though, so at least something got accomplished.

Then you factor in the loneliness I feel almost daily and living out of my suitcase for a month while 90% of my stuff is packed into my vehicle in garbage bags.  I need to find a full time job and get my own place, because I would like to sit down and watch t.v. once in a while, or make stuff to eat.  With the way things are going now, yes I have a (part time) job now but it will probably take a month or two for me to be in a position to save enough money to move.

It’s as if the only thing I think about is the show, making me a bit uneasy.  I’m also not one of those comics that always writes material at open mics.  I take my comedy more seriously than most and write at different times of the day, at least I used to before this radio show idea started to swallow me whole.  It will be a good feeling to know that I will have the most listened to overnight radio show in the city, if not the province, on the night which it starts.

I like that pressure, the expectations, as people wonder what the show will sound like, what will I say?  It also motivates me knowing that most at church have no idea of the giftings I have, what I am really good at because all most of them have seen is me struggle.  They have no idea what I am capable of and it will be a nice change to finally show people what I can do rather well.

All that I really want is to get back to a normal life once again, meaning that my bills aren’t overdue, I make enough to live and have a place to call my own.  But even then, I am not sure that things would really be normal in the way I am accustomed to, meaning that I would take the time to write and develop my material.  It looks as if I will need to spend equal amounts of time preparing for the show as I will for getting each episode of the show together.  I never intended to stop performing when the show started, but maybe the show is the only thing that could detract me from creating material and honing my act.  I mean, lots of you are aware how challenging my personal life has been and that didn’t seem to make me quit the stage, right?

I just don’t want to turn into a has been and not be relevant anymore.  I don’t want to be known as a former comedian and just a radio show host.  I need to keep my act going; I have come too far, been through way too much garbage to have a radio show be the thing that saps my comedy career.