I Have Been Doing Comedy For 7 Years

Hey.

So this is it, the seventh year of stand up is when you find your voice, when you know what you are doing. I agree with that as I seem to have found another voice in my head. So look out… I’m here to ruin that theory for everyone. I would like this year of my career to be about finding my mind, I seem to have lost.

How It Started

People ask me this question all the time, which I actually don’t mind. I have an answer for this and I can show my work:

I loved watching stand up as a youth —–> Started writing jokes for fun during my freshman and sophomore years in college —–> Couldn’t play basketball anymore ——> Watched one open mic at Laughs in Kirkland —–> The next week I do my first open mic —–> 7 years later I write this blog.

The Stories

I figure you don’t want to hear all the crap about what I am proud of and the people I enjoy working with and all the good stuff, as that is not what comedy is about. Comedy is about complaining. Well too bad, I’m going to tell you some good stuff anyway and you’re going to like it. Here are the nominees for best story in each of these categories I have arbitrarily made up:

The Best Thing That Has Happened

• I have traveled all over the country, almost every part of it, doing comedy and getting paid to do it. For the most part I have broken even and that’s pretty good for traveling.
• Comedy has allowed me to meet people I never would have otherwise, develop relationships I couldn’t have imagined and even hang out with Canadians.
• Stand up has given me opportunities to branch out into other amazing forms of comedy and create my own projects, podcasts and other stupid things I am deeply proud of. Huglifepodcast.com
• I have had the wonderful honor to work with people I have watched on TV for years and for the most part decide that they are pretty nice and hard-working people, just like the rest of us.

The Worst Thing That Has Happened

• I once asked if two people sitting at a table were mother and son and of course they were married. Then I spent the rest of the set making excuses for why that wasn’t as offensive as it definitely was.
• I have performed and even hung out in a number of moose, eagles and elks lodges. The drinks are very cheap but so are the inappropriate comments.
• I have slept everywhere imaginable, from cars to couches to tile floors and deflating air mattresses. Sometimes with cute dogs or cats to cuddle with.
• I once used someone else’s dirty towel for an entire week because that was my only option.
• A very small cowboy decided to put his hand in between my legs at a bar thus unleashing a beast inside of me that got me carried out of said bar by security, almost started a fight and honestly quite nearly got that mini cowboy killed. I have the poorly healed part of a tattoo to prove it.

The Craziest Thing That Has Happened

• While closing out a very fun show in the Northwest a gentleman seemed to be answering his phone in the front row and talking to someone. The third time it happened I asked to see his phone, like a teacher asking for your attention would. He quickly pulled away trying to hide his phone behind himself only to reveal it was a child’s water-maze play toy that he had been answering the whole time.
• A woman in Deer Lodge, Montana invited us back to her house to go in her bathtub, which she had pictures of on her phone. It was a lovely tub but we did decline… mostly because she had pictures of it on her phone which eluded to this not being her first time and I like to feel special.
• I have since vowed not to drive during the winter time but in October of this year we nearly died in the snow, in a Prius, in Southern Utah… Which seems to be the saddest of all potential obituaries.
• I once ended up after a show at a castle next to a state capitol building with the oldest man in history. He may have haunted said castle. Then we woke up in a different larger home on the water. A part of my soul may still be walking around those places.

Overall the last 7 years have been super easy, stress-free and full of love and functional relationships.

No, they have been full of sarcasm. I have loved mostly every moment of what I do, I feel lucky everyday that I get to do comedy for a living. I am excited to continue this journey and see the changes this year brings. Year 7 is the one when you start edging toward not compromising what you want for what you CAN do just because you can. Also, I am writing this blog from an apartment I share with two grown men, one of which is loudly having sex in the room next to me… so things HAVE to change.

Feel free to let me know which of the nominees in each category YOU think get the award!