Day 21
You may or may not have noticed that yesterday was the first day I haven’t posted a blog entry since I started my anti-depressants. I was still alive and on anti-depressants but I accidentally got too drunk at a 90’s themed night out and ended up getting into a bed at 5am. I subsequently had about 3 hours interrupted sleep before eventually travelling home and then driving a 3 hour round trip to perform at a stand-up comedy competition. I didn’t win. I think the night before may have had something to do with it.
I also planned on having a productive Saturday before the party. I even wrote on Friday’s blog post about how I wanted to wake up at a reasonably early hour and get things done. I hit off instead of snooze on my alarm and slept until about 1pm. Whoops. I suck at being productive. My worst habits are sleeping late and procrastinating too much. Although a few days ago I dropped my phone down the toilet severely damaging both the phone and my procrastination options. It currently sits in a bag of rice in a desperate attempt to dry it out and rescue what is essentially my life on it. I have a calender on their with all my future gig dates and details. If I don’t rescue my phone I may miss a lot of gigs.
I can take a lot of good things from this evening, an audience member came up to me after the show to tell me he thought one of my jokes was the best of the night. And another asked to get a picture with me. It’s important to not dwell on the fact I didn’t win and instead remember the good things. My anti-depressants are really helping me to do that. I know another technique people use is writing a list of three things that happened at the end of every day. I’ve tried that too but I couldn’t commit to remembering to do it and now I write a blog every night (except yesterday but that’s the only time so far!). I try to write about the good things that happen every day in this blog though, so if anything I’m doing a better version than just a list of 3. It’s kind of like asking for a burger and some one giving you a cow, you may be happy, you may be annoyed but you can’t deny that it’s definitely more. That’s a terrible analogy but I’m sleep deprived and it’s 1am.
On the way up to the gig, I was in the car with three other comics and we spoke a lot about mental health. About our experiences with it and our thoughts about it. And how common it is, not just in the world of comedians but in the world as a whole. People of all careers and backgrounds. We’ve all felt sad, depression is a different version of sad but it’s still relatable to everyone. It’s one of the few things we all have in common and yet we don’t talk about it that much. We’d rather talk about the weather. I think that needs to change. But I live in England so I also wish the weather would change.
Thanks for reading and I’ll speak to you tomorrow.
Jake
Jake Pickford 