Almost done with this cruise, and I’m delighted to be going home tomorrow. I’ll have a single day to sort through every worldly trinket and bauble I own and decide what to keep and what to toss, then it’s back out on Thursday for another week on another ship leaving from another port town, working with an entirely new staff. This is a big endurance test.
I’ll put in another week like this, then it’s back for two days, then I’m really going to be out there for an extended stretch of a couple of weeks with no days home. I didn’t look at my schedule, but I know it’s jammed. I’ll have to either live with it or jump off the ship.
I think I’ll be ok. Even though I had a little bout with homesickness yesterday, this was a pretty good week. Like last week, the shows were good and the other comic was nice to work with. Those are both big, but the highlight by far is all the quality work I finished.
This was without a doubt the most productive week to date off stage. I worked for hours on several of my projects, but the best was the restructure of my entire comedy show. I’ve been meaning to attack it for years, but this week I totally did. I plowed through hundreds of pages of unorganized jumbled up notes and pared them down to a workable 135 pages.
Then, I went through those and extracted the cream of the crop best ideas and jokes and organized them into ten topic categories in a workable order so I can start adding it to the mix of what I’m doing now. I’ve NEVER been this organized in my life as far as comedy goes, and I can already feel it was worth it even this far. This will help me exponentially.
I’m also thrilled about planting the seeds for the three five minute television appearance sets. I know I wasn’t ready when I did my Craig Ferguson shot, and one appearance does not a career make. I’ll develop these sets and be ultra ready when a chance comes my way again. I heard Jerry Seinfeld did his Tonight Show debut set 80 times, and I can see why.
A set for television should be baby’s butt smooth and razor sharp. I have a chance to get more than one set ready to go, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I know one set is a big enough challenge, but I’m required to do different sets on the ships so I can work with two at a time and have another as an alternate. Before long, I know I’ll get them polished.
Things like this take a lot of the boredom out of this whole grind. I was feeling a bit off yesterday, but putting in six solid work hours today and looking at all I’ve managed to get done this week really reinvigorated me before I went on stage. I had fun, and didn’t worry if the audience liked me or not. I’ve got a bigger picture in my sights that they can’t see.
The first two shows tonight were really fun. The room was full, and they laughed where the were supposed to. They actually laughed so hard, I wasn’t able to get to quite a few of the bits I was intending to get to and that always makes it easier. I closed exactly on time, and that always makes the club manager happy. The late show was light, but it’s the final night of the cruise and people are tired. I get that. So did the manager. Time to go home.
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