“So, mate, what do you do?” The comedian on stage selected me to do some crowd work with. I told him I’m a comic. “Really? What, professionally? You do it for a living?.”“No” I responded. “Do you?” and he quickly moved on to another audience member to focus on.

I didn’t want to slow the night down with a tedious explanation of my weird employment situation at the time. More importantly, I resent how when people think they’re asking you who you are they’re really asking how you make money. They’re rarely the same thing. If I made a list of “What I do” things, how I pay my rent is generally the least interesting item on that list, the one that says the least about who I actually am as a person.

At the risk of referring to Aristotle every time I write, he did tell us that people are the most genuinely themselves when they’re “at play.” The position that was available when I was seeking work probably doesn’t give you as much insight to my soul as the passions I pursue in my free time.

I thought this was an odd question to come from the comic on stage because he’d know as well as I do that there are just a handful of comedians in this country making a full time living from it; if I were one of them he’d already know. Even the comedians you know from television or radio are more likely to derive most of their income from said television or radio gig, monetised podcast, book deal, advertisements… even maybe a secret “day job.”

Interestingly though, people must think a sustainable entertainment career that pays all the bills is pretty achievable – if I tell a date I do comedy, there’s a 50% chance she’ll assume I’ve made a career of it. People in Los Angeles know that when someone says they’re an Actor they’re probably earning most of their income as a Waiter, but over here we seem to think that the only hard part about getting a full time income as a comedian is overcoming stage fright.

This might be because comedians actively suppress the truth about how they pay their rent. Most comedians have day jobs but they hide it. I’ve heard so many of them say “I *used to* work in a call centre” before providing funny insight into call centre life, rather than admit they currently do. Actually, considering the way call centres like to export their jobs, that might have been a bad example – call centre work might be low pay but secure jobs in the field might actually be as rare as successful entertainment careers. Nonetheless, I hear it a lot. When a comedian refers to any non-comedy work, it’s alluded to as part of a distant and irrelevant past. Comedians seem to be more likely to confess sexual inadequacy or living with their parents in middle age rather than actually having a job in the daytime.

I suspect that it might come from the idea that having a “day job” implies what you’re doing isn’t 100% valid. About a year ago a comedian friend of mine said on a podcast that he only considered someone a comedian if they’d been paid for it. I asked him later if he thought that maybe Socrates wasn’t a real philosopher or that Van Gogh maybe wasn’t a real artist. We had a good chat about it.

I conceded that in his time, Van Gogh *wasn’t* considered a real artist because he never managed to make money from his pursuit. I still stand by my assertion that whether he’s an artist doesn’t depend on whether you bought his stuff or not. If Van Gogh spends his time and efforts studying, practicing, acquiring the skills, thinking like an artist and creating art, he is indeed an artist. Joe Consumer doesn’t get to make that untrue just because there’s a new iphone out this week and “Starry Night” doesn’t go with his rug.

Personally, I’m not trying to make a living out of comedy or go down in history for it. I just love comedy so it’s natural I want to “be a comedian” and “do comedy” and those are the totality of my goals. That’s not necessarily the same for all my peers, as we all have different dreams and demands on our lives. I’ve never done an informal survey of what my peer’s motivations are, and I think it would be interesting, but I don’t think many of us realistically have “replacing our day job” in our sights. I think we’re all driven by other stuff.

When I first got up and performed at an open mic it was a big personal goal for me – a bucket list item. Interestingly, lots of my friends and family said “What’s that pay?” and suggested there’s something wrong if there’s no immediate money in it. That was an interesting response that I don’t think I’d have gotten if I said I’d played golf or gone fishing instead, even though those are pursuits that would be more likely to cost you money than pay you. I guess it’s because nobody ever wants to admit their artistic pursuits are a hobby.

When I point out to my friends that I started a little late in the game (my fifties) to consider it as any kind of “career path”, they assume I need encouragement and remind me about how Rodney Dangerfield did poorly for decades before becoming a household name right at the end of his life. I don’t need that encouragement and don’t find it encouraging. I don’t personally want his career or the success he had, and I’m not actually persuaded if you can only give me one example from half a century ago. I’m not going to be the next Rodney Dangerfield and that’s good because I really don’t want to.

So why do we do this? I think the late great George Carlin summed it up very well (which is something he was extremely good at) when explained his initial attraction to performing humour:

“In our school we didn’t have grades. So we didn’t have A’s, B’s, C’s, and D’s. The only A’s I got – and this is a little corny – I got their attention, I got their approval, their admiration, their approbation, and their applause. And those are the only A’s I wanted. And I got em.”

Yes, we want the approval and we love the applause. There’s a special thrill, a visceral high that’s partially an adrenaline rush from making a room full or people physically react with nothing more than words we create out of thin air. I got the same thing when I was making and performing dance music; it’s satisfying to orchestrate clever sequences with rare chord combinations, but there’s nothing like actually making people’s bodies move right in front of you. It’s satisfying beyond words, and making a room full of people laugh deeply is the only equivalent I’ve found so far.

There may or may not be a Netflix special and wealth beyond imagination in our comedy futures but in the meantime we all have a burning desire to express ourselves, to be understood and appreciated. You can call that narcissistic or attention seeking, but I prefer to think of it as “human” and know that while we mostly still have day jobs, positive feedback is the true currency we treasure.

Originally published on Facebook, 30 January 2021