This month is an anniversary. I’ve officially clocked 5 years since I did my first Open Mic and became a comedian. Is five years significant? To other comics it apparently is.

I’ve heard from many of them in interviews and on podcasts that the shared view is that it takes 5 years to become good as a comic, that you spend the first 5 years thinking you’re better than you really are but it’s only after 5 years that you actually know what you’re doing.

Is that true? I’ll let you know. I suspect it probably is, but I sure as hell doubted it five years ago.

I remember thinking that’s a pretty snotty attitude, that experience is only one of many factors that decides whether you’re any good or not, that most of the comedy I was seeing from comics with a lot of experience didn’t seem to be exponentially better than what I or my peers were doing.

I didn’t think the albums or specials from my favourite comics and musicians necessarily got better over time. Often the first album was the best album. You might be more proficient with your instrument for album #5, but fans are just as likely to prefer your earlier work and regard it as better. I have musician friends who’s output in the 80’s was a lot more interesting and exciting to me than anything I’ve heard from them lately.

But do I feel like the same now? Well…. To paraphrase Mohammed Ali, if I still had the same beliefs and mindset from 5 years ago then I’ve probably wasted the last five years.I can no longer sustain the same attitude, and I believe I’ve learned a bit since then. Hopefully I’m also a much better comic, or I’ve definitely been wasting everyone’s time.

I’m not sure whether we magically level up but I suspect that yes, that’s exactly what might happen. Mainly because I’ve experienced leveling up a few times in the last 5 years and it really does feel like a magical transformation.

You feel it and notice it. It’s not gradual like the accumulation and development of experience and authority in other fields. As with Dungeons and Dragons (or equivalent – there’s loads of great TTRPGs out there) it really does feel instant, and like getting extra powers.

Also, you can see the road behind you. To paraphrase Søren Kierkegaard, an even more impressive philosopher than Mohammed Ali, we can only live forwards but we can only understand it backwards. Reflecting on my journey (I hate that phrase but I’ll use it here) I now have some context and insight on stuff that seemed inexplicable at the time. Like re-watching a good movie, I can now understand that some of the bullshit challenges were important plot points and inflections on my own character development arc.

Also, I now have more tools. I can’t imagine how cocky you’d have to be to think you’re not going to learn any tricks over a few years. I’m talking joke-writing techniques, methods of processing stuff, but also stagecraft tricks, abilities with crowdwork etc. I knew this at the time, knew that there were holes in my skill-set that I would fill in over time (mostly… there’s still a few things I haven’t learned because I’m not interested in them. I have no desire to be an Improv performer, for instance, so I’m not going to allocate any of my experience points to that.)

Probably the surest sign you’ve made progress is that what you were doing and saying a few years ago makes you cringe. I recorded all my early sets, thinking I was building a library of material I could use for years to come. It never occurred to me that I might not be as proud of those early jokes in my third year. If it did, I might have published less of it.

Another sign is that the early stuff might not be so relevant. Comedy isn’t evergreen and it doesn’t all age gracefully. Topical jokes expire very quickly, but even the ones about my life assumed that nothing about my life would change. After my first 18 months of comedy I realized I could no longer use much of what I’d written. I had heaps about dating and being single, but I was now in a relationship. Speaking of relationships, my relationship with alcohol had changed a lot and I was no longer able to talk about that either. It wasn’t as dramatic as Doug Stanhope’s character in the excellent movie Road Dog, but it still feels awkward and fake to joke about drinking as I had.

It would be lovely to think we were building a massive body of work but sometimes we outgrow our jokes quicker than we can write them.

But we do get better at writing them. I notice the difference with new comics, up -and-comers. some of them are gifted and already good comedians doing a great job. But even the best of these seem to have a lot of trouble moving their material from “amusing” to “funny.”

Laughter, real laughter, is an involuntary response. Chuckles made for appreciation or encouragement are, like applause, and a result of a conscious decision. True laughter is a response, not a choice. We do it even if we don’t intellectually agree with or approve of the laughter stimulus.

Comedians view evoking “true laughter” as our main goal, much more valuable than applause (which is just telling us you agree with what we said), and that’s part of why you might hear an objectionable or egregious premise – it’s evidence that your laughter is visceral and not just encouragement, agreement or approval.

What makes this laughter? Well, there’s some theories about that (follow me for more recipes). But the main thing I’ve learned over the last few years as that to get the results we want on stage, we have to give our material that tiny little nudge to move if from Amusing to Funny.

Amusing is your idea. It might be absurd, ironic, clever, insightful, whatever. But Amusing ideas only get polite chuckles, applause, etc at best. Amusing doesn’t invoke true laughter.

Nope, there’s an escape velocity we have to reach before we move the needle from Amusing to Funny with our material That’s 100% of the challenge I see for comedians in their first couple of years. Most new comics are more Amusing than Funny. The comic can be likable and interesting, but in every instance they need to move their jokes from Amusing to Funny to break through the invisible wall blocking their advancement. Identifying that need and working out how to do that (it could be at the writing end, the performance end or both) is The Great Challenge.

Another lesson I’ve learned in the last few years is the absolute need to detach sometimes. It’s critical. There’s a couple of reasons for this, and I’ll be chatting about scene politics in a moment, but the main one is for our own mental health and perspective.

Simply put, it’s possible to become too invested in what we do. Hell, it’s kind of essential. We’re asked to commit to it, to invest ourselves into it in order to become good at it, so it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that over-investment and side effects like burnout are almost inevitable.

Comedians talk a lot about developing bravery and authenticity and resilience, getting the right mindset to become Undeniably Funny, but we don’t pay enough lip service to the necessary sense of detachment that we also have to adopt to maintain a perspective and make sure our head is right for all of it.

Audiences can tell when Burn-out and Bitterness affect a comedian. It comes out in the jokes, which can devolve from Funny to Not-Even-Amusing. In so many ways the Comedy is a process of detachment, looking at and evaluating things we take for granted with alien eyes.

Sure, we might act angry, frustrated or any other negative emotion. But it only works if the audience knows we’re actually not. If they think we actually are that bitter and twisted about stuff, that becomes a giant barrier to giving us any kind of positive reaction to it.

Another aspect of the detachment is sometimes taking a step back from the scene itself. About a year ago I hit a wall where I was seriously burned out and it was manifesting in some not-great ways. I’ve written a little about it, but I needed to get off the open mic treadmill.

It was a commitment that required attendance and spending a few hours almost every weeknight to do five (strongly enforced) minutes, all after a long shift in the day job, with regular new material written. And to promote all of it through my social media channels.

For what it’s worth, I love open mics; but the limited stage time wasn’t worth the impact this schedule was having on my life.

What kind of impact? Besides extreme fatigue, and the feeling of running late for the next checkpoint from early every morning to late every night, it was fucking my creativity. You just can’t create anything good in those conditions. It was fucking with my attitude. There’s no way I was going to avoid resenting it sooner or later.

And it was fucking with my relationships, especially other comics. Yeah, I’ve gotten into beefs with a couple of them. And they’re people I like and respect, comics I also enjoy. I can see that fueling the other side of these exchanges was exactly the same thing at their end: In every case I see that the other guy was just as over-invested, burned out, cynical and just plain tired as I was.

Objectivity and detachment are talked about as though they were weakness or failure to commit, but I see them required everywhere. Truthfully, even in my day job – every one I’ve ever had, in fact – every time I become unstuck or end up struggling it’s because I’m too invested and take too much ownership over everything that’s going on. Being too invested can mess you up.

This is also the case with comedians. When they’re bitter and too invested it shows. It sours the jokes and stifles the creativity. We don’t talk enough about how comics sometimes need to step back from the grind and “touch the grass.”

Of course that’s not the only reason people might have a beef in the world of comedy. When we start out, we’ve got a bit of an image of what a comedian is, what they’re like, and it’s idealized. I’ve also talked about the qualities of comics, what makes us do this thing, and about how supportive comedy communities are.

It’s true, and I’ve made amazing friends through this hobby or whatever it is. But it’s not the whole truth.

We’re definitely hard-wired in certain ways that let us re-frame ideas, articulate aspects of life in counter-intuitive ways, make us able to gaze into the abyss and come back with new material. There are values that we espouse, and they’re good ones.

But we don’t talk so much about how competitive comedians can be, or how ambitious. We don’t talk about the compulsive and obsessive nature that make over-investment a real danger to us. We take it for granted that the drive to elicit responses and approval from strangers translates into narcissism to most people.

We don’t talk, not seriously anyway, about the self-esteem issues that make us eternal class clowns. We rarely reflect ourselves that we do our work in an environment which rewards being mean and snarky more than it rewards kindness. We don’t question a culture that applauds shutting someone down or playfully insulting them. We never consider that a culture where we love “busting each other’s balls” and withhold what most people describe as empathy might be a little on the toxic side.

It never occurs to us that the type of linguistic cleverness behind Carlin’s wordplay might be tiresomely pedantic. We don’t generally consider that focusing on observational minutia could be a sign that we’re petty. We ignore all accusations that our free-speech honesty in the the face of everyone’s taboos and hurt feelings might be a bit obnoxious.

It’s a weird thing being a comedian. Part of it comes from a people-pleasing drive where we’re trying to put smiles on the faces of strangers; but an equal part of it comes from a confrontational side that likes to challenge people and win over them. I guess that’s part of the tension that makes for effective comedy.

But one thing’s for sure: Comedians romanticize comedians. We regard our local scene solely as an awesome and supportive scene filled with awesome and creative people that we all relate to in an intense and specific way that most of you civilians couldn’t understand. We speak in reverent tones about “The Comic’s Table” where the comedic cool kids gather and hold court after gigs, and ignore any evidence that it might be something of a snobby clique. that some of us might be a little more bitchy, hyper-competitive and self-involved that we think we are.

I’m not coming down on comics; They comprise a significant chunk of my closest friends. I’m just saying that over the last five years I’ve discovered a little dissonance between the advertisement and the reality of what it’s like. I really enjoy being part of my local comedy scene, but it’s not all a smooth ride. Some of the most turbulent and not-fun periods of my adult life have stemmed from conflicts within the scene. Sometimes navigating it feels dangerous and psychically draining. And, as I mentioned, all of us need to step back from it sometimes.

Something else I’ve learned over the last five years, something I didn’t expect, is how well you get to know yourself in the process. Becoming a comedian really is a process of learning about yourself, from discovering how you feel and react in situations you never imagined yourself in, finding out you’re capable of stuff you never expected, and to drilling down to discover how you actually feel about stuff you thought you had a set opinion on.

There’s many paths to self-knowledge, really looking under the hood and seeing how your engine works, from therapy to spiritual quests. I’ve participated in a few of these processes but I’ve found the journey to becoming a comedian is the most effective and surprising route to self-knowledge. It’s something I should dedicate a future post to.

I didn’t even do my first open mic until my fifties People who see me assume I’ve been at this game much longer than I have. Because I’m old. And because I’m fucking funny. I have no aspirations to put in two decades until I “make it.”

I actually found the narrative on how it takes 5 years to get good and 10-20 years for any actual success to come knocking quite discouraging.

One of my great regrets is not recognizing and addressing my desire to become a comedian three decades before I actually did. I’m reconciled to that. I don’t have any plans to quit my day job and become one of the lucky Netflix stars. Just being a comic and having that recognized by comedians I respect has exceeded anything I’d have put on a vision board. Becoming decent at it, getting positive feedback from my audiences and actually getting fans surpasses anything I’d have asked for.

I had no master plan, have no end-game. I also didn’t expect to still be doing this after half a decade, was sure I’d do it once and have an interesting story to tell at parties. Now I perform regularly, have people come specifically to see me, get paid, get treated as a peer and friend by artists I’m a fan of. It’s a pretty good gig 🙂

So do I get good now? Do I level up? I’m not sure. A year ago I kind of thought I was coming to the end of this whole trip, knowing I never intended to ride it forever. I’ve spent the last year doing it on my terms – fewer gigs and with smaller audiences, but longer shows so I’ve really gotten to develop and deliver proper structured sets – and I’ve spent much of that year intending to wind it all down.

But I also feel some leveling up has happened, and I just can’t resist the opportunity to test new powers.

Do you really get better after five years?
Ask me later. Or better yet, I’ll ask you.