I found it very hard to wake up this morning. I don't know why I was so tired. I was woken at 7am to some knocking on the front door. I'm not sure who it was, though I suspect it may have been my girlfriend's sister. I didn't get up.
The alarm periodically managed to raise me from my slumber, but somehow managed to sleep on until well into "The Danger Zone". With some effort, I managed to disentangle myself from the bed sheets, stop stroking the cat - it's habit for us both now - and get myself dressed and out of the door. The drive to work was accompanied with the excellent Gavin Webster - in CD form, rather than in person, of course... that would be weird.
My morning in the office was ok. I continued tickling some code, which is teaching me the ways of a new language, without actually challenging me too much. Then I found out that there was no more of this code to tickle. It's pretty much all done. D'oh. Just when I was getting into it.
So, nothing.
I'll have to fill my time with reading things and the occasional blog entry, then.
Very dull.
Planning Holidays
All is not lost, though. I have finally managed to complete the arrangements for our trip to Kenya this month. I'm very good at starting things and getting 95% of the way to completion, but really poor at the finishing touches. I don't know why that is. It just is. Note to self - try to avoid doing this when living in your own home again.
Anyway, the Kenyan holiday form has now been filled out and returned to the folks in Kenya. Well, they're in Kent, but that's only a couple of letters different, right?
I even paid for the Safari, which my holiday insurance would prefer I organised here, as, apparently, British organised Lions are more insurable than Kenyan-native-organised ones. Something like that. I think it's probably more like something to do with suing people, but don't quote me on that.
Planning Gigs
History generally repeats itself, as no doubt would be confirmed by looking back on this date over the last few years:
In general, too, October and November are two of my busiest gigging months and I'm presently working on getting bookings enough to keep me busy in this, my fourth end-of-year season as a comedian. The problem I have at the moment is that if I over-book myself then I will create much stress in the home. If I underbook myself, then I will fail to capitalise on what I feel is the strength I've recently consolidated. It's a tough balancing act.
I want to advance as an act, but it's a competitive industry and there are times when I find myself advancing through a particular club's career path, only to find that when I reach the top of their staircase, the door had been locked to me all along. This is very frustrating. It's probably the opinions of about 6 people in the country that determine whether I get anywhere in a given year... but getting "somewhere" is different to gigging a fair bit and enjoying myself doing it. To those who seem to think that my act is "not for them" or "not for their club" then I say "boo". I'm not giving up and I'll keep trying things and improving things until someone goes "Ah yes, Ashley... I've always thought he was pretty good".
So, I'll be slaving away at this for some time, then.
It's still good fun and I have 21 gigs in the diary to look forward to.
My space
For reasons that I can't quite fathom, I've set myself up a MySpace site. This is just an excuse to beg people you vaguely know to be your friends. Theoretically it might be an effective place to manage my gig diary, but I quite like doing that on my own website. We'll see. At the very least, it has been a good excuse to get my new promo photograph into the wild. I quite like this photo.
The alarm periodically managed to raise me from my slumber, but somehow managed to sleep on until well into "The Danger Zone". With some effort, I managed to disentangle myself from the bed sheets, stop stroking the cat - it's habit for us both now - and get myself dressed and out of the door. The drive to work was accompanied with the excellent Gavin Webster - in CD form, rather than in person, of course... that would be weird.
My morning in the office was ok. I continued tickling some code, which is teaching me the ways of a new language, without actually challenging me too much. Then I found out that there was no more of this code to tickle. It's pretty much all done. D'oh. Just when I was getting into it.
So, nothing.
I'll have to fill my time with reading things and the occasional blog entry, then.
Very dull.
Planning Holidays
All is not lost, though. I have finally managed to complete the arrangements for our trip to Kenya this month. I'm very good at starting things and getting 95% of the way to completion, but really poor at the finishing touches. I don't know why that is. It just is. Note to self - try to avoid doing this when living in your own home again.
Anyway, the Kenyan holiday form has now been filled out and returned to the folks in Kenya. Well, they're in Kent, but that's only a couple of letters different, right?
I even paid for the Safari, which my holiday insurance would prefer I organised here, as, apparently, British organised Lions are more insurable than Kenyan-native-organised ones. Something like that. I think it's probably more like something to do with suing people, but don't quote me on that.
Planning Gigs
History generally repeats itself, as no doubt would be confirmed by looking back on this date over the last few years:
- September 2005 in which I was gigging in Penzance and Blackpool and organising my holiday
- September 2004 in which I was so busy I failed to blog for nearly a month, but eventually blogged about gigs and The Musical!
- September 2003 in which I was blethering about musicals, home cooking, gigs and more gigs
In general, too, October and November are two of my busiest gigging months and I'm presently working on getting bookings enough to keep me busy in this, my fourth end-of-year season as a comedian. The problem I have at the moment is that if I over-book myself then I will create much stress in the home. If I underbook myself, then I will fail to capitalise on what I feel is the strength I've recently consolidated. It's a tough balancing act.
I want to advance as an act, but it's a competitive industry and there are times when I find myself advancing through a particular club's career path, only to find that when I reach the top of their staircase, the door had been locked to me all along. This is very frustrating. It's probably the opinions of about 6 people in the country that determine whether I get anywhere in a given year... but getting "somewhere" is different to gigging a fair bit and enjoying myself doing it. To those who seem to think that my act is "not for them" or "not for their club" then I say "boo". I'm not giving up and I'll keep trying things and improving things until someone goes "Ah yes, Ashley... I've always thought he was pretty good".
So, I'll be slaving away at this for some time, then.
It's still good fun and I have 21 gigs in the diary to look forward to.
My space
For reasons that I can't quite fathom, I've set myself up a MySpace site. This is just an excuse to beg people you vaguely know to be your friends. Theoretically it might be an effective place to manage my gig diary, but I quite like doing that on my own website. We'll see. At the very least, it has been a good excuse to get my new promo photograph into the wild. I quite like this photo.
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