Moment...ummmm.

Pre-progress umming and ahhing. How Not to Succeed in Comedy Without Really Trying.

If you want to progress in comedy, you need momentum. Momentum comes from constant gigging. Through gigging you get good, your name stays buzzing around the heads of acts then promoters then agents then critics then producers and finally everybody else. What's more you have to live and breathe comedy. You socialise with comedians, you know individual agents and their proclivities, you're at every festival. You become the furniture of the comedy bedsit. Status is important, comparison is important, momentum is important. Not for your mental health or relationships, largely it's disastrous, but it's the price that comedy demands.

This guy knows what he's doing.

I haven't been willing to pay that price for a long time. I lost my momentum long ago. Every year I've watched acts below me leapfrog over my head. Firm circuit friends will now ignore me because there are others around me more worthy of their attention, some established acts who I started out with will look at me in bewilderment and ask me what I'm doing and even offer me some pity one off gig with acts several rungs up from me, but promoters are no longer excited about the prospect of asking me to gig for them. A few promoters still hold me in high regard and book me for well paid gigs outside London, but my lack of positive press quotes and inflated five star reviews do not go unnoticed when it comes for them to send posters to print. To date, Newbury Today's five year old estimation of me still appears on flyers for regional clubs.

I'm certainly better and more consistent than I've ever been but this means nothing when you no longer have the momentum. Better to be fresh and raw and brimming with potential than to be seasoned and discounted and yet more complacent. The fire quickly goes out unless constantly fueled. Somehow I have become a hobbyist.

I have to decide whether I'm willing to bury myself in the feverish core of planet stand up or to continue coldly orbiting the maelstrom from afar. There is no halfway. The inescapable truth is that success in any field usually requires more of yourself than you're willing to give.

Follow Ed O'Meara at @edfomeara. It won't help ya none.