Pace-Plan-Prioritise
Friday 14th November 2025
It’s been a busy week, and yet, I had to cancel most of the things I had on owing to prioritising learning some new stuff for last night’s pro comedy night. So technically, I was less busy. But I was actually very busy. Just busy doing one thing rather than five or six and it made for a very dull week. Prioritising. My counsellor would say that is progress.
The gig was good. The acts were encouraged to test out new stuff. The quality bar was high and I have the confidence in my material and delivery to know I belong at this level so I was really looking forward to it. It’s simply the fact I hate the line learning. I enjoy writing new material. I love performing it because of the increased jeopardy because you genuinely have no idea if it works until you do it on stage. It’s just the bit in the middle that I find horrendous.
The closer aside, we all had fifteen minutes last night. Which was great. It’s nice to be able to do these longer sets which allow your work to breathe. I had a number of newish bits I was tweaking but also a completely new bit which was meant to be part of a brand new 4 mins to include. I find writing new material easy. I wish the rest of my writing was going as well as the stand up writing. But learning it, while I have massively improved in this area, I can see why so many actors hate learning lines. It’s monotonous and very difficult. I looked at acting courses over the summer specifically for line learning but looking at the various syllabuses, the line learning was a very small part of the overall course. There were specialist memorisation technique courses but they cost something ridiculous. I spoke to some actor friends and they told me there wasn’t much out there. It’s just something every actor has to deal with.
On Tuesday, I did 5.5 and a half hours of rehearsing, turning on the stopwatch on my phone and running the battery down, going as far as pausing the clock for any break, however momentary BECAUSE I HAVE OCD AND 5.5 HOURS HAS TO BE 5.5 HOURS EXACTLY. I am like an American sport. The clock gets stopped and for every single minute, the ball is in play. However, at least to me, when you consider these 5.5 hours were spread out across a twelve hour day, one of which also included rewriting/tweaking some of the new material, doesn’t seem that productive.
I had cancelled one writing class to tackle this rehearsing and linked to that, a big writing event I was meant to be reading at this month. Having only attended four of the last eight classes run by this particular writing group, I didn’t feel it was right that I have the opportunity to read a piece at an annual showpiece event when I might have been taking the spot of someone who has committed more time to the group. The work had been submitted and accepted. I’m confident it would have gone down well but given I am struggling to get to those classes regularly, I wasn’t comfortable taking up the opportunity.
Then on Wednesday, I had to bail out of yoga again. This was the second consecutive week I’d dropped out. Last week was because of the fatigue. This week was down to still struggling with the rehearsing. I do feel the yoga class is the right thing for me to do, but two hours is a lot. It’s boring and it’s more monotony in my life. That said, I do believe yoga will stand me in good stead so I have to try and salvage this course and learn more yoga poses to go with the few I have been getting down since the spring. I do feel though a regular one-hour yoga class is better than an eight-week course of two-hour sessions. Especially when you have to take out your phone during the interval to fill out a survey. When I am on the yoga I want it to be phone-free.
Then in the evening I had to pull out of one of my college evening writing classes for the first time. This rarely happens. My attendance, historically, with courses is brilliant, but I must also acknowledge that going back to my youth, I would string together these incredible attendance records only for that first absence, when it eventually came, to trigger a monumental downward trajectory in my attendance. I am all about habits. Good ones and bad ones. This week’s cancellations have left me concerned I may be on one of those arrow down journeys. Thankfully my dedication to the gigging is relentless and I think that’s partly down to knowing if I stop or ever pull out of a gig, I might get comfortable at home.
I did manage to cram in two runs this week. A 6.5k poodle around the park yesterday during which I ran the lines in my head twice, one for each lap. Through those runs I was able to add in new bits. Without that blue sky thinking that the running triggers, that wouldn’t happen. That’s always been a plus of the running for me. Or THE plus. The 6.5k was proper laps of the park but earlier in the week, in lazy mode, I had simply run around the cricket pitch to complete a slow 5k. Curiously, the wicket aside, it’s an all-grass cricket surface and when the grass is long, it just zaps the energy from your legs, like they used to say about the old Wembley. It really is easier just to run proper laps of the park and get on the trails, as boggy as they are at this time of year.
Despite all the rehearsing, I still managed to get one bit in the wrong order last night but I am experienced enough these days to not let that throw me. Over the last couple of years, I am much looser on stage. I think the bigger issue here was just the pedant in me being irked with myself that this happened. Now I am doing more 15s and 20s, chances are this will happen more frequently.
The thing I get a lot of satisfaction from right now is my ability to change my sets every night and in usually remembering the new running order. I bullet point it on a card and then will run through it between ten to thirty times that day. That may not be standard practice with acts. I suspect that rehearsing and remembering running orders feeds into my OCDs and occasionally manic behaviour.
For instance, at last night’s show, being the penultimate act, I ran through the bullet points again at least five times during everyone else’s set before I went on. Sometimes, if I get the order wrong in these mental run-throughs while I am at the gig and about to go on, I think to myself, ‘This shouldn’t be happening. Not at this late stage.’ And I start again.
Continues below
I also make sure I do my diaphragmic breathing, a legacy of this year’s rehab, and an invaluable one at that. I think that technique will be with me for good now. It’s very effective in calming you down and focusing. I’d probably use it in the moments before any future prostate examination and who knows, the Doctor might be impressed. I’m not saying he’d share this with me, but I think he’d make a mental note and perhaps check my medical records out of curioisity, establishing I’d spent the summer in rehab and would most likely have picked up the diaphragmic technique there.
Gig-wise it’s been a very quiet week. I could’ve chased more gigs this weekend but last week was hard and as my counsellor keeps drumming into me, I need to grasp the three ‘Ps’.
Pace
Plan
Prioritise
I’ve certainly been better with one and three this week. The problem with my planning is I do too much. I was always going to wilt at some point juggling four different writing classes in the run up to Christmas with not only yoga, but all the gigging. And of course, with Christmas just 40 days away now, there are Star Wars Football Christmas Cup fixtures to fulfil. Expanded to 16 teams in recent seasons, the Last 16 second legs kick off tonight with both Death Star and Ajan Kloss holding comfortable aggregate leads over Rebels and Bora Vio respectively. Last Sunday, before my Brockley gig, and shortly before Manchester City handed Liverpool their behind in the Premier League, 8-times League Champions Tattooine were humbled 1-0 at home in their first leg by the league’s smallest club Zonama Sekut. It’s likely Tattooine’s big guns will be back for the second leg as they look to turn around their faltering season but there is a growing sense that Sekut, led by the inspiration veteran, Squid Head, will close this out.
Star Wars Football, my old podcast listeners will be familiar with this, is my happy place but as I push deeper into the Stand Up circuit, the seasons have taken far longer to complete. Silver Age Season 8 took 21 months - insert exclamation mark here. Silver Age 10 has sought to redress this by scaling back the European fixtures.
It’s also been a week of workmen. I’m always impressed by my plumber. He works around water but has never felt the need to use my loo. I was a little concerned the heavily-ringed guy repairing the fridge door this afternoon would ask but he also left without needing it. Cue massive relief. The key is never offering them refreshments. This week I have new kitchen taps and a fridge door now opening on the other side, so it will take some getting used to. The fridge door arguably now opens on the correct side. I have spent three years opening it from the left which sums this flat up. I love left-sided things and movements. But the fridge door really should open from the right.
Back to normal next week with five gigs which again will test me. Not much brilliant planning there but I’m hopeful I can attend my two evening classes.
I’m off to do some late shopping now and tonight, in between those Christmas Cup games (the final is always played on Christmas Eve), I’ll be treating myself to a bowl of porridge.
Love the oats.
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