I'm not the funniest anymore

My first month in San Francisco

It's the whole big fish little fish thing. For most of my comedy career I was the funniest comedian around. (Of course the comedians in Iowa will claim that they were funnier, but they're wrong.) So I come out to San Francisco and suddenly there are many comedians who are much funnier than I am. My poor little ego was all crushed and broken.

My girlfriend kept telling me that here is no such thing as "the funniest" and that I'm funny in my own special way. Yeah, I loved hearing that! But she was right. I started trying to exploit what makes me different from the others and I instantly got much funnier.

I also discovered something weird. I went from no stage time to too much stage time. As I quickly progressed on stage, my material was lagging behind. I didn't notice this until I cut out a few nights because my girlfriend was complaining that she was lonely. When she said that I realised I hadn't spent an evening with her in over two weeks. So I backed off a bit, and found myself writing new material again. I still haven't found the perfect balance of writing and performing, but there both getting better.