She So Funny

By Samantha DeRose

I just made a New Year's Resolution not to mention, ever again, how late my blog is.  Starting....NOW!

What can I say about the title of this post?  Mundane?  Sure.  Why not.  I'll give you that. Want more mundane?

 I get up (5:55 a.m.), prep myself, make 3 cups of coffee, make two different breakfasts, drop kids off at two different bus stops, I work, I come home, and I throw together a gluten free lasagna (currently in oven).

It's a routine, ya see.  Sometimes it changes a smidge, but it's usually always goes back to much of the same.   Add a smattering of driving kids to tae kwon do, baseball, tennis,  or sport du jour, friends' houses, Barnes & Noble, Game Stop, but weekdays are pretty much the same.

Weekends, ditto. Wash laundry, light cleaning, grocery shop (OK, I do some of it online because I don't like people..but once in a blue moon I have to venture out to Costo, but only after bracing myself with a morning cocktail or 12. Seriously, I got there at 10 a.m. yesterday, opening time, and had to park four miles away for a place that doesn't bag your items.  OK.  I get it.  Hard to bag bulk, but GRRR...and do I really need 72 gallons of chili?), watch movies like The Graduate or The Goonies, make dinner, watch whatever's on HBO or Showtime, and go to bed.

My routine had always been a variation of the above minutia...

And then I found comedy and I became caught up in the whirlwind of trying to make people laugh on a fairly regular basis.  Suddenly, the mundane became manic, the banal (love that word because it looks like anal) became berserk, the dull - deranged, the humdrum - havoc.   Eh.  You get the picture.  There's definitely a high that you feel preparing, practicing, performing.  I'd hear people say, "Oh, once you catch the comedy bug, it's hard to break it."  Truth, brah, truth.

For the first two years, life for me was attending classes, coaching sessions, open mics, running open mics, being in shows, running shows, writing new material, fine-tuning old material, practicing new material, practicing old material.  All of which had to be squeezed into my pre-existing condition called "life as a working parent."

And it worked for a while.  The exhilaration and exhaustion seemed to oddly compliment one another...for a while.

I started to feel disheartened about the whole deal about 9 months ago.  I couldn't do both and I felt like a failure.  I would find that I'd beat myself up incessantly for not looking into comedy when I was in my 20s.  I had time back then, but what I had in terms of time, I lacked in confidence, something that, to many of us, comes with age.  Why, Why, Why did it take me until I was 40 to grow a proverbial pair and get up there?

I felt that a life that I really and truly wanted had slipped through my fingers.  I found myself so envious of the young comics who had the courage to grab the brass ring o' comedy at a young age.  I found myself envious of the successful comics who were able to juggle raising a family,  a day job, and comedy.

I reached a real turning point last week.  I decided to stop pretending to be something I wasn't and chalk it up to a learning experience.  Another chapter in the unwritten memoir.  I've learned a lot about myself.  I enjoyed the ride, the people, the performances, the flow of the creative juices.  By the same token, I made some big mistakes when it came to people, made some big mistakes when it came to my own character, all of which I hope has shaped me into a better, if not wiser person.

That being said, I'll be performing at the following places:
Tuesday, March 19, Otto's Shrunken Head 8pm, NY, NY
Sunday, April 14, Tierney's Tavern - Hosting 8pm, Montclair, NJ
Friday, April 19, Grover's Mill - 8pm, West Windsor, NJ

Guess I'll give it a few more (days) (weeks) (months) (years)?  Who knows.