The race for life and other smaller tidbits

2 folk i’ve known literally all my life are now married to one another. Massive congrats to Humzah and Erim, I was partially involved in introducing them so I am doubly happy for them and wish them the all the best!

But I do feel though i’m somewhat at a standstill in comparison to my peers, I’ve done alot of minor things over the course of my life but I’ve done nothing recently. With the wedding of 2 friends (although I rarely saw or spoke to them over recent years) now over, i’m left thinking: “shit, what am I doing with my life.”

An attempt to enter and run the london marathon, weight training for britains strongest man heats and a job hunt. It does seems so frivilous in comparison to my peers, who have jobs, relationships and kids. I’m still chasing my dreams rather than living reality.

I love stand up. I love preforming, its still amazes me how much I love it but, I don’t chase it nearly enough as I should. Everyone else seems to be rocketing ahead with gigs and contacts and here I hide doing next to nothing comedy wise not one proper gig this month…

I’ve justified it in my head that because i’m not working I’ll save money by not gigging. When truth in point probably is I’m afraid, i’ve been told repeatedly by my peers and my respected heros of comedy that I could live the dream of doing stand up full time, if I just apply myself over the next few years. The problem is I’m more afraid that I’ll fail. I’d rather live as long as possible with the dream that I can become a professional entertainer rather than try and fail.

Perhaps I should take a leaf out of Erim and Hamzah’s book and take a leap.

More regular updates to come. Soon. Ish. Maybe.

Ross is on a boat.

He’s going quite fast supposedly.

Stupid Mortality

Everyone is going to die sooner or later, for me my father died when I was 4 years old, so you’d think I’d be accustomed to loss. But you’re never really ready for it when it comes out the blue when it did to me a few hours ago.

My aunt, died of a cerebral aneurysm yesterday, for the non medical, that’s a burst blood vessel in the brain. My aunt and I were never close, not in a emotional or even a physical sense, only 3 members of my family live in Europe, my aunt lived about 4000 thousand miles away in Pakistan. I had only met her a handful of times, the generational and cultural gap was far too large to bridge for any ties to be formed.

But, I still cared about her, and when I was with her I got the sense she cared a great deal about me too. The idea that she’s dead still doesn’t really compute in my brain, she broke her leg a few years back, and was very limited in her movements, my brother told me from his recent trip over, she was very depressed and wishing for death, because she felt as if she was a burden on her family and was in a great deal of pain. I’m glad that she’s no longer suffering the pain she was in but, i’m still quite unusually saddened by it.

Its brought back a lot of memories of when other members of my family have died, from my uncles to my father, and i’m catching myself wondering what will happen when my mother dies, and how will I cope?

I deal with grief in a very odd way, anger, just bursts of anger and elongated periods of silence, my brother said in my DNA that all bansaipuria (this would be the name my clan, its derived from my ancestral village somewhere in India) are like that. He went on to say its also an attempt to hide my true feelings of loss behind a veil of anger.

To be honest I think my brother attempts to psychoanalyse me far too much, I think its much simpler, I’m angry at the fact someone I cared about died additionally people irritate me quite easily.

But Auntie Sabra and everyone else in my family who’s passed away you’ll be missed by one guy who never got to know you as well as he should have and will never have the chance to again…

Grief aside, I need to stop using facebook for social planning, I’ve become way too dependant on it.

What the Deuce?

I’m officially no longer a student. Huzzah!

I’m just unemployed, less huzzah, the job hunt is going slowly, but I shouldn’t really be concentrating on only software engineering jobs, I have plenty of other talents like the ability to clean and tap dance.

Asim in beardland

I was at the So You Think You’re Funny (SYTYF)  Glasgow Heats, it was a good evening! Some really fantastic acts, special mad props are being thrown out to Sarah Cassidy for being fabulous tonight, my favourite act of the evening.  She was fantastic tonight, the last time I saw her gig was in March, and she’s come along leaps and bounds since. Absolutely brilliant, some really strong new material, she’ll only continue to grow and grow!

Everyone else was pretty damn good too, too many folk to name and individually give praise to, but on the whole a very good evening!  I never applied to do this competition, probably a good thing too, I wouldn’t want to compete against any of the folk that were on tonight, they were that good.

On that note, stand up competitions are a bit of a white elephant for me anyway, I don’t really want to do them, a number of comedians asked me why I hadn’t entered SYTYF, to save myself from the a number of “oh you should have you’d have done…” conversations I just told them, I missed the deadline that I’ll do it next year. Which for me is a big ass lie, I doubt I’m going to do it next year.

I somewhat fearful of being having my stand up critiqued, especially when I’m against my peers and people I’d consider friends. I’m critical enough of my performances, even the good ones,  I still hate myself and my act afterwards.

I was Ross Main, another fabulous comedian who also did absolutely amazing tonight -probably my second favourite of the evening-, that talked me into applying for  Take the Mic, using the line “what have you got to lose?”, now in the post apocalyptic world of take the mic, I tell you Ross what I have lost, my self respect, my pride and of course my will to live, thanks Ross, but to be fair to you, I never had much of the aforementioned anyway =)

Competitions are very daunting, and I don’t have the guts to do any more right now, rejection is scary, especially early on in a comedy career but, I’ve got a damn load of respect for those comedians that do and are willing to put themselves up to that kind of external scrutiny.

Anyway, fingers crossed its one of my peeps wins SYTYF, and that way I can ride their coat tails into gigs!

Finally onto a small matter of housekeeping now, i’d like to thank whoever it was, who visited the site for 14 minutes yesterday you were probably a bot, but, you pushed my site visitor stats to a new high, over 1000 visitors a week! Lets hope you’re not all bots.

In the meantime, writing my new material for the halt on Tuesday, should be epic, I’m on with 2 really good friends, the afore mentioned Ross Main, an old Friend that I known since way before either of us did Stand up, Daniel Webster and, 2 other veterans from Take the Mic Glasgow finals, including the winner, all in all, should be a good night!