I’ll be honest with you. The reason I wanted to get into stand-up comedy was not a good one. I was drawn to the prospect of working an hour per night. Do you know how stupid I was to think that? Let me tell you how stupid I was in great detail.

Living in a small town means there aren’t many opportunities to perform stand-up. Rather than driving an hour to the nearest comedy club for a chance at 5 minutes, I messaged all the local bars on Facebook. I told them I would do 60 minutes and bring my own equipment. Anyone in the stand-up scene can tell you how stupid I was to tell them I could do 60 minutes for my very first performance. My overconfidence was astounding. I book the show 1 month out. I have time to prepare.

A month is plenty of time, but I waste none. The first day I spent an hour writing. “That’s an hour of material” I thought. Time to read it out loud. Oh no! Either the clock is broken or I have to spend the next 11 hours writing. Day after day I wrote joke after joke. Finally I had an hour of material. Time to read it out loud. Oh no! Only 10 minutes was funny. I did so much research and writing and panicking over the month of preparation that I couldn’t possibly screw it up. Right? Right?!

Wrong! It’s the day of the show. I arrive early to prepare. Terror punches me in the face. I pace around behind the building making sure I’m not actually peeing myself but my nerves are just having a moment. It’s time to perform. I have to go now or never. I put on a brave face. I took the microphone and started on my rehearsed routine. Immediately one of the staff members interrupted me and threw off my whole energy. I’m 30 seconds in and panicking. Where are my jokes? Not in my head anymore, that’s all I can say for sure. I skip ahead to the first joke I can remember. It does okay but everyone is so far away that I can’t hear them laughing and the wait staff are walking back and forth in front of me while messing up everyone’s orders. Things are not going great. I’m still in control and it’s not my fault, I press on. I tell all the jokes I can remember, in no particular order. Most jokes are landing but I’m still panicking at the lack of audible laughter. One sweet soul, a savior in the crowd, yells to me from across the room. “Keep going! You’re doing great Ryan!”

Thank you good man! You have given me the strength to carry on! I made it 30 minutes before I could not remember anything else. I told the crowd I had to be done. Again, my hero called out to me. “Keep going! You got this man!”

A woman joins in. “You can do it!”

I ask the audience if they mind me using my notes. They encourage me. Fantastic crowd. I pull out my phone and proceed to do another 15 minutes of jokes. I made it through 45 minutes of a very rough performance my very first time. While it didn’t go as well as I wanted it to, I was hooked. Someone who runs an open mic reached out to me after the show and invited me. I’ve been going to that open mic every time they host it and will continue to do so until they stop.

I’ve realized that comedy is an art and a science. There is so much more labor that goes into writing a good joke than most people could imagine. This realization led me to create a podcast called “Road To Star-Dumb” (RTSD). I have plans to start hosting my own open mic in the near future. Finally, I’ll be looking to perform a full show again as soon as possible.

Instead of making a living working an hour per night, I’ve worked my butt off and spent 5 figures on getting my own projects going. It’s not what I imagined. I love it and I will not stop until I succeed!