a priori/a posteriori

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Encouragement vs. Discouragement, part 1

I’ve lost count exactly, but I got 90-100 sets in in January, and 70-80 in February. Which puts me on track to do about 1000 sets this year.

You don’t realize it night to night, but that experience adds up. Each night can be so similar to the last, and each week can feel so similar, that you don’t realize that you’re getting better the whole time. You don’t realize that it makes a difference that you’re hustling.

I did an 8-minute set at a club two weekends ago, and it was the most comfortable I’ve ever felt in a club setting. I started a conversation with one couple, and riffed with them. But unlike in the past, I was able to transition that into bits that I’ve come up with and been working on the past few months. When I got the 7-minute light, I still hadn’t stopped the original conversation, but it had expanded to a conversation with the crowd as a whole, and I’d been able to go into 3 or 4 of the bits I’ve written over the past few months. All without having to give up the conversation. I was able to crush my set, without ever stopping my conversation with the crowd. It might have been the easiest set I’ve ever done.

I don’t know if I could have done that for an hour. But I know I wasn’t slowing down yet. It felt really good. And it was something I know for a fact I couldn’t have done six months ago.

It was 8-minutes that will hopefully fuel me. It can be hard to keep your morale up here, night to night. The first time you do 5 sets in a night, it’s exhausting, but exhilarating. When you’re doing 4 or 5 sets a night for the 3rd time that week...it loses its novelty. It’s just exhausting.

Let’s talk about that in part 2.

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