I went to the Happy Basset Barrel House open mic (for comedians) last week. This was my second time to do this. The first time i played a funny song I wrote called Justin Case. This time I actually got up with just a mic and told stories. You probably wondering why I did this? Yeah, Me too. lol
I am getting ready to start booking and doing gigs. I needed to work on my witty banter, that I used between songs and also just to get more comfortable talking to crowds. Practice, Practice, and more practice. That is the only way to get good at doing anything. It doesn't matter if it's cooking chocolate chip cookies, singing, playing guitar or telling a joke.
Here are some of my ideas or witty banter that I'm thinking about sharing in my show. I just retired from Dillons grocery store. I messed up when I got that job. Where I messed up is, whenever I talk about going to my job, it is called going to work.
As a kid, I didn't want to go to a job. I wanted to go play. I remember wanted to be a professional baseball player, or a pro football player, (changed my mind, on this one) , or a guitarist in a rock band. All of these profession you do not go to work. No you play football, you play basketball, and you play guitar. This is where I messed up.
As a kid, I really believed that I could have a job where I could play for a living. Me and millions of other dreamers belived this. I grew up and realized that this dream was never going to happen. After I turned forty I realilzed that the NBA was never going to give me a call, so I quit going to the gym and practicing my jump shot.
I decided that I would pursue a job as a country songwriter. I wanted to get a publishing deal. This was my new dream. So I have been pursuing this for the last fifteen years. This made sense to me. I could do this.
I heard a statistic this week that blew me away. The stat was the odds of making it as a hit songwriter is smaller that the odds of playing professional football. Add up all of the football players in the NFL. This is easy to figure out. The number of spots on the roster times the number of teams in the NFL. There are less proffessional song writers with publishing deals in Nashville than their are football players.
I might want to rethink my strategy. Maybe getting a songwriting publishing deal is an unrealistic goal and I should go get my football out the garage and work on throwing some perfect spirals again.
The odds of achieving any long lasting success is tough in all areas of life. That's okay. Really, I wouldn't want it any other way. Success is not determined by how high we go up the ladder. No success is whether we every got on the ladder in the first place. So here's to doing my best and seeing how high I can go with God's help.