mostly david ephgrave

Today I sent the following email to few friends and people I know in the industry: …and the first response I received was this, from a fellow comic: Don’t you just love humanity? I actually wasn’t contacting them in their unnecessarily overstated capacity as a promoter, but as a fellow human being - and one who knows what it's like to try to pull together an audience. I didn’t break any rules and wasn’t pestering or being pushy; I’d just dropped them a line in the hope they'd show interest; they were the ones being unprofessional by being so blunt. It’s disheartening when you try to generate interest in what you do to feel like you’re shouting into silence. It’s not like I’m giving it the hard-sell. it can be difficult to keep faith in the worth of my work at the best of times, without being hit by such unpleasantness; I wouldn’t speak to anyone like that, however right I thought I might be; if my email was that ann...

Today was a busy day of jumping from one thing to another, but ended up being productive nevertheless. I started the day feeling quite negative and overwhelmed by the situation I’m in work-wise at the moment and the things I need to do. If I allow myself to frame things negatively - which I’m prone to - there’s a sense that nothing’s changing and that aspects of my career are stagnating and won’t improve. Cast the net too widely and you can give yourself the distorted view that everyone else is better off than you; Facebook is a huge culprit in feeding this, which is why I try to keep my distance when I’m not at my best. Thankfully, a meeting this morning helped me vent my frustrations and reminded me of the good things that have happened recently that I’d forgotten. I came away invigorated and with a greater sense of purpose once I’d cleared the mental fug I’d woken up in. As I left, I picked up a message from my friend Sarah suggesting we...

I was feeling a little forlorn about trying to drum up interest - and an audience - for Wednesday's preview, and all the admin that goes with it, until I received a nice email from someone I'd invited, expressing frustration that they couldn't come.  This might sound like a standard response, if it weren't for the fact that this person -  who shall remain nameless - is of a high enough profile / doesn't know me that well to feel obliged to reply, yet they still did, and were really lovely in the process. They only said a few words, but it was still enough to make me feel more positive about what I was doing; particularly after a challenging day.  Working on your own can feel like a uphill slog. You fluctuate between feeling good about what you're doing and being generally unenthused by it. You have to constantly keep yourself in check, while splitting your time between writing, promoting, rehearsing, improving and keeping faith in what you're doing when fa...