Category: travel

I was toying around with shutting this blog down because I hadn’t really been writing in it lately / because I’m a long time out of clown college / because every time I type up a blog post I delete it because it’s been written in an emotional frenzy that will bring along feelings of shame and regret.

Then I thought… hey isn’t that all part of this?

I mean, maybe it isn’t. But it has been for me, so I’m going to keep writing when I’m inspired. Or when I have time.

Time’s been a tricky thing lately. (see: always.) I’m back working a full-time job, which I had the pleasure of not having to do for a few years. Turns out that life’s only possible for a certain echelon of society not impacted by the increase of interest rates.

The weird thing about the job is that I really like it; I feel valued by my co-workers, I like the environment, I’m not someone’s assistant. I friggin’ got promoted within my first year of being there. (Temporarily – but that’s beside the point.)

Counterpoint. It’s not particularly creative, which means I still have to find time to perform, teach, learn and engage with the comedy (mainly improv) world’ my true joy and passion and love but that sadly doesn’t provide the same benefits as a Joe job. I’m both amazed and suspicious when I hear folks are able to make it work. I haven’t solved the puzzle (yet.)

This summer, the great city of Detroit helped me feel the at least some pieces were fitting. In May, the gals from Improv Niagara embarked on an awesome adventure down to the Detroit Women in Comedy Festival for a weekend of performance, learning, teamwork, Faygo and fun. Did you know weed is incredibly cheap in Michigan? You do now. If you seek pleasantly inexpensive edibles, look about you!

We stayed for a few nights in the neighbourhood of Hamtramck, which is incredibly fun to say. We arrived just barely on time to catch Susan Messing and Jamie Moyer serve up an education in hilarious duo improv. We took workshops, then got up on stage and did some hands-on learning of our own. I came home feeling refreshed, despite having stayed up very late.

In August, this time to Ferndale for a quicker visit, I made my debut performance in the Detroit Improv Festival with pals from Everything Improvised. We performed an improvised episode of the Bear, and I got to portray the performance stylings of local Niagara hero, Matty Matheson. The set was a joy, but the trip was brief. In future, I’d love to take in more of the fest.

I’m still doing the thing. I’m not sure why my mind keeps telling me I’m not doing the thing just because I have a day job again. Just because I’m doing the thing as a commuter. Just because I keep comparing myself to people who seem to be having a much easier time doing the thing. (what do I know?) Just because I’m friggin’ blogging about doing the thing instead of just doing the thing.

I was also toying around with changing the name of the blog, since we’re a long way away from clown college as it’s been abundantly clear more of this blog has been about navigating the comedy community as an anxious person. The anxious improviser? Too easy? anxiousimproviser69. There it is.

Today was a WEIRD DAY. I drove to Toronto in what was the most smooth drive to Toronto ever. I’m talking better than a Sunday good. Better than first Lockdown good. Got off on my exit, no problems. I left my place early, (as I normally do because traffic is so unpredictable) and got to the Distillery District for a wardrobe fitting with 45 minutes to spare! AND I found AMAZING parking!

I did the things you do when you have to kill time, but it’s Covid so you can’t go to a coffee shop and it’s Winter so I didn’t really feel like walking around outside. I sat in my car, checked some emails, set up my parking payment by re-installing the Green P app. (It’s been so long since I’ve used it, I deleted it from my phone!)

Nature called and I debated going to my fitting early to use the facilities, then I saw on Google maps that there was a public restroom (because it’s is the Distillery District and people drink lots of mulled wine,) so I grabbed my purse, my keys, my tuque, not my big winter jacket, I wasn’t going that far, and while opening the door, my finger slipped on the lock, locking the door. 

I thought to myself, “this is not a problem!” because I had put my keys in my purse when filling it up with with all those loose car-things that become purse-things when one exits their car. 

I got out of the car, the door slammed shut, and I thought, you know, maybe I should at least grab my scarf, it is a bit nippy. (The scarf is basically the size of a blanket.) 

I go to open the door. It’s locked. Right. I remember locking it. The locks work great!

I check my purse for my keys, find my key ring, but on it, there is no car key! There is every other key, but no car key. Where the heck is my car key?

I look around my purse, it’s not in there. I bend down to see if maybe it fell under the car. Nope. 

At this point a car pulls in directly beside me in the parking lot. (There are like TONNES of spots around the lot, why park RIGHT BESIDE ME, DUDE!?) It’s akin to the person sitting right next to you on the subway, but not because he just stood outside his car lurking (ie. probably waiting for people, whatever, I’m calling it lurking,) while I was crouched down on my hands and knees trying to find my key.

With 15 minutes left before my call time, I call my husband. He reminds me we no longer have roadside assistance because it’s the pandemic and we never drive anywhere any more. So we call CAA, and have to re-set up an account, re-set up payment, get transferred to the Toronto district office, schedule a truck to come break into my car so I can find my key. 

  • SIDE RANT! HEY! CAA, just saying here, you think you could call the guy, and get him to come over, because while you’re going through a million systems, some of which, oops just froze and we’ll have to try again, and speaking of freezing, I’m standing in -4 degree weather without a coat, (I mean, luckily I had a tuque and mitts – I’m not a complete amateur,) we could be getting something done here!

Like, get the guy to come fix my car, and while he’s on the way, we can set up the payment details and all that. Wouldn’t that make sense? So I’m not stranded outside my car in the cold for longer than I need to be? It’s bad enough I feel like an idiot, do we have to prolong the car-lean-of-shame any longer?

Anyway, the CAA guy came with in 5 minutes of the phone call so I was barely late for my call time, and the situation was resolved relatively easy. I do require his eyes to find the key because I couldn’t see it anywhere in the car. He found it UNDER THE PASSENGER SEAT! (How did it get there? It was in the ignition like two seconds before I got out of the car! What’s happening???)

Overall, it could have gone much worse. But sheesh. I don’t think I’m ever going to trust that easy of a drive into the city again. 

I love to travel. This shouldn’t be surprising. A lot of people like to travel. You probably love to travel. People who don’t love to travel have either 1) not travelled or 2) not travelled right… yet. (There’s still hope for them.)

There were a few things I worried about when I made the leap to the life of a comedian. One was: will I ever have enough money to travel again? (Noting that I spent a year in Europe back in the pre-comedy days and it totally changed my life.) It’s well documented that amateur comedians often don’t lead the most glamorous lifestyles. Most of us are just scraping by to make rent and / or feed ourselves. A lot of us end up getting day jobs to make that process a bit easier. (See The Constant Struggle Podcast.)

When I was getting started, it seemed pretty obvious the only way I could ever continue to travel was to become a stand-up comic, get hired by Yuk Yuk’s and only ever travel in Canada. So I gave stand-up the ol’ college try. (Literally. I went to college for stand-up.) Along the way, I got side-tracked with this wonderful thing called improv, and again by the calling of the craft of sketch. What can I say? Humans are by nature social animals. (And empaths don’t do super well listening to that much misery and misogyny.)

In spite of the joys I was getting performing sketch and improv, I kept telling myself if I wanted to travel, I needed to put more emphasis on my stand-up.

I’m only now realizing that I was dependent on an outside source to give me the ability to travel; when, like many other things in my career in comedy, it is in fact possible to just do it myself. Thinking back, in my first year outside of Humber, I co-produced a tour that hit three Canadian cities; Stratford, Ottawa, and Montreal. Afterwards, I was part of a Fringe show that took me to Winnipeg for the first time in my life. I took some personal trips to the comedy meccas of New York and Chicago. Another Fringe took me to Halifax for the first time, where I also took the opportunity to road-trip around PEI in case I never got back! Last year my sketch troupe visited Boston. I began teaching workshops and doing shows that took me back to my alma-mater city of Ottawa, and this summer, I’m booking regular shows in my stomping grounds in the Niagara Region.  And lo and behold, should I be ever-so lucky to have been asked to do some travail that’s taken me the furthest West I’ve ever been in our great country. Vancouver! And on my birthday, no less.

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They have mountains AND water here!

I am grateful. I am happy. I am travelling!

The long and short of it is, if you want to make travelling a priority in your performance plan; make it so, number ones! Just take a look at what the awesome gang at Daisy Productions are doing. Funding can be an issue, so they worked hard to raise a bunch of dollars to take their production LOL LOL LAND all the way to Orlando later this year. With that, they can combine performing AND a trip to DisneyWorld all in one shot! It’s genius. As I type this, my Assembly buds Grim Diesel are currently rocking the Chicago Improv Fest. Improv pros RN & Cawls are currently Down Under teaching courses and no doubt getting more material for their podcast while they’re at it. And I’m here in Vancouver. On my laptop. When I should be on a suspension bridge or something! Maybe not. It’s pretty late.

I guess this is just my own reminder, and maybe it’s helpful to you too, not to wait for someone to tell you what you can do. Figure out how to make it happen, and in the immortal words of everyone in Letterkenny (which I think is appropriate given how that show came to be. Look it up.): PITTER PATTER!