Standing up in front of a bunch of people who are expecting to laugh (or in some cases actively resisting laughter), and attempting to actually make them laugh is hard. Just motivating yourself to walk up to the mic sounds so stressful. What’s scary about doing comedy is during your performance you have real-time feedback. People either laugh at your jokes or they don’t, and there is little ambiguity to what each of those mean.
To go to other people and say, “Here I made this.” is scary. It makes you vulnerable. It takes a part of you and puts it out for the world to see… and to judge. The more you work on something, so bigger part of you it contains. And that is why I publish my blog publicly, because to not share it, to hide, would be to deny a part of myself and requires no effort on my part. If my goal is to grow, I need to fight against some resistance. Just like with exercise, if there’s no resistance, there’s no growth. For me, the stakes might not be as high as with the comic who is not only risking their pride as a comic, but also their reputation as a person, but it’s something.
