I'm Back Again

I haven't been here for a little while. I was trying out a different approach because, quite frankly, I wasn't getting the results that I was looking for here. I was getting decent traffic but no interaction. So, I started over with a new site. I got really serious and set out to make the new blog what I had always hoped this one would be.

The more serious that I got about making it successful the less fun I was having writing it. I got my traffic up right away but still hardly any interaction. No one ever comments. Comedy is very hard to do with zero feedback. I know that I find it funny but does anyone else? Hard to say because I can't get anyone to talk or respond no matter what I try. I never even stopped to realize it may be because I have no idea what I'm doing.

I always used to just do this blog for fun. I love to make people laugh, I always have. Stand-up is great for a personality like that and that's why I love it. I never get tired of making people laugh. I started the blogging as a way to work out ideas, share actual bits, or anything else that I feel like doing that I think is funny. Everything about it I loved for a long time. I'd work on this thing for hours and that lasted for years until it started to bother me that I got the amount of views I did but no one ever comments on anything.

I began to drift away from the new site entirely. I let the URL expire and now it just sits there in the void deserted. While I was away from blogging I got really into politics because of this guy Bernie Sanders. I am now all in with trying to use the system to improve our world instead of just bitching about it. It has consumed me you could even say, I may even have to change my comedic style as a result.

Getting into and involved in politics and activism has kept me pretty occupied in my free time for about a year now but I still really miss doing what I once loved to do here. So, if you do know what you are doing, maybe you can help me grow and develop this blog into what I've always hoped it would be. A place dedicated to all things comedy with a community of like minded individuals having fun and joking around. Like a digital comedy club after close if you will. When it's just the comics and the staff hanging out and talking shit.

If you're new here, look around there's years of stuff on here and if you have something to say speak up, I don't bite anyone but my baby.

Blogging, and why I do it

     Hi, my name is Shawn and I am an addict.  I am addicted to blogging.  I do not know why.  I don't understand my obsession with blogging in the slightest bit but, the fact remains, I cannot stop doing it.  I know this because this blog is a constant pain in my ass, yet it if the very first page I load up every time I start up my computer, and this blog is something that I think about all the time.  I'm sick, and I need help.
     This little blog drives me nuts!  I don't even know how to blog honestly.  I treat this thing like it is a website and I scrutinize every thing I post even though I've never made a single dime from doing it, and for all I know no one even reads it.  I could just be a madman screaming jokes at an empty room.  There are probably 50,000 things that I could be doing with my time that are way more productive, and certainly more beneficial than working on my little comedy blog but, I don't even do 1 of those 50,000 things.  No, I sit and watch a counter rise ever so slowly and do all I can to keep that number climbing towards God knows what for no reason or reward what-so-ever.
     Is it better than spending my free time watching cartoons and brainless sit-com's?  Yes, of course it is, but so is staring at an empty wall.  Is it as sad as collecting unopened action figures while living my adult life out a virgin who lives in his mothers basement?  Slightly, but not much isn't.  Is it bettering my life at all, in any way?  No, it isn't.  It is slowly driving me insane.  That is what it is doing.
     I'm a comedian.  I love to make people laugh.  I love to tell jokes and make people happy.  How I became consumed with doing what is usually rewarded by laughter in a comedy club, where comedy is meant to live, to doing it silently on the Internet rewarded only by a slowly climbing visit counter confuses me endlessly.  Yet, here I sit, rattling away at a Denny's typing my nonsense feverishly in hopes that people read it, and someone, anyone, takes just ten seconds out of their day to let me know they were here and enjoyed their visit.
     The only explanation I can offer as to why I continue to do this is that I am addicted.  I love to work on this little blog.  And, I guess that is just going to have to be OK.  I'm not hurting anyone with my obsession and it could be worse.  I could have tried crack instead of blogging in my free time.  If I had I'd be less full of cheese fries right now, and instead of enduring Denny's slow internet right now I'd probably be living in a box in the alley behind it.    

Liebster Blog Award

     The Armchair Squid has graciously presented me with The Liebster Blog Award so, in receiving this award Laughing at Life, 2 has now got some real blogging street cred.  I've finally made it Momma, Top of the world!
     Being presented with the prestigious Liebster Blog Award comes with a few responsibilities.  As a recipient of the award I need to give 11 fun facts about myself, answer the 11 questions about me that were asked by The Armchair Squid, then award a Liebster to 11 other bloggers and ask them 11 new questions.  Then if my choices for a Liebster are good enough to, they can in turn repeat those steps to keep this award going.

Are you Laughing at Life, 2?

     Life can be very hard, painful, and extremely stressful as well.  Luckily, it can also be hilarious and it often is too, if you know where and how to look at it.  That is what is so healing and necessary about the art of comedy.  That is also why I love doing it so much.  I love making people laugh.  It's like a drug to me and it is to most of the other comics that I know as well.  
     We comics are mostly all just a bunch of sad clowns who see the world through a skewed view that allows us to translate it into humor.  We need our audience as much or more than they need us.  The relationship between the comedian and the audience is a very intimate one even if it doesn't fully show on the surface.  The audience benefits from the release of the laughter and the comic benefits from the audience's laughter itself.
     Making people laugh is like our own version of cheap therapy, and it's our anti-depressant drug too.  It is for me at least.  Making people laugh and feeling that acceptance and praise is why I do it.  It's what drives me to write and perform.  I love to entertain people and hear them laugh.  I need it, it's my drug, and I've been addicted to it ever since I first stepped onto a stage and felt it.