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Yes - standup comedy. I’m 47. Started 2 years ago, background mostly “nerdy” and not hyper social. Have done some paid gigs and performed for crowds of up to 15
by harryf 6y ago
Yes - standup comedy. I’m 47. Started 2 years ago, background mostly “nerdy” and not hyper social. Have done some paid gigs and performed for crowds of up to 150.
And at 38 learnt rock climbing ... got quite far with that until was stopped by an injury.
Also more recently podcasting and literally today Adobe Audition. More nerdy I guess but still.
Somehow programming is a good career to have a mindset of “I can learn anything”. The only thing I really think speaks against age when it comes to learning new things is your ability to dedicate time to get deep into whatever you’re learning. Job, family and other commitments etc can make it harder but if you’re willing to sacrifice some Netflix time many things become possible. Perhaps the other point is motivation - I won’t “waste time” learning things if I’m not highly motivated to do it - perhaps it’s an awareness that time is more precious now, I don’t know.
- akudha 6y agowow, standup comedy. Performing anything in front of people is hard, comedy is even more harder. This is awesome. Did you follow any structure to learn comedy? Or are you a natural?
- harryf 6y agoHonestly I “nerded” it. There’s a bunch of “how to” videos on YouTube plus I was anyway watching a lot of comedy. The pattern I’ve seen when people start standup seems to go like this ... Extroverts who are comfortable in front of people tend to try to “wing it” and don’t prepare material. Introverts (like me) tend to work harder on the material and actually having good jokes. This can be advantageous but you have to put the work in preparing. If you’ve ever done a talk at a conference or otherwise, that probably helps. What’s interesting about comedy is it seems to exploit a “bug” in the way the human brain works. The most basic form of a standup joke is basically; 1. Create tension for the audience, 2. Release the tension with surprise ... there’s plenty of material online explaining this and I even read somewhere that there are only something like 21 possible joke structures to make a crowd laugh. What I love about comedy is it’s a craft, much like programming. The goal is to make a room full of people laugh at the same time but there are so many variables that can influence that, there is no single solution to the problem... hence it’s a craft.
- akudha 6y agoThank you for answering. Do you have your standup videos online?