Me and My Mental Health: Coronavirus Special Edition

I actually started writing this blog last Monday, for Mental Health Awareness Week; however, due to a week where my depression was particularly bad, I didn't finish it in time. How appropriate.

After leaving school in 2010, I was unemployed for a long time. I remember ending 2010 with around £38 in my bank account, and saying to myself "this time next year, you'll have more than £500 to your name at the start of the year". Due to a couple of reasons - either remaining unemployed, or balancing a part-time job at Sainsbury's with relentlessly gigging - I didn't actually manage to achieve that target for almost a decade.

In January of this year, though, I finally achieved it. For the first time in my life, I started a year with some financial stability. Not only that, but in the same month, I sold out a 3 night run at the Soho Theatre. This meant that January of this year was the very first month - apart from the August (because of the Edinburgh Fringe) -  that I had earned enough money that I was making a real living from comedy. 

I had spent around 9 years of my adult life either fighting to survive on benefits, or trying to stretch every penny on a retail wage to make my dream come true. To have reached a stage where I could make a living doing a job I love was such an incredible feeling. Not only that, but after one of the Soho Theatre shows, I was talking with my girlfriend about the idea of us getting a place together. We weren't talking about a specific time period - odds are it wouldn't have been in 2020 regardless - but it felt good that I could even enter that conversation and feel like I would be able to contribute, whenever the move happened.

My diary had some exciting, nicely paid gigs in there - none that would have bought a house - or even a room in London, to be honest - but for a guy who worked for £7 an hour this time 2 years ago, it would have been more than enough for me to comfortably live on, with space to put some money away.

In February, I signed with an agent; I was booking tour shows for I, Tom Mayhew; I felt really, really good, and positive. 

It was the best my mental health has been in the past decade.

THE END. AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

...

Yeah, if only! Safe to say, I am really finding this whole COVID-19 thing difficult. I am not sleeping very well at all. I am back signing on, which feels particularly gutting. There are days where I question every decision I made before a pandemic that we had no idea was coming.

I am finding it a real struggle. It feels like there is part of society that makes people think you're not allowed to say that - y'know, the people who will say "well, people have it worse, so you shouldn't complain".

But part of recognising the need for mental health care and services is the acknowledgement that there isn't a hard and fast system. It isn't a hierarchy of sadness, where only the saddest 5% can struggle.

Yes, things could be worse for me during this - my Dad has lymphoma cancer and had chemo earlier in the year, so I am fully aware of the huge risk that covid-19 is to people. He has only left the house since February a handful of times, and that was to have radiotherapy, which he started seeing as "a day out". So I'm not downplaying coronavirus, or the awful impact it is having in terms of people literally dying.

However, it is also important to respect that a lot of people will be depressed, and/or struggling, with things that aren't strictly life or death, as there have been so many huge shifts in the way that people are living. Whether that's losing a job, or just missing social interaction down the pub. It's perfectly fine to feel shit right now. I'd argue that you're in the minority if you don't feel that way, frankly.

I suppose I thought it was important to write this, because people who are struggling might tell themselves "oh, I can't complain about how I feel, with all this other stuff going on", but that isn't the case. Your mental struggle isn't any less legit during a pandemic. If anything, considering how sudden and huge the impact to our daily lives has been, it should be taken even more seriously right now than ever.

Stay safe. Take care. Don't be afraid to share.

Stuff I Did in April 2020: Streaming, Virtual Snooker and a Heist

Hello, and welcome to a new series of blogs on my channel, imaginatively titled "Stuff I Did". Near the start of each month, I will give a rundown of my creative output the previous month, as well as a general rundown of the month itself.

April 2020 was the first month since September 2014 - when I started gigging regularly - where I did 0 gigs. Not one. Not even a virtual gig. Edinburgh was confirmed as cancelled, and my booked shows at Greater Manchester Fringe and Brighton were removed from my diary, along with a load of paid gigs I was looking forward to. This meant that April was a month where I had to both find a new creative outlet, as well as try to find a new way of bringing in some money.

In terms of creativity, I tried to make sure I did at least one creative thing a day, just to make sure I still felt like I was being productive. For 14 days in a row, I streamed on Twitch, playing a mixture of Fire Pro Wrestling, Snooker 19 and Crash Bandicoot on my PS4. Through a mixture of putting out regular content, posting about it on social media, and engaging with the streams of others, I managed to get myself to 50 followers, and become a Twitch affiliate! This did feel like a success; however, I could not shake my frustration with the quality of the steams. They often had moments where the screen would buffer, or the picture quality would be poor - I can only describe it as being like a video filmed on an old Nokia - and there were even a couple of occasions where the stream would completely crash. Ultimately, this has led me to the conclusion that streaming just isn't an option for me at this time, as we simply don't have good enough internet to do so. 

I remember a few years ago, when I wrote an article about being a working-class comedian for the British Comedy Guide, there were a couple of people who responded "well if you can't afford to do Edinburgh, just make things online, everyone can do that" - and yeah, most people have the internet, and they can put videos online, but it is ridiculous to believe that money doesn't also skew the creative side of the internet into rich people's favour. It's everything from having the best internet and best equipment, to being able to play the latest (so inherently, most popular to watch) games, or even just simply making a video which is basically flaunting the fact you have money through creativity: how many times have you seen a video called "I open £200 of FIFA Ultimate Team cards", "Is this new MacBook worth £1000?", or "Here's a video of me in Japan! How well it compare to my trip to New Zealand last week?"

That last one isn't an actual title - at least I hope not - but it exemplifies the fact that there are a lot of successful creatives who manage to do so by offering a window into their richer, more successful life, so for people to pretend the internet is a fair utopia is absurd. Maybe this is the crux of why I am gutted that I can't stream to a high quality: because I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the interaction - it's the closest I've got to feeling like I am gigging since lockdown - and I enjoyed the creativity, but I can't do it to a standard I am happy with, because we can't afford better quality internet. And that hurts. 

Anyway, that's a longer blog for another day. If you're interested, there is a playlist of archived streams and highlights here. I am hoping to use that same YouTube channel to 

do some sort of YouTube let's play series, because I can at least film me playing videogames and upload it as a non-live option, so I am trying to take that as the best alternative available to me.

Another thing that kept me busy in April - both in terms of my time, and in terms of creativity - was the Virtual Snooker World Championship, the official virtual snooker championship, organised by World Snooker Tour themselves! It still feels like such a surreal thing to have been involved in, but as a big snooker fan, I am very proud to have taken part. I made a few videos detailing my tournament experience, including an interview I did on BBC Radio Sheffield as a virtual snooker player! Snooker Loopy or what!

Ultimately, I am gutted to have not played better in my matches, but hey, it was a fun thing to take part in, and the best players reached the final anyways, so I can't be too down about that. As I say in the final video of that playlist, there were a couple of weeks where we were all playing the game for hours each day, really practicing, trying to get ourselves in the best form possible - for a brief moment, it made me feel like how a real professional snooker player would feel...the only difference being that I was practicing with a cup of tea while wearing my trackie bottoms, I imagine. But yeah, it was a load of fun, and if you are looking for a game where you can spend a load of hours knocking some balls about, then Snooker 19 is the best one out there. It's crazy that in April 2019, I bought a preowned PS4 off eBay because I wanted to play Snooker 19 and the rereleased Spyro trilogy, and a year later I was competing in the official virtual snooker championships! I am still waiting for the invite from Spyro for his skateboarding world cup.

As well as appearing on the radio as a virtual snooker player, I also appeared as a political comedian on Ashley Haden's Political Breakdown. It's always good fun appearing on Ashley's show, and this time was no different, as we ended up somehow talking about what would happen if a load of comedians tried to organise a bank heist. Give it a watch, and do subscribe, because Ashley is a fantastic political comedian who really should be more well known than he is.

I am still making sure I do at least one creative thing a day, however little it is: my good friend Daniel Kempster is also doing the same thing this month, and he is detailing his progress each day via his blog. If you have Twitter, do give him a follow here, and check out his blog. He's a fantastic writer, and one of my very best mates, so go cheer him on!

Thanks for reading.

Tom.

Comedians vs Corona: An online database of UK-based comedians YouTube/Twitch pages!

It's a really weird time to be a comedian. Most of us have lost all of our live work, and so are having to turn to different ways of trying to make a living, or just new ways of keeping ourselves sane.

I have seen numerous acts who are putting their efforts into YouTube or Twitch, and it feels like a good time for everyone to come together and help each-other out a bit. So I have made a couple of pages that should help comics build an audience, especially if this takes off:


Firstly, there is this YouTube channel here.


Basically, if you are a comedian who has a YouTube page that you want included, pop me a link to your page via Twitter or Facebook, and I will subscribe using this channel. That way, there would be a central hub for people to find the channels of loads of different comedians. Hopefully people will click on it and go "oh, I didn't realise that Sarah Funnychops had an account, I'll check her stuff out!"


I have subscribed to a few channels already, so you can get a feel of the layout. I think it could be a really good idea to have a bit of a database of UK comedians who are on YouTube, as I don't think that exists anywhere.


For Twitch, I have made this channel.


If you follow this with your account, then https://www.twitch.tv/comediansvscorona/followers will act as a way for me to find any other comedians' Twitch accounts. So far I have:

Ian Lane
Sooz Kempner
Will Preston
Joe Jacobs
Thomas Craven
William Stone
Oli Court
Jen Ives
Luke Poulton
David Earl
Matt Hoss
John Robertson
Basil Bottler
Pope Lonergan
Steve McNeil
Daliso Chaponda
Masud Milas
XS Malarkey
Rob Mulholland
James Meehan
Josie Long
Fern Brady
Eleanor Conway
Ed Night
Brendon Burns
Iain Stirling
Inel Tomlinson
Liam Withnail
NextUp
Carl Donnelly
Richard Herring
Stu Goldsmith
Tom Mayhew


Hopefully this can get a bit of traction and help people out. It might not get us all 10K subscribers, but if it means some people find new content by a comedian that might lead to that comedian getting some more work down the line, it feels worth doing.

Even if it just leads to a comedian going from 40 Twitch followers to 50, or from 980 YouTube subscribers to 1000 - that can often be the difference between a comedian making money from these platforms or not.


If someone reading this has an idea of how to best make it work on Twitch, do get in touch.


Stay safe everyone.


Tom

The Admin Day

Welcome to The Admin Day. The day where I reply to e-mails that I have been meaning to reply to for weeks, or sometimes months. We all have these days; outwardly, everyone likes to pretend they are on top of everything, nailing their responses to e-mails within 5 minutes of receiving each one. The reality, though, is that many of us have regular patches of our lives where we struggle to response to an e-mail, or to fill out that form, or to finally upload that document.

It's super easy to beat yourself up for not being on top of everything all of the time, but y'know what? Who is? I think my record length of time it has taken me to respond to an e-mail is something like 10 months; needless to say, it wasn't one that had a deadline, it was a social conversation, but even so, I feel like it's an important thing to publicly acknowledge. This year has started with a lot of stuff going on in my life. I covered a lot of what was happening in January in a previous blog, and it hasn't really slowed down since then! This month, I've performed previews, booked previews, performed a tour show, performed club gigs, applied for club gigs, written new material, applied for new opportunities, had meetings, and managed to shower pretty much every day!

But despite doing all of that, there's always that niggling voice,  that constantly reminds you of all the things you haven't done; there's that e-mail from December, the video you meant to record since October, the podcast you haven't edited that was originally recorded over a year ago...in this line of work, it can often feel like we are constantly veering between feeling super productive and accomplished, and then feeling like we are doing fuck all.

I suppose my intention behind this entry is to remind people that we are all not doing enough; and we are also all doing more than we need to do. Especially for people with mental health issues (i.e. 99% of people working in the arts), it can feel like an endless battle to be constantly motivated, to tick boxes...let's be honest, even me writing this blog is me doing so to say "I have done that today, box ticked, 5 points to Ravenclaw". It is important to celebrate those little successes on some days, though, because not every day can be the day where you change the world. Some days, you just have to be happy you changed your clothes.

Today, I replied to e-mails I have been meaning to reply to for weeks. It may not seem like much to some, but to others, it really is something. It's important to remember that.

Thanks for reading,

Tom

Do artists ever have a day off?

The end of January 2020 signalled the start of a bright new era; yes, that is correct, I did my first work-in-progress shows at VAULT Festival!

I really enjoyed these early previews; the staff at Hello Darling were so lovely, and the audiences were brilliant. Much like last year, VAULT has given me a chance to try brand new ideas, and leave the venue thinking "awesome, we have the seeds of something great here", so a huge thank you to everyone who came along!

Coming home from the venue, my mind immediately turned to my upcoming tour show at the Leicester Comedy Festival; I have booked a few dates that will also see the show coming to Sheffield on 8th March and to Glasgow later on that month, with a Manchester date in July, but that is not on sale yet. It is very exciting to be taking the show on the road, so if anyone reading this knows someone from those places who they think would enjoy the show, please do let them know!

However, while it is definitely very exciting, and something that I am looking forward to, it has made me realise that, mentally, I can never allow myself a day off. There can be days where I am not gigging, or where I am giving myself a bit of chill time, but I haven't had a day off completely for...years. There's always something to be done, someone to reply to, some idea you need to explore and make funnier. I think that's one reason why being a creative can be so tough on your mental health; even when you give yourself a "day off", it's never a proper day off, as you are always thinking "I just need to check my e-mails", "oh, I should tweet about my show", "I should post the link to this blog on a forum to get it a million hits". You always feel like you need to keep running forwards, keep pushing, keep hustling, because if you take one day off, or don't check your e-mails every 20 minutes, then you'll miss the opportunity of a lifetime. Regardless of how much you do - or how well you are doing - you always feel like you're not doing well enough, that you could be doing more, that you should be doing better, and that you only have yourself to blame if you're not.

I know that getting to do this as my job is far better than when I worked at Sainsbury's - trust me, I do get that. But one thing Sainsbury's did afford me - which was not much financially, cos £8 an hour doesn't go far - was a day off. I'd work on Saturday and Sunday, and then on Monday and Tuesday I would not be thinking about Sainsbury's. I would go a whole day without asking anyone if they had a Nectar card. I would wear clothes that weren't weird, uncomfortable maroon jackets. I wouldn't be worried that my manager would be peering over at me on my PlayStation, judging me for not looking enthusiastic enough about Sainsbury's and ALL THEIR GREAT OFFERS.

Part of me feels like I may never allow myself a day off, because you're always trying to create better art, to reach more people, to be more successful; but another part of me thinks that, if I were financially secure and had a large enough fanbase to not have to worry about ticket sales as much, then I would be far more relaxed about everything. Maybe one day we shall see.

Today was supposed to be my day off...hope you enjoyed the blog!

Thanks for reading,

Tom

Soho Theatre, VAULT Festival and Stoke Mandeville Hospital

January has kicked off my decade with the kind of ups and downs that felt like the trademark of my 2010s.

On one hand, I played Soho Theatre. Not only did I perform my show I, Tom Mayhew there, but we managed to sell the whole run out!

Soho Theatre is a venue I have a lot of love for; I saw my first ever solo Edinburgh show there, when I saw Jon Richardson perform This Guy At Night for my 18th birthday present. I also went there on my first 2 dates with my girlfriend back in 2017, watching shows by Mae Martin and John Kearns. It was a dream since I was 18 to have my own show at that venue, so to perform a sold-out run was a wonderful feeling, made even more apt because my show was directed by my girlfriend!

It is a show I love performing, because it is a show that is fuelled by passion, anger and love. If you didn't catch the Soho dates, it will be coming to Leicester on February 14th, Sheffield on March 8th and Glasgow on March 28th, with a Manchester date in July almost finalised.

Things never stop in this game, though - after sold out shows at Soho Theatre on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I found myself doing new material at an open mic gig on the Monday. In terms of a follow-up show, I am performing the first work-in-progress performance of my new show later this week at VAULT Festival. It should be ramshackle and fun, with all details available here: http://vaultfestival.com/whats-on/milo-edwards-work-in-progress/

I don't know why the link thinks I am Milo Edwards, but there we are.

With all of the good news of Soho Theatre, it would be easy for people to think "hey Tom, it looks like everything is going great for you!" - but, as anyone who attended the Soho shows would know, my Dad was in hospital in January having stem cell replacement treatment, as part of his ongoing battle with lymphoma cancer. He was at Stoke Mandeville hospital for 3 weeks, which is the longest length of time he has been kept in hospital since he was diagnosed back in 2011. This meant that this month has been a strange balancing act between the best achievements of my comedy career, and some of the toughest moments at home. I ended each show by getting the audience to record a little video for my parents: day 1 was for my Dad, day 2 was for my Mum, and then day 3 was for both of them. The video from day 1 is here, if you are interested.

The performances in January became more than comedy shows about real-life, as the timing of them meant that real-life and art were both on show for all the see. While it meant that I probably didn't have the best build-up in terms of preparing for the shows, I have always wanted to write comedy that is real and genuine, because that's the kind of art that I love...though spending one day visiting your Dad in hospital and then spending the next day talking about your Dad on stage is not something I fancy doing again, if I can help it!

It has been both a tough month and a brilliant month, and I am pleased to say that Dad came home from the hospital today, and it feels so much better to have him here. Tons of people from my generation in their 20s/30s have found themselves living with their parents for far longer than they would like, but when both of your parents have had treatment for cancer, it really makes you appreciate all the time you can share with them. Even if it does mean I have to see his bum every day.


Thanks for reading. Look after yourself, and I'll see you again soon.

Tom

Relaunch: Twitter Killed the Blogger Star

Hello.

If you were one of the small number of people who followed this blogger account years ago...it's been a while, hasn't it?

I fell off the blogging bandwagon; or, perhaps more accurately, the internet moved on from blogging.

People don't blog anymore; they tweet; they do Twitter threads; they write long statuses on Facebook which are shared far and wide; they say their thoughts to a camera; they talk to their phone and release it as a podcast. All these things have seemingly pushed the idea of blogging to the outskirts of internet communications.

But I'd like to get back into it. There is something about writing long-form that is different from a tweet. The writer has taken the time out to craft something, to think about the structure, and to choose the perfect words; the reader has specifically taken the time out to sit and read it. Not only that, but it is an in-depth record of how you felt at a certain time in your life, in a way that tweets often aren't.

When I was writing my Edinburgh show in 2019 - a show about being long-term unemployed, being working-class, and the demonisation of both groups of people - I looked back on some of my old blogs. These were written between 2012 and 2015*, and they helped me think of new things to write about, just by reading about how I felt back then. In that sense, those blogs were very useful, and helped shaped what my show became.

So it's a useful resource for me to get back into. I don't plan on sharing these far and wide, so it isn't a career move - I'm not crazy enough to think "I know how I will make it big! I'll become a viral blog star in 2020!" - but it will be interesting to see what I come up with, now I have opened the door to this outlet once again.

Write again soon!

Tom