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.