You know how when you're in the schoolyard and some girls are jumping rope, you know, the long ropes with one girl holding each end and a third girl jumps in and takes a turn, and then it's your turn, and you keep waiting for the perfect timing to jump in, but the rope never seems to be in JUST the right place JUST when you're ready to jump, and you have x number of false starts and ALMOST jump in but never actually leave the ground, and so you end up never finally just jumping in?

That's how I'm feeling lately. Looking for just the right moment to jump into a lot of things. Bad habit -- I've done a lot of that in my life. One of the myriad unhealthy patterns I've been working to change lately (and, I think, finally starting to see some progress). It's two steps forward, one step back, and then I get tentative about taking the next two steps forward. Ya know?

One current thing I'm being tentative about is standup. Haven't been back out in front of a mike since my two July gigs, and they were in *early* July. Just not in the mood to use my initiative, for a lot of reasons I'm not pleased or proud about that I don't really want to recount where just anyone can read about them (Sorry; it's not you, it's me. I'm also working on my trust issues.) and no gigs have just fallen from the sky into my lap. So there you go.

But don't worry; I'll get back to it. Standup, that is. A friend tweeted me a link to a piece that included Bill Hicks' Principles of Comedy (http://bit.ly/3eS6s7 -- thanks again, Jeff, and thank YOU, Nerdist!), which I am now going to adopt as my own. Going to start thinking about open mics again -- more comedy-specific ones, in Manchester and maybe Portland, instead of, or more realistically, in addition to, the ones closer to home that are more musician-oriented, but that I'll have to keep doing if only to spend less money on gas and stuff.

Unless, you know, my LJ readers were to kick in Help-Peg's-Comedy-Career contributions! (Hey, I should put a tip jar here ...)

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Having just written all that, "jump" strikes me as a really funny word. "Juuuuuummmmmmmmp."

No, no, I'm NOT high. I'm just a word nerd, and sometimes when I hyperfocus on a word, it starts to disintegrate into its component molecules that don't, by themselves, contain meaning.

ACK! You guys just made me miss taping the beginning of "Monk"! Dammit!

Who'd've thought that the perfect line for my life-tentativeness (tentativity?) would have come from Ted Mosby in the rerun of "How I Met Your Mother" that aired tonight:

"The longer I put off starting my own firm, the longer it can remain a dream and not something I screwed up at. It's like I'm giving up before I even started."

Where "firm" = comedy, writing, bill-paying work and other stuff.

Thanks, Ted Mosby!