63. What it's been like working as a full time comedian for a year

Ruddle Me This! with Taylor Ruddle

It's just over a week since a year to the day I left my previous job to work as a comedian full time. It's been a year of ups and downs and I've learnt a lot, most of which I tried to document in this episode of the podcasts.
The questions I covered:

1. Did I make any money this year?
2. How much of my runway have I used?
3. How has my lifestyle changed?
4. How are my hands doing? My health in general?
5. How is the podcast doing?

I also talked about these observations:

1. Being a freelance entertainer is all about maintaining relationships, and weeding out the people who aren’t worth your time.
2. Waiting for venues / companies to pay you can be a nightmare
3. You need to be on top of your calendar / schedule, and be thinking ahead. You will get very frustrated with other people’s lack of organisation
4. You’re not obligated to reply to people straight away
5. You’re going to feel like you’re shouting into the void a lot
6. You might find planning activities outside of work too exhausting to bother with
7. Every day is different. You’ll experience some of the weirdest gigs and jobs that you never saw yourself doing
8. You’re going to experience hella ups and downs. You’ll feel like you’re taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back a lot.
9. You have to put yourself out there - you will experience growth from this
10. You will often need to spend money to make money
11. You will really quickly learn the value of your work, and hearing “no” will no longer be devastating
12. You will probably still have a lot of sleepless nights
13. You will feel a new type of satisfaction having paid your bills off the back of your art

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Ruddle Me This! With Taylor Ruddle is an independently produced Kiwi podcast based in Christchurch, New Zealand where the host Taylor Ruddle, an Award winning stand up comedian chats to artists, comedians, performers and anybody else interesting in a long form, chilled out, cosy conversation. If you want to know what it's like to be an up and coming Stand Up Comedian, then this is the pod for you!