To comedy or not to comedy

I feel like I'm getting to the point where I am finally starting to put everything together on stage. The past month or so I have been really putting in some solid sets, mixing in old jokes with new ones. My stage presence has gotten a lot better. Though I feel a lot of my punchier/funnier jokes are still my race jokes, I feel like I am joking about a wider variety of topics. Last week I did a new joke about Sodom and Gomorrah which (surprisingly) went down really well.

That being said, I feel like I am at a sort of crossroads. This week is my last week in Wilmington and though I have every intention of continuing to do comedy during grad school in Chapel Hill, I have to say I am still not exactly sure what it is I want from comedy.

To make it perfectly clear, I love comedy. I love writing jokes, standing on stage and telling them. I love watching stand up being performed, whether that is live or on T.V.

However, I am not sure if comedy is something I want to do as a career or as hobby. I mean there would definitely be a lot of benefits to doing stand up. I would be doing something I love. I would get to travel and see new places, talk with interesting people. I would in all probability get and receive a lot of free alcohol. I imagine if I were to break up with my girlfriend, I would have no problem finding someone to date.

But, as I touched on in my last blog post, making it big is difficult.

Granted, I don't really know how good I could become. With enough stage time and effort, I could become a really funny stand up performer and entertainer. Who knows?

However, even if I were to get that good, I realistically could only stand to make (tops) maybe 50,000 or so. Which is fine, I could definitely raise a family on that salary, but as a lawyer (depending on how good my grades are, my references, the sorts of internships I am able to get as law school student etc.) I could stand to make 130,000. Straight out of school.

Plus I also wouldn't be disappointing my parents.