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Its a mess. Im glad that I have a girlfriend to tell me when my desk is covered in 9 days worth of TV dinner trays and redbull cans. Ive been giving some thought to this lately. In my mind, have two career paths that obsessively require all of my time if Im to do well at them. Cartooning and stand-up comedy. So when Im working on one Im thinking of the other. Its only slowly that Ive started to think of them as almost the same thing. Drawn jokes and stage jokes have the same goal. Power. Just kidding. Laughter.

Heres what I do on a daily basis. I haphazardly work on drawings during the day. This includes thinking about comic ideas, thumbnailing strip layouts, drawing pages, and getting distracted by youtube videos old people fighting. Wisdom lines make their anger adorable. Anything can distract me. Im like a gnat that appreciates comic books. Then at any time, day or night, when an idea pops into my head for a stage joke, Ill write it down. It can be very similar to how I write comic strips. Either the joke comes into my head fully formed or theres a general concept that I have to widdle down into something. Heres one that was fully formed:

Parents say cheesy things

My step-dad used to say, Erik, you make a better door than a window

Which is weird, because he also said I'd never be part of his home

But then there will be things that come into my head that need more thought:

Do you remember the TV show Ghost Writer?

A show about a ghost that helps middle school kids solve mysteries

Without ever solving the mystery of how this ghosts afterlife is so mediocre

And I work on the general concept from there.

Then every night, after a day of not getting enough done, I get up on stage somewhere. Either a show to do solid material for an audience or a mic where I can test my newest jokes for a roomful of comics. Its a lot of trial and error. And given that there is absolutely never any drinking involved, I wake up hungover the next day and ready to start again.

Grimmer Tales Erik Bergstrom Plume Fairy Tales Happily Never After