Who has your back?

Performance improv is an innately social art form.  Improvisers from the Loose Moose in Calgary have a pre-show ritual they insist on following wherever they perform.  Immediately before taking the stage each improviser approaches every other improviser, pats them on the back and simply says: -

I've got your back

On a good night improv feels effortless and the audience will know it's in the presence of genius but these aren't the nights you have to worry about.  It's the bad nights (we all have them) when you feel inadequate and exposed.  It's as if the audience can see what you're thinking in real time as you fruitlessly try different approaches to turn your performance around over the course of a show.  Instead of starting the next scene you hang back hoping that someone else will shoulder the load.  You start blundering onto the stage when you're not needed and staying off when you are.  Paranoia creeps in as you sit in the wings wondering if you were ever any good at this nonsense.

The truth is that you can't think your way out of a hole like this.  You have to switch off that calculating brain and feel your way forward.  In the mean time you must trust that your fellow performers will give you time and space for this to happen.  You need to hear: -

I've got your back

About ten days ago I had that bad night in London.  Happily the format of the show and the quality of the rest of the cast meant that the overall night was unaffected.  My horrible sense of exposed inadequacy was mine alone.  On the night someone had my back.

The reason that stand-up terrifies most improvisers is that no one has your back.  The main reason that sole trading terrifies most people, even those self-employed in partnerships, is that no one has your back.  When you're self-employed you accept this and develop techniques to create the time and space to feel your way out of that hole.

I work early in the morning and late at night to give my underperforming brain the additional time to complete tasks that would be simple in better times.  I keep a private journal that gives me a historical record of what I'm feeling as much as what I'm thinking.  Most importantly I stay close to smart people who I trust despite most of them living in Australia.

It's counterintuitive but I think that misanthropes are the people least equipped for a Headcount: 1 life.