I Went For A Run

A day after the London Marathon I went for a run. Not a long run, it only took 12 minutes to complete it, but it made me feel good about myself. I haven’t been doing any exercise for a few weeks now. We went to Melbourne for the comedy festival and I’ve been busy writing and we’ve been going to see other comics and there have been things to do around the house and I’ve had to take the car to get work done and I just haven’t had the time to go for a run.

I haven’t felt like doing any exercise actually, I’ve just been too busy. I’m normally an exercise freak, I love going in the gym 4 or 5 times a week. I love looking good and feeling good. What I love the most is the self-righteous glow of knowing that because I’ve been in the gym everyday for the last year that I’m better than everyone else I know. I’m probably better than a large percentage of people I don’t know as well which is uber satisfying.

Being a comedian I would get to feel a little extra smug every time I went to a gig and realised how fat and unhealthy a lot of comedians are. How could they let themselves go like that? Sure they’re good comedians but let’s look at the big picture, the lifestyle is killing them. Late nights, fast food, hours spent sitting in cars. The lifestyle was making them fat. They were getting fat because on top of the lifestyle they were leading they weren’t exercising. I was and that made me better than them. I was certain of it.

So for the last few weeks I haven’t exercised and I’ve kind of missed it. While I was running I got to thinking (it was a quick thought as I wasn’t going to run around the block again) what could have been so important to occupy the time that I could have used exercising. The answer is simple. I was being creative instead.

I haven’t been as prolific in my writing since… ever. I have written pieces for a character I’m working on, I’ve written stand up, I’ve been editing a sitcom I’m working on and I’ve been writing these blogs. On top of that I’ve been out to gigs, meeting people and making contacts with agents and promoters. Oh, I also started planning my festival show for next year and began editing the Mr&Mrs show with Liz to take to next years festivals as well. I even went for a casting – I’ll write a blog about that later, it was a disaster as they always are.

This is why the fat unhealthy comedians are funny. They take the 10 hours a week that I’m in the gym plus the 10 hours a week that I lie around recovering from being in the gym and they work on their craft. They write, they edit and they speak to actual human beings. The people you meet in the gym are never inspiring human beings. They’re shallow, self-involved parodies of people. The good comics are more rounded both as people and physically.

Maybe Zoolander was wrong, perhaps there is more to life than being really really really good looking…