The other day my girlfriend April and I were stuck in traffic next to a slightly busy restaurant on A1A. I turned to her and said, "Baby, if someone told me I could get out of this car right now, and go do a 10 minute set inside that place, I'd do it. Right now. Without even thinking. And even if some invisible all knowing man came up to me and said, 'I know the future, If you do this, you WILL bomb, there will be NO laughter, and at the end, you're going to fall off stage.'

"I'd STILL do it. I don't give a fuck."

I wasn't always like this, but this is the state I'm in right now. It's a fairly new state for me as a comic, too.

Confidence is definitely key in stand up comedy. I know that seems like common sense, but it's really a difficult thing to develop. It's a state of mind. A free state. It's having alligator skin. When I first started doing comedy, I was not in this state. I was in a weird place, where I felt suppressed, limited, and almost silenced. I was angry about it at first. Because that WAS NOT the way I've always been (even as a kid). And I blamed other people for keeping me down.

It wasn't until the first time I got up on stage that I really broke free and started changing my way of thinking. I now have an outlet. I realized I needed to focus on getting good on that stage, and everything else didn't matter. I no longer blame other people for the way I feel. And I laugh at the thought that I gave so much credence to random people for having any kind of say in my life.

My ideas are my own. My feelings are my own. And no one is going to dampen that for me.