MY 100 NIGHTS OUT (IN A ROW)
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When it comes to being a selfish mother, I have quite literally written the book on it. You can’t get more self-centered than doing something you want to do just because you want to do it for a hundred consecutive nights. Something which you do for the love of it and to scratch an itch and because you know you have to. I neither regret it nor would I recommend it. But it made me understand that sometimes it’s OK to be outlandishly selfish, as long as there’s an end in sight.
This is what I did two years ago when I set myself a serious stand-up
SelfishMother.com
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comedy challenge. My third child Jack had just turned one (I started it on the day after his first birthday). My two older children were five and seven. I was working away as a freelance writer, reasonably happily, a job I had done for over ten years. But something had started to eat away at me: what happened to the thing I had wanted to do since I was little? Why had I never given comedy a proper go? How long was I going to leave it? Or was I just never going to do it?
The children were part of the catalyst. I hated the idea of living with this
SelfishMother.com
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secret of having something I really, really wanted to do and not having the guts to do it. It felt like a kind of a lie. “You can do whatever you want with your life,” I’d tell them, “Just do what makes you happy.” And yet I had not really had the guts to do what I wanted myself.
I started with a comedy workshop, loved it and did some gigs now and then. I had done maybe twenty stand-up comedy gigs over a year or so by the time I realised that I was getting older and still wasting time without really getting anywhere. All I had done was take
SelfishMother.com
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up a slightly odd hobby. I was neither committing properly to getting better at stand-up nor giving it up as a lost cause. I needed something to push me into a decision about whether it was going to be a part of my life or not.
The idea of doing “100 gigs” is a big thing in stand-up comedy. It’s supposed to be the number of gigs you need to do to know whether you can really cut it and whether it’s worth continuing. At the rate I was going, it was going to take me fifty years to find out. I decided to short-cut it by hitting the target in the
SelfishMother.com
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space of three months. The only problem was, it would mean going out every night. And who does that when they have three kids?
Turns out I do. It was painful. And it wasn’t pretty. My husband got the worst deal: all the evening childcare, a hundred nights in a row. (Yes, he is a saint.) But the big surprise? It wasn’t awful for the children. Otherwise I would have stopped it. There’s selfish and there’s cruel. But, except for one or two awkward nights, they lived with it and accepted it. Crucially, because they knew it wasn’t forever. And
SelfishMother.com
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they liked counting down the days.
Turns out extreme selfishness (even a hundred consecutive nights of selfishness) is OK. As long as – and this is really important – there’s an end to it. Just do not mention this whole episode to my husband. He doesn’t think it’s very funny.
How to… be away from your family a lot without hating yourself:
— If you have a reason to be out or away a lot, balance it with spending time with family (and friends!) at other times of the day or at weekends. You need to schedule that, otherwise it won’t
SelfishMother.com
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happen. Be brutal.
— Remind yourself that you are doing this because it’s important. In my case, I was trying out a new career: that takes a huge investment of time and is going to be painful.
— You can’t burn the candle at both ends indefinitely. Build in breaks. Set time limits. Have bursts of intense activity alternated with periods when you are at home a lot more.
— Remind yourself that this kind of thing isn’t for everyone and loads of parents will not understand why anyone would want to be away from their family for any time at all.
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That’s fine. Know your own mind.
I Laughed, I Cried: How One Woman Took On Stand-Up and (Almost) Ruined Her Life by Viv Groskop (Orion) is out now
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Viv Groskop - 9 Oct 13
When it comes to being a selfish mother, I have quite literally written the book on it. You can’t get more self-centered than doing something you want to do just because you want to do it for a hundred consecutive nights. Something which you do for the love of it and to scratch an itch and because you know you have to. I neither regret it nor would I recommend it. But it made me understand that sometimes it’s OK to be outlandishly selfish, as long as there’s an end in sight.
This is what I did two years ago when I set myself a serious stand-up comedy challenge. My third child Jack had just turned one (I started it on the day after his first birthday). My two older children were five and seven. I was working away as a freelance writer, reasonably happily, a job I had done for over ten years. But something had started to eat away at me: what happened to the thing I had wanted to do since I was little? Why had I never given comedy a proper go? How long was I going to leave it? Or was I just never going to do it?
The children were part of the catalyst. I hated the idea of living with this secret of having something I really, really wanted to do and not having the guts to do it. It felt like a kind of a lie. “You can do whatever you want with your life,” I’d tell them, “Just do what makes you happy.” And yet I had not really had the guts to do what I wanted myself.
I started with a comedy workshop, loved it and did some gigs now and then. I had done maybe twenty stand-up comedy gigs over a year or so by the time I realised that I was getting older and still wasting time without really getting anywhere. All I had done was take up a slightly odd hobby. I was neither committing properly to getting better at stand-up nor giving it up as a lost cause. I needed something to push me into a decision about whether it was going to be a part of my life or not.
The idea of doing “100 gigs” is a big thing in stand-up comedy. It’s supposed to be the number of gigs you need to do to know whether you can really cut it and whether it’s worth continuing. At the rate I was going, it was going to take me fifty years to find out. I decided to short-cut it by hitting the target in the space of three months. The only problem was, it would mean going out every night. And who does that when they have three kids?
Turns out I do. It was painful. And it wasn’t pretty. My husband got the worst deal: all the evening childcare, a hundred nights in a row. (Yes, he is a saint.) But the big surprise? It wasn’t awful for the children. Otherwise I would have stopped it. There’s selfish and there’s cruel. But, except for one or two awkward nights, they lived with it and accepted it. Crucially, because they knew it wasn’t forever. And they liked counting down the days.
Turns out extreme selfishness (even a hundred consecutive nights of selfishness) is OK. As long as – and this is really important – there’s an end to it. Just do not mention this whole episode to my husband. He doesn’t think it’s very funny.
How to… be away from your family a lot without hating yourself:
— If you have a reason to be out or away a lot, balance it with spending time with family (and friends!) at other times of the day or at weekends. You need to schedule that, otherwise it won’t happen. Be brutal.
— Remind yourself that you are doing this because it’s important. In my case, I was trying out a new career: that takes a huge investment of time and is going to be painful.
— You can’t burn the candle at both ends indefinitely. Build in breaks. Set time limits. Have bursts of intense activity alternated with periods when you are at home a lot more.
— Remind yourself that this kind of thing isn’t for everyone and loads of parents will not understand why anyone would want to be away from their family for any time at all. That’s fine. Know your own mind.
I Laughed, I Cried: How One Woman Took On Stand-Up and (Almost) Ruined Her Life by Viv Groskop (Orion) is out now
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