By Asterios
My anxiety is begging me not to write this.
It’s yelling, “Nobody’s ever heard of you, so why would they care what you have to say?”
The sad part? That’s a pretty good pitch!
Anxiety is an incredibly effective salesperson. We comics fight it every day. And most of the time, we lose.
It screams at us to get Grubhub with money we don’t have. To skip that open mic. To play Borderlands 3 instead of cutting together a reel.
And like any good salesperson, Anxiety’s words makes perfect sense in the moment.
“If you order Grubhub, you can save time and get work done instead!”
“If you skip the open mic, you can catch up on sleep and hit a bigger show tomorrow!”
“If you play Borderlands 3, you can track “the pulse of the culture.” (I don’t know what that means, but it sounds good?)
And we never end up doing any of that good shit Anxiety promises us. Then we feel guilty, because we were “lazy.”
Which is, I think, kinda fucked up!
If you had a broken compass, you wouldn’t call it lazy — you’d call it broken.
Anxiety works the same way. Like a broken compass, it provides us false information that looks incredibly real. So we rely on that information!
If your compass says you’re walking north, but you’re going south…are you “too lazy” to walk the right way? Or were you just given the wrong information?
And this bad information has fucked my life up pretty badly. Me, Asterios Kokkinos. I’ve avoided creating a comedy podcast for over ten years out of sheer anxiety. Here’s the lines it used:
“Who needs another comedy podcast hosted by a nobody?”
“Why would someone listen to you when they could listen to a celebrity?”
“What makes you think you’re funny enough to listen to every week?”
“Could you even MAKE a show every week?”
As you can see, these are all pretty great lines! I wish I could be half as convincing as my Anxiety is.
But in January 2019, after decades of stand-up and improv and guesting on other people’s podcasts…I finally broke down and started my own.
Against all my better judgement. Against all my fears and concerns and doubts. I broke down and I started a show called THE LOUDEST PODCAST.
And the weird thing is? It’s kinda a success!
We’re not the biggest show in the world. But we’re getting listeners! And now, we’re touring around doing live shows, mostly as an excuse to meet listeners.
It’s insane. It was not supposed to happen. I was convinced it would never happen. And Anxiety is still trying to convince me it’s not happening.
And it might all go away tomorrow, but I’m going to try and enjoy it for today.
I’d love it if you’d come see us. Our show’s way sillier than this essay. But it’s a comedy podcast hosted by broken people, and you might relate to us.
And if you do…I’m sorry?
