Great piece, Riaz. I was in your situation back in 2010, wanting to finally try my hand at stand-up just to see how it would feel.

At the first open mic I did, I was really nervous and had the cliche stage fright symptoms but got up there anyway and powered through my 5 minute set to some chuckles from the crowd.

The few mics I did after that didn't make me as nervous. And then I hung up the mic for joke telling. I got it out of my system.

I hope you carry through on your resolution to try it because it's a lot of fuckin' fun and you'll see a bunch of other aspiring comics bomb too.