So - I've come to the end of my 2015 Festival run. It's been a good thing, and a profoundly strange thing, to have been grieving and working on SAVAGE, and trying to be a person in a community at the same time. Thankyou, Patrons for helping me out. Being a full time comedian is a weird and strange life. If you would like to drop me an email on alicerfraser@gmail.com I'll give you two free patreon tickets to the EXTRA SHOW of SAVAGE (by special demand) at the Comedy Store in Sydney. Can't fly you over, but if you come, or want to send friends, let me know. Here are a few things that I'm not putting out onto the public internet because they're probably a bit contentious, but figure you might like to have as a bonus behind the scenes special Patreon treat. Festivals make you weird about friendship: Brief and shallow connections with people seem to have been all I can sustain at the moment, hallo in passing and the occasional dinner with friends. I think I may have locked in one heart-for-life amigo, but it's mainly just been survival level hoarding of my emotional resources. Festivals make you weird about sleep: I could always take a nap when I needed one. Now I can take a nap while upside-down on a moving donkey. Festivals make you weird about money: I've never really cared about money very much - I lived on a lot of free samples when I was in New York, and managed on about $4 a day (after rent & tuition fees) for half the time I was in Cambridge. That said, I've started to get a bit thingy in the last few weeks when people have offered me work, asking if it's paid, how it's paid, when it's paid and so on. That's new. I think it's mainly because I'm bad at chasing invoices, so if it's not cash in hand, I will have to make a note to remember to check if an invoice has been paid. Also, because for each festival most of your costs are up-front, then you wait a very long time before the festivals/venues/your producer gets your money together to pay you, and then you have to check the numbers three or four times despite being bad at maths, because let's be honest, they're all scum. SCUM. Neal Downward who commissions for SBS Comedy online is a saint who always pays on time, and he is the exception that proves the rule. Festivals make you weird about the future: Your horizons narrow to the next three weeks, and you will sacrifice any future hopes for the need to fill your room that night. That said, I feel like I've managed to come out of this run relatively intact, and although it would be almost impossible to be sadder than I was at the beginning of this year, I feel happier and more solid.