The eye twinkle

Well, if you miraculously found this blog and are wondering what strange land you have found yourself in, let me formally welcome you!!

Who am I and what is it that I say I do here?

My name is Leah Weber and I'm kind of a weird person. I'm a weird person who just got started in stand-up comedy this year. That's 2025 in the event that you are visiting me from the future. Check out this post to read more about my self-proclaimed weirdness. And I am starting this blog to document and share my experience learning how to become a stand-up comedian.

First, let me assure you that I have no deep knowledge about comedy or magic bullets to make you great. I would never claim that as my area of expertise. There are far greater resources out there for that than I could ever provide.

But since I started, I have noticed that when I tell people I do stand-up, I see a little twinkle in their eyes. I know exactly what that eye twinkle means because I used to have it in my eyes when I was around stand-up comedians. That twinkle roughly translates to: 'Golly gee, I would love to do stand-up but I could never do it for reasons x, y, or z.'

Reason x, y, or z varies from person to person but may include:

• I am too scared
• I am not funny enough
• I wouldn't even know where to start
• I don't have time

My hope is that this blog will help a few eye twinklers out there overcome their fears and hesitancy and become a space where we can all learn and grow together.

Why do I think the internet needs more words?

Besides the obvious that we all now exist to build content for our future AI overlords, I wanted to start this blog for two big reasons:

I wanted a place to reflect and write about my own journey in comedy in the near real-time to help others overcome their hesitations. Perhaps also, they may even discover new ones but they’ll feel more ready to tackle them. I am a former eye-twinkling person who took the plunge and have drunk from the firehose just ahead of you so that maybe it will be a little less scary for you.

I am someone who thinks a lot and very analytically. I wanted a space where I could write longer-form essays and analysis regarding my many thoughts about comedy without censoring myself. This is not to drive engagement and sell you on content and products. There are plenty of people who will happily do that if that's what you want.

I very much enjoy thinking about the theory behind doing stand-up comedy and I wonder if there are others out there who like to nerd out like this too. Some of these thoughts are lessons learned the hard way and some are ideas that I've picked up through reading, podcasts, and good old face-to-face conversations with other comedians.

I am a very private person so this is very scary

I find it very hard to let people into my inner world and my inner thoughts. I spend a lot of time trying to fit in to a world that wasn't designed for weird people like me. Probably the one thing that I have fallen in love with the most about doing stand-up is the fact that I now have a creative outlet to bring others into my weird inner world. This is simultaneously comforting and terrifying.

Naturally, doing something like starting this blog where I reveal a lot of my innermost thoughts was very terrifying to me. After I shared my idea, my friend Stephen Scragg, shared a Virgil Abloh quote with me that really inspired me to take this plunge.

It took me a while to understand that
if I want to be creative and put things out in the world
that I also have to share myself with the world.

You know, it's the only thing I have for myself.
So I do it cautiously.

My 'Pale Blue Dot' life philosophy

And with that, I am going to cautiously share something deeply personal with you that will help you better understand how I view life and why taking a risk like stand-up comedy is not as scary as it may seem.

If you're not familiar with the famous photograph, the 'Pale Blue Dot', let me briefly explain it. The story goes that when the spacecraft Voyager 1 was about to exit our solar system, the scientist Carl Sagan requested that it be used to take a photo of our earth from the edge of our solar system. And in that photo, which appears almost all black, you can see a tiny, tiny blue dot that is our planet Earth.

Carl Sagan has a beautiful quote about it from which I am cherry-picking but I encourage you to read the full quote in its entirety.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

At first, it sounds deeply depressing because it highlights the obscurity and futility of each of our individual lives and that of the earth. But weirdly, I personally find this extremely freeing because this obscurity hides us within the vastness of the universe and frees us up in order to use our one life to explore our deepest dreams and desires without fear.

As a veteran with three combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, I have spent a long time struggling, oftentimes in private, with the meaning and value of life and the guilt that comes with still having mine. I know deeply that life is fleeting and the vast majority of our lives will pass by in utter obscurity.

And so I like to turn that obscurity and fleetingness into an opportunity to live mine freely, in the way of my choosing, and as a way to honor those who no longer have that privilege.

And at this moment, I am choosing to have a blast learning to become a stand-up comedian.

So.....If you've ever had that twinkle in your eyes when you think about stand-up comedy, then welcome home earthling!