Is anyone else finding life exhausting right now – or is it just me?

Is anyone else finding life exhausting right now? On the one hand, I’m thrilled to be back on stage – but as I prep for my extremely imminent new stand-up tour, I’m finding it very difficult to balance my naturally pessimistic and slightly paranoid outlook on life with the optimism that is required to move forward without worrying.

How gung ho should we be?

What I’m particularly struggling with is how normal most things seem on the surface and yet, as we gather again and meet up in ever-expanding groups to socialise in pubs, cinemas and theatres, I can’t help feeling an undercurrent of doubt: is this safe, should we be doing this? It’s like constantly being able to hear thunder in the background.

What if the storm hits me?

So far, I feel I’ve been extremely lucky, I’m obviously double jabbed, and – since the restrictions lifted – I’ve performed on a cruise where mask-wearing was mandatory at all times (unless sitting down eating or drinking) and at a festival (unmasked but outdoors).

I’ve also been in various very small studio theatre spaces where I’m alone in a dressing room until the show, and the audience – who are required to be double jabbed – choose to wear masks or not. For the most part, I drive to these gigs and I lateral flow test myself every other day.

As a punter – rather than a performer – in the past week I have sat in a packed audience to watch my niece in a comedy sketch show in a similarly-sized studio space to the ones I am currently playing, hugely enjoying those magical moments of shared laughter; but wearing my mask throughout. I also attended a memorial service for my next-door neighbour who died of Covid last year – and whilst sitting in the well-spaced, extremely airy church, felt safe enough to move my mask.

The truth is that some of us are more risk-averse than others, and weirdly – for someone who may come across as reckless and has done some very stupid things in the past – I’m extremely risk-averse. I know this for a fact, because, once upon a time, when I was making lots of money, a financial manager in a suit and tie told me so. I did a questionnaire and after ticking various A, B and C boxes, it was revealed that I don’t have the killer instinct to make big bucks in a short space of time. I’m not a gambler – I like to play it safe.

I’m not alone. Plenty of people are in the same boat. We want to get cracking again; we’re ready to go out and party but there is this element of “what if” that is holding us back from really being able to relax. I’m very envious of people who don’t feel this way, and from what I can see there are huge numbers who feel completely confident in big crowds – hence the festivals, first nights and massive sporting events.

In my very recent experience of post-Covid gigging, audience numbers have been robust and the sales for the tour are healthier than I could have dreamt.

But with cinema takings down by 50 per cent on 2019, it’s evident that this confidence isn’t across the board – and whether the much-delayed Bond movie will get bums back on seats remains to be seen.

Personally, I’m wondering how I can get over this constant low-level sense of anxiety that is interfering with fully immersing myself back into my old life – though whether my failure to return to the gym has more to do with exercise-phobia than Covid worries, I couldn’t possibly say.

Possibly, I need to stop listening to the news – maybe it’s easier to feel happy and positive if you create a bubble of complete blissful ignorance around yourself and make sure you never listen to anything that is going to freak you out on a daily basis?

And maybe, instead of listening to Radio 4 as I drive myself to gigs, I should switch to a music station? But to be honest, my car is still quite new to me and I’ve no idea how to retune the radio. So there I sit, driving clench-jawed, through the increasingly back-to-pre-covid-levels of rush hour traffic, listening to horror story after horror story.

The plight of the Afghans is enough to make you pull over and weep. Then there’s the bizarre and terrifying growth of “incel” men, men who should never in a million years be allowed near a firearm, and on it goes – the constant catalogue of daily disaster with a great big dollop of climate change catastrophe on top.

None of this is helping our current mood. The world is in a mess and yet we are being expected to put our chins up and get on with it, which is fair enough – I understand that we need to get the economy off its knees. But with case numbers still worryingly high, and breakthrough infections increasingly common, it’s hard to pretend that everything’s completely hunky dory.