Sitting Under A Tree with Aidan Jones

I went to a notary public yesterday to get the last of the forms signed for the US company that's distributing my special! Before I had to get this thing notarised I had no concept of what a notary public was, and now that I've dealt with two of them, I know even less. Who are these mysterious figures? Where do they come from? And why did the one I saw yesterday have four gold chests in his office...

This morning I tried oil painting for the first time, and far from attaining a state of clarity, I was just reminded of all the times in primary school that my art teacher got mad at me for making shit stuff out of clay. Then about 9 minutes in to this week's podcast, while trying to figure out what paint is made out of, I think I attained that state of clarity. If clarity is having your mind comp...

This week in therapy we spoke about feelings - CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?? Lucky for me, there's been heaps of stuff this week to practice on. Also my friend Bella Fowler wrote a phenomenal article for news.com.au about the decision on abortion in the US, so I challenged myself to speak about that for a while without saying anything stupid. I reckon I got through it. Bella's Article: https://www.news.com...

After all my talk of giving myself time to relax and enjoy myself I've finally started doing it! This weekend I went to see my friends Flimsey Lohan play a gig at Bad Decisions in Fitzroy. On Sunday I went with a few mates to the Reclink Community Cup at Victoria Park to watch the mighty Megahertz defeat the slovenly Rock Dogs. And on Saturday, joy of joys, I treated myself to not one but TWO ice...

Home on Sunday! Melbourne is beautiful and cold, just the way I like it. I made dinner for one of my housemates on Sunday night and spent Monday relaxing as well. Almost finished my Steve Jobs book. A few mishaps, but all-in-all, pretty uneventful really!

This week I'm recording from the Virgin Lounge in Brisbane Airport after the pleasant surprise of achieving Velocity Gold status. So long peasants and disgusting serfs, I now dine for free behind the locked door of privilege. This week I also had a lovely trip to Laidley, and saw the fantastic City Piss at the Outpost in Brisbane. It's been brilliant!

James Donald Forbes McCann is an Adelaide-based comedian, writer, podcaster, and future boat-owner. We went to McDonalds after a show at the Rhino Room and after eating burgers in his car, we turned the mics on and had a conversation about what we want out of life. James is one of the funniest, most unique people I know, and I always love talking to him.

I heard that they're thinking of getting rid of the 5c piece because the metal required to make them costs 6 cents now, so the RBA or whatever is making a loss on the coins. Pretty funny! They asked ScoMo about it in a press conference and he basically told them to fuck off and that he doesn't care. What a loser! If I were Prime Minister, that would be all I'd ever talk about - let's get some weir...

I've been trapped for years in a neverending cycle of being busy to distract myself from depressive thoughts, then getting stressed because I'm so busy, so taking time to relax, but then when I relax, suddenly I'm faced with depressive thoughts. Lucky for me, there's one place I can always go to feel safe, and that's an awful open mic comedy night.

I'm flying to Sydney and back, and then there again... three flights in three days this week. I've made an absolute mess of my schedule here. I listened to some comics talking about how you can only really make fun of something if you have love for it, otherwise it's just mean and spiteful. That rings so true to me, I think that's where I've fucked up so many times in my life. It's fine to make fu...

I went to see 'After Yang' with a friend yesterday and while it wasn't incredible, Colin Farrell's depiction of a man struggling to reconnect with his life and loved ones was very powerful, and I found a lot in it to identify with.

My main takeaway from the Melbourne Comedy Festival is that if I feel jealous of other people getting opportunities that I'm not getting, the problem isn't them, it's me. The only reason I might feel jealous is if I'm not happy with where I'm at, and if that's the case, the only person responsible for that is me! So I'm going to make some moves to take responsibility for my own career and where I'...

My friend just sent me the song 'Short People' by Randy Newman and my god is it good. I laughed about it for about half of this week's pod. The other half was taken up talking about my friend Steph Broadbridge's amazing show last night. Still feels like there's some uncertainty around the future at the moment, but I'm feeling better and better.

Sunday night I drove to Lorne, slept in the car, and woke up to a man playing bagpipes at 6:30 in the morning in the carpark next to the beach. Sometimes the only thing you can do is laugh.

A couple weeks ago in therapy I spoke about how I often reach out to people when I'm feeling down in the hope that they'll make me feel better. While there's nothing inherently wrong with that, the thought occurred to me, why don't I learn to do that for myself, rather than needing other people to do it? Pretty cool hey? So I'm working on that lately.

Got Covid this week, been inside since Friday. Hating it. Woke up today feeling a bit better which is good, actually in a pretty good mood. Learned some stuff about blood vessels in the nose. Thought about my feelings etc. Overall though, hating it.

I've been in Sydney all weekend. On Thursday night I got lost on a hiking trail, and then spent about half an hour wandering around a golf course in the dark trying to find the way to my AirBnB. My phone was on less than 10% and fading, and I genuinely considered whether I should just sleep on the golf course. I didn't though, but the AirBnB I arrived at was awful, so I left the next morning anywa...

Last night I drove to Lorne and slept in the back of a rented car so that this morning I could wake up on the beach and go for a swim. I've been feeling shit all weekend, and about half an hour into the drive I finally figured out why! I had a spectacular long weekend full of all this amazing stuff, but it took me untangling my dumb-ass feelings to be able to step back and appreciate it! Hooray!

The Adelaide Fringe run is done, and I'm back at home in Melbourne. The show still isn't where I want it to be, although I am happy with where it's going - it's just hard to figure out what it is exactly that I'm trying to talk about! I gave it a crack here today, I dunno. I'm figuring it out slowly.

Woke up feeling heavy and in a weird mood, scrolled the internet for a while until I found some shit to get angry at, turned the mic on and away we went! Fun stuff on the Instagram this week if you wanna check out the posts I was talking about. Also here's the Birthday Drill-o-Gram vid link. Love youse all! https://vm.tiktok.com/ZSewFNYbc/

Thursday night a guy with a knife scared the shit out of me at the tram stop next to Adelaide Hospital. I wish this city was designed in a way that encouraged more people to walk around so it didn't feel so empty, maybe stuff like that wouldn't happen so much. Then again Aidan, it's not, and maybe you'd be happier just accepting that, rather than ranting about it every time something bad happens....

I'm using the camera I bought to film the podcast this week for YouTube. I'm not convinced it's a good idea, but we'll see I guess. If I can do it with a minimal amount of extra work, I guess it could be beneficial. Clearly something's got me feeling angry this week, because that's all I was on the podcast today. Feels good though. Yummy.

It was my birthday on Saturday, but somehow I started this podcast not remembering, and feeling like I had nothing to talk about. I did end up finding what I feel is a pretty good answer to a question my piano teacher posed me when I saw her a few weeks ago. Pretty unfocussed stuff this week, but worth it for some moments of genuine discovery, I reckon!

Today I'm going to spend most of the afternoon captioning a 12-minute video of my stand up for TikTok. The people have asked and so I, their faithful servant, will deliver. I also ask you, my doting adherents, to help me by setting your alarm to 7:30pm tonight (Melbourne time), going on my Instagram stories, clicking through to the TikTok when I post it, and sharing it with everyone you know. I'm...

I've made a decision! For the next couple years until I film another special, I'm going to make a concerted effort to build a following online around my stand up. I think I can see how it might work, and then hopefully in two years' time when I put another special out, there'll be heaps more people ready to watch it, and it'll reach a wider audience. The problem with that for now though, is that e...