Obsessive-Compulsive Professional Stand Up Comedian To Launch Humorous Home Organizing TM
Aaron David Ward loves to make people laugh and to organize. Now the 36-year-old professional stand up comedian from upstate New York is combining his two loves into one business. His latest venture Humorous Home Organizing TM will allow him to entertain and earn a living onstage and offstage by delivering comedy right to peoples’ homes.
The comedian has toured the Northeast and the Midwest for the past six years performing in comedy clubs, colleges, bars, pubs, restaurants, and small theaters. Mr. Ward appeared in the Boston Comedy Festival in 2006. At some point while behind the wheel of his car for more than eight hours, Mr. Ward realized he could deliver stand up -- live -- right in people’s homes and organize them at the same time. As far as he knows, no other stand up comedian or organizing service offers “home-delivered” stand up comedy.
“It’s like home owners will ‘download’ me – live – to their living rooms where I perform my act and organize their bookshelves, closets, and files afterward. If this idea takes off I envision a franchise in every state by 2020,” Mr. Ward said.
He was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder in 2001. OCD is frequently characterized by a need to alphabetize, arrange, and file. “Some look at OCD as a mental illness or impairment; I prefer to look at it as a gift…with which I can make a living,” Mr. Ward said.
Humorous Home Organizing TM is just starting so Mr. Ward has no fancy vans or spiffy uniforms, just a love of organizing and making people laugh. He’s looking for venture capitalists and other investors intrigued by the concept who share his vision for what he believes will be a profitable enterprise.
I've officially made it in LA, check out this professional organizer's blog
Check out my latest Libertarian article about government intrusiveness...
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/ward-aaron2.html
Read my latest interview...
http://www.avproductionworld.com/aaronward.html
Check out my article about Neo-Conservative Talk Radio...
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/ward-aaron1.html
Many over due thanks to CE Skidmore for a great article!
Thanks CE!
Editor’s note: This is the first in an occasional series profiling local comedians.
By CE Skidmore
skidmore@poststar.com
Aaron David Ward is a funny guy. Funny “ha-ha” and funny weird. In the spring of 2002 he was 30 years old, freshly booted from his job and living in his parents’ basement. But he was debt-free with few expenses and viewed his recent firing as an open door. He decided to try his hand at stand-up comedy.
“I’d always loved making my friends and family laugh,” he said. “The equation was pretty simple: My obsessive need for attention plus the idea of making people laugh for money equals validation.”
When he says “obsessive,” he isn’t joking. Ward suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
“I always knew I had it, “ he said. “When I was a kid and had a bad day at school I would come home and immediately start to vacuum or do laundry.”
Despite its amusing delivery, his admission was no punchline.
“People think it’s the ‘handwashing illness’ but that’s not always so,” he said. “There’s a theory I subscribe to — OCD starts out as ADD where too much information is coming at light speed into a racing mind. To compensate, the brain starts to obsess.”
His meticulous explanation is in itself obsessive.
Ward’s act is revealing. He makes his inner demons partners in the routine.
“I love being emotionally naked on stage,” he said. “The things that are painful are funny as a survival mechanism. An audience only laughs for two reasons — relief or identity. They’re either just like you in secret or thanking God that they’re nothing like you.”
Ward’s OCD has not hurt his career. The night of his first performance, after only one month of preparation, he was on stage at an open mic for half an hour. After the set, he was asked to be the club’s house emcee.
“I’m glad to have started my career later in life. I had always wanted to do stand-up but I had no confidence in my teens or even in my 20s,” he said. Ward recalled a study he had read that stated more people feared public speaking than death.
“But the crowd was never the problem ... it was me. I was afraid of myself.”
As a self-confident 30-something, Ward has been a featured performer in the comedy clubs of more than 10 states. He is most proud of his set at the 2006 Boston Comedy Festival.
“That one means more than the rest because of the hometown support it took to get there,” he said. He earned the spot as a prize in a Comedy Works competition in Albany, where he was voted best in show by the audience and a panel of judges.
“It was so fulfilling to know that so many people wanted to see me progress.”
But the audiences haven’t been Ward’s only supporters, he said, a network of local comics look out for the best interest of their brethren. The way Ward speaks of his peers departs from the rumors of feuds and joke-theft common in Hollywood gossip columns and tabloids.
“The Capital Region comedy scene is hugely supportive,” he said. “We pretty much live by the motto that a rising tide lifts all boats.”
The only person Ward demands a lot from is himself, he said, insisting that his comedy be as insightful as it is humorous. He doesn’t like to sink into blue jokes and prefers “smart” humor.
“If I can get an audience thinking as well as laughing, then I’ve done my job,” he said.
Ward’s idea of success is more modest than you might expect from a man whose mind is always racing.
“When I started I thought success would be fame and fortune but then I realized that the Seinfelds, Carlins and Pryors make up less than 1 percent of working comedians today,” he said. “Success for me now is developing as unique an act as possible. My whole act is about neurotic inner demons that plague me... but still, it’s pretty socially acceptable.”