Joel Dsouza has been doing standup for over a decade, but his comedy has never quite followed the most obvious route to getting noticed. From Comicstaan and his early days in the Mumbai comedy scene to experimenting with everything from streaming to Instagram formats, Dsouza has spent years figuring out what works for him—and, perhaps more importantly, what doesn’t.

His debut special, Dear Diary, which is releasing soon, is the result of that process. The title sounds introspective, but the show isn’t interested in taking itself too seriously. Instead, Dsouza uses the idea of a diary to explore optimism, self-reflection and the strange ways we make sense of our lives, while deliberately resisting the increasingly polished, relatable and easily clip-able approach to standup.

The special was written largely over the past year and designed to be watched as one continuous piece rather than broken up into individual bits. It also marks something of a reset for Dsouza: after recording the special in July, he stepped away from standup for a while, hoping to return with a different approach to writing and performing.

We spoke to Dsouza about Dear Diary, why he wanted to make an “unrelatable” special, the problem with writing for clips, what he’s learned from 11 years of standup and why he’s now trying to forget some of the habits that made him successful in the first place.

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What is ‘Dear Diary’ about?

I think of a title such as Dear Diary as running on a theme of journaling, but not in a serious or introspective way. It’s much more like how an eight-year-old toddler would write in their diary. I wanted to take a serious theme like journaling and make it silly.

When I decided to make this hour, I was watching other specials coming out and they had become so serious. I got a little tired of comedians putting on this whole “life is against us” thing. And I was like, we’re all living a good life. It’s a nice life. Sure, there are problems, but what would you exchange it for?

So somewhere it came from wanting to have a more optimistic anger to it. I’d gone down the pessimistic route a lot, but eventually I realised that optimism and underthinking are things our generation doesn’t use enough. That’s something I wanted to explore.

Do you actually journal?

I’ve journaled since 2017, and it has helped me. The first idea for this show actually came in 2021, so I feel like I sat on the whole thing for a while. I waited five years to put it out.

I still have the first idea for this show in my notes app. But my actual journal is very serious. It’s not funny or fun at all. I’ve always written in a very overstimulated state of mind, so now whenever I’m in a good mood—which is quite often—I don’t write anything. It’s a very skewed representation of my thoughts.

So I’ll read something from my journal later and think, “Oh, relax, it wasn’t that bad.” But in that moment, it did feel that bad.

The previous show you toured with was ‘Gift’. Did any of that material make it to the special?

Whoever saw Gift would have seen the diary part of it. I really liked that part and wanted to keep it, but I didn’t like how Gift became as a whole show. Individually, I thought the material was pretty good, so I released it as unrelated videos on YouTube.

Dear Diary is completely different. If you’ve seen Gift, maybe three minutes of the whole thing will feel familiar. That’s about it.

When did you actually start writing this hour?

Almost all of the material is from September last year onwards. I had released some videos last year and in August I was working on two more. Around that time I met a director who said, “Let’s shoot something together.” I told him I didn’t have any ideas for an IP or show, so he said, “Then write a special.”

He eventually bailed on me, but I still wanted to go ahead with it. So I made a plan and started writing it in September.

It’s very fresh. The oldest joke might be from 2019, but apart from that, almost everything is from September onwards.

You mentioned this hour is best enjoyed in one viewing. In the era of short-form content, how did you take this decision?

I’m not very good at chasing trends anyway. I’ve tried. But with this, I genuinely don’t know how many reels I can cut out of it because it’s written in such an hour format.

The whole special actually begins with a disclaimer saying it’s made to be watched in one long shot. I don’t know if that’s an anti-marketing move, but I don’t want to do what everyone else is doing just because that’s what works.

In a previous interview, you’ve described your comedy as “awkward, weird and unnecessary”. Do you think that description still holds?

I think the crux has remained the same.

This one also isn’t relatable. The closing bit is about how I participated in a bodybuilding competition. I don’t think anybody watches that and thinks, “Yeah, that’s me.” But it goes into the theme of, “Yeah, man, you can just do it.

So it’s a very unrelatable special. I told my editor that too. If the whole special has its own universe, why attempt to make it relatable and shareable?

If you have something that feels unique at this point, I think you should go hard with it. I really like people like [Anubhav Singh] Bassi and Zakir [Khan] because when they did their thing, they were among the first people to do it. Then so many people copied it that eventually everyone became indistinguishable.

I’m hoping this has that effect too.

You’ve also largely stayed away from the current trend of format shows, crowd work and everything being designed for clips. Is that a deliberate decision?

I did try all of that. During the pandemic, when everyone was streaming, I tried streaming. I tried Instagram. I’ve tried releasing videos. I’ve tried almost everything over 11 years.

Eventually, whatever worked for me was something that had no formula. I think if you’re going down the relatable route, you also need to have an approachability that supports it. I’ve tried that and it didn’t work for me.

Eventually the sustainable mindset is just doing what feels comfortable to you. Standup is something I like doing, so that’s what I’ve been able to come back to.

I also think a lot of these things—panel shows, streaming shows, vlogs—are mediums, not styles. Eventually the person who succeeds is the person who ends up owning that format. Samay has done Latent and there are other people who have done panel shows successfully, but you compare them to Samay and they feel short.

I’ve not been able to do that either, maybe because of a lack of effort or whatever. Maybe that’s something I’ll think about after this.

A few years ago you said you didn’t like testing material on comedians. Has that changed?

I think what I said has aged well.

You can tell a joke to your comedian friends and it can either work or not work on stage. As comedians, we’ve consumed so much humour that our sense of humour isn’t necessarily useful for testing something.

If it’s a simple joke but it’s a good joke, a comedian will see where it’s going. So I mostly showed Dear Diary to my other friends—people who I felt were more like my audience.

The biggest flex I got from those feedback sessions was that they could watch it in one go.

This is your debut special. How are you feeling?

I don’t think a special means much anymore. It used to mean some streaming service had to give it to you. Now, in the self-produced genre, I think it’s good that people can do it themselves. The pressure is less.

I feel like I could have done it sooner, but opportunity-wise I couldn’t. You have to fund it, and it’s not the cheapest thing to produce. I’ve always needed some margin or buffer. I can’t be like, “This is my last hundred rupees. Let me put all of it into the special.” I need to have a hundred rupees left afterwards.

So I think I’m happy with the way I’m putting it out.