If you read my blog, you’ll know I quit teaching three and a half years ago to travel the world then become a full-time professional magician. As madcap as it sounds, I had been building the business alongside my teaching career for 7/8 years by this point and my gig schedule was always full so I was confident I could make it work.
Following a year in some pretty remote places, I returned home to a fairly slim diary so went into full-time business mode and concentrated all my efforts on filling the gig list back up. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time to “play” with the hobby I love, develop new tricks or dig out old props to see what I could do with them. Soon, I could feel my creativity starting to lapse as I lost time for development and had to focus my efforts on getting my schedule back up to where it was before I left. When I was a teacher, income from entertaining was an added bonus, now it was a necessity.
I quickly realised this wouldn’t do and wasn’t the reason I’d chosen to become a full-time entertainer. I began to allocate myself time to read magic books, research new trick ideas and buy new “toys” to master. The spark was instantly back. I can now balance on a 3 tier Rolla Bolla, perform loads of new effects adapted from books by my peers, ride an electric unicycle to my office and have just filmed the promo video for my first trick to be marketed to fellow magicians.
In November 2014 I decided to start rooting in my garage through all my old props and that was when Garage Trick Tuesday was born. Since then I have uploaded a trick I have dug out of my garage every Tuesday, some are great, some not so great and others have even made their way back into one or two of my performances. Click HERE for one of my favourites.
I guess my point of this blog is the importance of not losing sight of why you do things, I love magic and variety entertainment so made it my life but very nearly missed out on appreciating the joy my occupation brings me. By giving myself time to appreciate my art forms, I reignited my enthusiasm for them, sparked my creativity and found some absolute gems amongst the “magic trash” accumulated in my garage.
Don’t forget the real reasons you do what you do, whether it be for work or as a hobby, we should all allow ourselves time to be excited by the things we love.