The Silver Circus Blog

My name is Andrew Silver. I'm a touring circus artist sharing stories from the road, reflections on performance, and lessons from life under the spotlight. From juggling and magic to mindset and meaning, this is where circus meets real life, including the triumphs, the flops, and everything in between.

[silvercircus]

Listening, Learning, and Leading: A Circus Artist’s Contradictions

Part One: You Should Absolutely Listen to Other People

Circus is one of those art forms where ignoring advice can get you injured, embarrassed, or both. Sometimes simultaneously. If someone who has been doing this longer than you says, “Hey, maybe don’t do it that way,” it’s usually worth at least pausing mid-stubbornness to ask why.

I learned early on that most circus skills are not invented in a vacuum. There are reasons progressions exist. There are reasons coaches repeat themselves. There are reasons you’re told to drill the boring stuff before the flashy stuff. Someone else already tested what happens if you skip steps, and generously survived to warn you about it.

Listening, in this context, is less about obedience and more about efficiency. You borrow hard-earned knowledge so you don’t have to personally discover every possible wrong way to do a thing. It’s a communal act. A quiet acknowledgment that you are not the first person to try spinning upside down while trusting your body to obey physics.

And honestly, some of the best breakthroughs I’ve had came directly from advice I didn’t want to hear at the time. The kind that sounded obvious, annoying, or suspiciously like work.

I remember when I was training hand balancing for the very first time, and at that time, my shoulder muscles were pretty weak. I remember balancing against a wall, and my instructor came over and said “Hey, your favoring your right arm, make it even.” To which I thought, “Pshh, of course I’m favoring my right arm, my right arm is stronger! I wouldn’t be able to hold this position otherwise.” Belligerently, I kept favoring that arm.

In short order, the time came to come off the wall and freestand. Filled with confidence that only a novice can have, I threw myself into it, and straightened out as best I could. In moments, my weight shifted over my left side, I couldn’t correct, my left arm dislocated, and my face met the floor with a resounding thud. (Luckily the arm popped back into place almost immediately, but it still hurt a lot).

Bruised in both body and ego, I got up. Only after my instructor made sure I was alright he said “If you always rely on your right side, you won’t be able to correct on your left. DUHHH”.

Ok he didn’t actually say “Duhhh” at the end. But I could tell he was thinking it.

I made the adjustments and tried holding my weight evenly over both sides. Immediately, handstands became easier (NOT EASY, just “easier.” Meaning vaguely possible). I wasn’t able to hold it for nearly as long, but it felt stable, and that was a feeling I had never experienced before.

From that day on, I trained both sides equally, even if it sucked. And now I can hold a handstand!

Check it out…!This is a moment from a routine where I perform an “inverted tight rope walk”

So, big takeaway, listen to people when they tell you stuff! It might be helpful! Especially if they’ve done what you’re trying to do!

Then again, maybe not because….

Part Two: You Should Definitely Ignore Other People

Here’s the problem. If you listen to everyone, you end up doing nothing. Or worse, doing a very convincing impression of someone else.

Circus advice is abundant. Opinions are plentiful. For every person telling you to slow down, another is telling you to push harder. One coach wants precision, another wants risk. One artist swears by structure, another insists chaos is the point. If you try to incorporate all of it, you’ll collapse under the weight of contradictory wisdom.

There’s also a sneaky trap where learning becomes a substitute for doing. Watching tutorials. Taking notes. Asking questions. Waiting until you feel “ready.” At some point, preparation turns into avoidance, and you realize you’ve become extremely informed about a skill you have barely tried.

Some things can’t be taught. They have to be felt. You have to make the wrong choice to understand why it’s wrong. You have to follow an idea to its inevitable failure before you can let it go. No amount of advice replaces that moment when your body figures something out despite your brain’s best efforts to interfere.

And yes, sometimes ignoring advice leads to discovery. Not always a good one, but usually an educational one.

I have another example from the same routine pictured above! I remember working on this routine with some colleagues and mentors of mine. The premise was simple: how many silly ways could I tightrope walk using only two chairs and a long piece of rope (Spoiler alert: this is currently a 7 minute piece in my show.)

During this workshoping stage, I was considering a lot of different options for the ending. I wanted to end on a success of some kind.

This is a popular way to end a clown routine; with some sort of impressive, and often counterintuitive, victory.

Several of my contemporaries (Many of whom had decades more experience than me) suggested I figure out a magical way of actually walking across the rope stretched between the two chairs. It sounds impossible, but we workshoped a few ways this could work. However, I ignored them all. Instead, I decided that I would flip the whole thing on its head, literally!

Now, as a finale to my routine, I perform the inverted tightrope walk. Where I handstand underneath the rope and tightrope walk upside down. Not only does this get a fantastic reaction, but it requires no setup, no expensive props, and I’ve gotten more positive feedback from audience members doing it this way, than any other way I tried. Sometimes, you just gotta stick with your gut, and do what feels right.

So, you shouldn’t always listen to advice…

Except for when you should…

Unless you don’t want to…?

What am I even saying at this point?

Part Three: The Uncomfortable Middle

The annoying truth is that both of these things are true at the same time.

Listening matters. So does wandering off on your own.

The balance isn’t neat. It changes depending on where you are, what you’re making, and how much experience you have. Early on, listening keeps you safe. Later, listening too much can keep you small. At some point, the question stops being “Who should I listen to?” and becomes “When do I stop listening and try this anyway?”

What I keep coming back to is intention. Learn with purpose. Experiment with commitment. Take in advice as information, not instruction manuals. Let it inform you, not replace you. Circus thrives when artists absorb what came before and then make a mess with it. This is true for all creative endeavors

You’re not here to perfectly execute someone else’s idea of your work. You’re here to test, adjust, fall down, try again, and slowly build something that looks suspiciously like your own voice.

In the end, I’m happy I listened to my mentor when I was told how to do a better handstand. And I’m happy I didn’t listen when I was told how my clown tightrope routine should end. I don’t think there is a black and white answer to this dilemma. All I can say is: listen long enough to understand what’s being offered, then decide whether it belongs to you. Some advice is a handrail. Some is a suggestion. Some is just someone else explaining how they survived their own learning curve. Circus, like most creative work, lives in that uncomfortable space between respect and rebellion. You take what keeps you safe, discard what keeps you small, and occasionally learn the hard way which was which.

If nothing else, try to avoid dislocating anything in the process. But no promises.

[silvercircus]

We’re Not Bad at Communicating. We’re Out of Practice.

On presence, practice, and why communication feels harder now than it used to

One of the quiet things circus arts taught me is how much information lives outside of words.

In clowning, circus, and live performance, language is only one channel among many. Meaning is carried through posture, timing, breath, where someone places their weight, and how long they wait before responding. A pause can be an apology. A stumble can be an invitation. A glance can be a question. Onstage, you learn quickly that if you rely only on what is said, you will miss most of what is happening.

This isn’t unique to performance. It’s how humans have always communicated. The difference is that performance arts make this visible, obvious, and unavoidable. When you’re standing in front of people, you don’t get to hide behind clarification later. You don’t get to rewrite your sentence. You feel the response immediately, in the room, in your body.

Face to face communication gives us access to tone, cadence, and intention. It gives us the full sentence, not just the text. When someone speaks in front of you, you hear how fast they’re talking, where their voice softens, where it tightens. You notice when someone wants to be interrupted and when they’re asking for patience. You can tell when a joke lands, when it doesn’t, and when it lands differently than expected.

When communication moves online, much of this disappears. Words flatten. Timing collapses. Tone becomes a guess. A message can be read ten different ways depending on the reader’s mood, history, or assumptions. None of this is new, but it has become the dominant way many of us communicate. It’s no wonder misunderstandings feel more frequent. We’re working with fewer tools.

I know I’m going to piss off a bunch of writers with that last paragraph, but please hear me out.

This isn’t an argument against writing. Effective writing is hard. Making a reader feel something specific, guiding them toward empathy for a character, or landing an emotional beat on the page takes years of deliberate practice. The best writers I know spend enormous energy thinking about rhythm, voice, and subtext. They know exactly how much weight a single word can carry.

And even then, those same writers will tell you how often tone is misread online. How a sentence meant as gentle comes across as sharp. How irony collapses without shared context. How a carefully chosen phrase lands differently depending on who is reading, when they’re reading, and what they’re bringing with them. This isn’t a failure of craft so much as a limitation of the medium.

On the page, you can shape meaning, but you can’t control the conditions under which someone encounters it. You can’t see their face, hear their breath, or adjust mid-sentence when you sense confusion or resistance. In live conversation, those adjustments happen instinctively. Online, the feedback loop is delayed or missing entirely.

So when I say we’re working with fewer tools, I don’t mean fewer words. I mean fewer signals. Writing can do extraordinary things, but it asks a lot of both the writer and the reader. Face to face communication, for all its messiness, gives us a fuller instrument panel. It lets us respond in real time, repair misunderstandings as they happen, and feel our way toward each other rather than guessing from a distance. When we collectively allocate all of our communication practices to virtual reality, we lose something. And that trend seems to have had a noticeable and detrimental impact on our interpersonal communication skills.I love how one of the people in this AI image has two phones. I’m keeping it in!

It often feels like interpersonal communication as a whole has taken a dive, like people have forgotten how to talk to each other. I’m not convinced that’s true. I think we’re just out of practice.

In the circus, no one expects to juggle well without dropping. No one assumes balance arrives without wobbling. Communication is no different. It’s a skill that sharpens with repetition and dulls with neglect. When we remove daily, low stakes interactions from our lives, we remove the training ground.

Modern conveniences have done something remarkable. They’ve eliminated the need for countless small exchanges. We can scan our groceries without speaking. We can order food without looking anyone in the eye. We can entertain ourselves indefinitely without sharing a room with strangers. None of this is inherently bad, but it does mean we’re exercising a different muscle set.

Those tiny, ordinary interactions matter more than we realize. Saying hello to a cashier. Making brief conversation while waiting in line. Sitting in a dark theater with people you don’t know, all reacting to the same moment at the same time. These are not deep conversations, but they are repetitions. They are how we practice reading tone, adjusting timing, and responding to other humans in real time.

Performance teaches you that connection isn’t built only in grand gestures. It’s built in attention. In noticing. In showing up when it would be easier not to. The same is true offstage.

If communication feels harder lately, it may not be because we’ve lost the ability. It may be because we’ve optimized our lives in ways that require less of it. Less eye contact. Less improvisation. Less listening to what isn’t being said.

The solution isn’t to abandon technology or convenience. It’s to intentionally reintroduce moments where communication can be practiced. Choose the checkout line instead of self checkout. Sit in the theater instead of watching alone at home. Strike up the small conversation that doesn’t lead anywhere except to the experience of being briefly, awkwardly human together.

Circus artists train by doing the thing they want to be good at, over and over, in public, with room to fail. Communication deserves the same generosity. We don’t get better by avoiding it. We get better by engaging, stumbling, adjusting, and trying again.This is not AI Generated. This is me connecting with a wonderful audience member during a show last summer. They were fantastic!

At its core, performance reminds us that connection is not automatic. It’s active. It’s something we participate in. And like any skill worth having, it gets stronger the more often we step into the room and practice.

[silvercircus]

I AM A CLOWN! Literally, figuratively, and proudly.

What clowning taught me about honesty, humanity, and living without armor.

There’s a question I get more often than you’d think. It usually comes after a show, when people are still half-smiling, half-processing the fact that a grown adult just communicated a surprisingly complex idea using nothing but a raised eyebrow and an ill-timed stumble. Someone leans in, a little conspiratorial, and asks, “So, why clowning? What got you into this line of work?”

It’s a great questions, and one that doesn’t just have one answer. Clowning isn’t something people drift into by accident. If anything, it’s a path you walk, against the current of cultural pushback. It’s a career that draws you in because something in you recognizes its importance long before you do.

It’s taken me years to fully understand why I was drawn to it, but I think I can finally put it into words.

Reason #1: Collaboration Vs Competition

The first part of the answer is simple. I’ve never been competitive. I don’t mean that in the self-effacing, I-just-do-this-for-fun way that people say when they lose a board game. I mean it in the bone-deep sense that competition never made sense to me. The whole structure of winning and losing felt like a language I couldn’t speak. That’s the reason why I was never interested in sports. That’s also why I always prefered cooperative board games instead of competitive ones (Happy to give recommendations if that’s a type of board game you’d like to try).

Now, that’s not to say that don’t feel a motivation to push myself and get better. I am motivated by a sense of self competitiveness, not social competitiveness. I desire to be better than I was yesterday, not better than someone else is today.

Sports amplified that feeling. The rules were rigid, the stakes oddly personal, and the whole thing seemed designed to measure one person against another. Even as a kid, I didn’t understand why the point was to beat someone else instead of discovering something together. That’s why I was drawn to theater.

Theater offered its own template. An ensemble is a small, temporary tribe where everyone’s success is tied together. You rely on each other. One person’s breath supports another person’s line. One person’s timing determines another person’s cue. There’s a unity in that kind of work, a shared striving that never asks you to step on anyone else’s toes in order to shine. In theater, no one in the audience is rooting against you (they may root against your character, but that’s a whole different story). There is a shared communal understanding. A shared goal, and a collective creation. I started as a “theater kid”. Then… I discovered the circus!

Circus sharpened that idea into something even more elemental. In circus, the physical demands are undeniable. I have to keep my body in shape, train skills that challenge our assumptions about the limit of human ability, and maintain the discipline required to do the same motion again and again until it finally softens into muscle memory. But unlike the athletic environments I grew up around, circus culture is built from collaboration. You don’t compete with the person in the air next to you. You protect them. You support them. You celebrate when they succeed because their success lifts the entire tent.Photo by Linh Quach on Unsplash

Now, I’m not saying there’s no competition in the circus. Anyone in the performing arts industry can tell you that there is plenty of that. We need to audition to get into the show. We need to perform well in order to get hired. If we’re solo artists, we need to sell ourselves to clients to prove that we are worth their time and investment. However, once the contract is signed, once house opens, and the audience takes their seats. We are all united. A team creating a shared experience together. That is what I love. When someone falters, you catch them both literally and figuratively.

I remember when I was first training at a circus school in Maine, we had a showcase at the end of the school year. Leading up to the show, during training, I fell and got injured. A sprained ankle. Nothing terrible but certainly something that would affect my ability to be in the show. What blew my mind was that everyone’s (yes EVERYONE'S) first reaction was, “Ok how do we rechoregraph so that Andrew doesn’t need to put a lot of weight on that ankle?”

That was their first reaction!

There was no “Whelp, guess you can’t be in the show” or “Looks like we’ll have to get someone else to take your place”. No. None of that. To them, there was only one option from the beginning. How can we work together to make sure everyone shines?

So we did, we re-choreographed a few section, and proceeded to put on a kick-ass show. We had a blast, the audience loved it, and everyone walked away a winner.

That sense of shared risk and shared triumph is part of why I drifted toward circus. Eventually I would go on to create my own one-man show (which I am still touring today), but even though I’m not in a big ensemble, I still carry that sense of collaboration with my colleagues to this day. We regularly get together to train, workshop ideas, and share insights and tips from our experiences on the road. The circus community is my second family.

Reason #2: The historically important roles clowns play

Now I know what you’re probably asking. I’ve heard it many times. After I tell people I’m a clown, after the initial reaction of “haha, very funny, so what do you really do for work? … wait, you’re serious?” I usually get something along the lines of “Why a clown?”

First I want to make a distinction, because there a so many different kinds of clowns. From the white faced clown (known as Clown Blanc) and Auguste clown to the characters from Commedia Dell’arte, there are so many different kinds of clowns. Yes, even scary clowns, which unfortunately has turned a lot of people away from clowning. But I promise, for every single scary clown, there are 99 kind and caring ones. I consider myself a new vaudeville clown. To summarize, I am modern performer reviving the spirit of old-time variety shows, focusing on character-driven, often silent or minimal-dialogue acts that blend mime, physical comedy, juggling, and acting, moving away from traditional circus makeup for more depth and personal connection

But to the original question of “why clowning?” The deeper reason is older than any one performer, older than any one circus. It’s woven into the history of the clown itself.

If you trace back far enough, the clown appears again and again in cultures that never spoke to each other. In Ancient Greece, comedic performers in the marketplace and in early theatrical festivals played the fool for the sake of exposing truth. In medieval Europe, the court jester held a position no one else in the kingdom could replicate. They could tell the king the truth in plain sight, hidden under a layer of absurdity. They could interrupt ceremonies, mock decisions, exaggerate flaws, and make observations that would have been dangerous in any other mouth.

You find similar figures throughout Asia. I.e. the Japanese kyōgen comic servants, the Chinese chǒu characters with their stark white nose patches, the South Asian vidusaka from Sanskrit drama who could question authority with a mischievous innocence that made audiences lean in. In Indigenous traditions across the Americas, trickster figures blend humor, chaos, teaching, and spiritual insight into a single role. Despite being separated by geography and era, they share a common thread: the clown reveals what others conceal.

In every place and every era, the clown was a mirror. A slightly warped mirror, yes, but only so the truth would be visible. They spoke in ways that sidestepped defensiveness. They exposed contradictions not to shame but to illuminate. They held up society’s flaws gently enough that people could laugh at them first, understand them second, and maybe change them third. That lineage matters to me. It gives weight to the silliness. It turns nonsense into a language with its own grammar and purpose.

But there’s one more piece of the puzzle, and it’s the one I return to when the work feels heavy, when the world feels like it has forgotten how to look itself in the eye.

Reason #3: The Importance of Play

Clowns teach people how to play.

It sounds simple. It isn’t.

Play is something we quietly strip from adulthood. We reward seriousness, discipline, efficiency. We applaud busyness and productivity, but rarely curiosity. And then we wonder why creativity dries up. Why imagination gets stunted. Why people lose the ability to laugh at themselves or explore the unknown without fear of looking foolish.

Clowns reintroduce that permission. We remind people that play is not something you grow out of. It’s something you return to when you want to feel fully alive. The clown is the master of experimentation, of trying something simply to see what happens, of leaning into the moment instead of controlling it.

We are professional permission-givers. We let people breathe a little deeper. We show them that failure can be funny, that confusion can be fertile ground, that joy is a legitimate way of understanding the world. Picture this, a room full of corporate elites sitting in a conference room. Each of them engaging in hushed conversations. I begin my show. 5 minutes later, this room of adults is playing a game of catch with each other using an invisible ball. laughing, playing, and having an absolute blast. Sometimes you just need one person to give them the permission to be silly. And before they know it, they feel like kids again. Engaging, creating, and playing. Simply wonderful.

So when people ask why I chose this path, I think of all of that. The collaboration. The lineage. The play. I think about the moments when someone in the audience suddenly forgets to be self-conscious, or when a child laughs in that unrestrained way that adults forget how to access, or when a room full of strangers suddenly feels like a single, breathing organism.

Clowning is not the path I chose because I wanted to stand out. It’s the path I chose because it aligned with the parts of me that never fit inside competition, hierarchy, or the rigid seriousness of adulthood. It’s a way to stay honest. A way to stay human. A way to help other people remember their own softness.

In a world that asks us to armor ourselves daily, helping people set that weight down, even briefly, feels like meaningful work.

[silvercircus]

The Surprisingly Useful Art of Getting Bored

The overlooked role boredom plays in creativity, clarity, and courageous work.

Boredom doesn’t get much respect. It’s usually treated like an unwanted guest who shows up early, stays too long, and doesn’t even bring snacks. Most of us will do anything to avoid it. Reach for a phone. Rearrange a drawer. Suddenly remember a pressing need to alphabetize the spice rack. Without even thinking, we fill the space. We find another task, another micro-hobby, another mild obsession we’ll abandon in a couple of weeks when the schedule inevitably bursts at the seams.

And it’s funny how deeply this has seeped into our language. When someone asks how we are, we have our standard script: “good, you?” No need to pause, no need to reflect. Just a social handshake wrapped in words. But ask someone what they’ve been up to, or how things have been, and nine times out of ten you’ll get a single, triumphant answer.

Busy.

As if busy is a virtue in itself. As if the only correct state of being is in motion. Gotta be busy. Gotta keep moving. If you stop, even for a breath, someone else will race past you. Don’t stop. Don’t slow down. And for heaven’s sake, don’t think. Thinking is how you fall behind.

Sound familiar? I know it certainly does for me!

In a culture built on productivity, boredom has been cast as the enemy. Something suspicious. Something dangerous. Something to be avoided before it ruins everything you’ve worked for. So when boredom does sneak in, even for a moment, our brains panic. Withdrawal symptoms kick in. We grab a screen, any screen. A phone, a tablet, a television, the back of a cereal box. Even a fidget spinner, if that’s the closest dopamine dispenser available. Anything to escape the terrible vacuum of unoccupied time.

But here’s the twist: boredom is not the enemy. It’s the compass.

For creatives, performers, makers, and anyone trying to build something that didn’t exist yesterday, boredom is the quiet doorway into the parts of the mind that don’t surface when we’re busy executing the next task. When I allow myself to be bored, truly bored, not the performative kind where I pretend to rest while secretly refreshing emails, something starts shifting.

The mind wanders. Thoughts stretch. Ideas unspool at their own pace. A space opens that productivity cannot create.

In my line of work (The circus), boredom has become the unlikely engine behind some of my best ideas. It shows up during repetitive drills when my body has settled into autopilot and my mind starts tinkering with what might come next. It shows up on long drives home after a show when the adrenaline has faded and my attention loosens. It shows up in those strange, suspended minutes where I stare at nothing in particular and my brain finally has the freedom to make weird, unexpected connections.

The act that seemed impossible suddenly has a pathway. The show that felt stuck reveals its next beat. The business problem that’s been taunting me for days resolves itself with a solution so obvious I’m annoyed I didn’t think of it sooner.

None of that happens when I’m rushing. None of it shows up when I’m busy for the sake of being busy. It happens in the stillness we’ve been trained to fear.

Boredom is the soil that imagination grows in. Creativity doesn’t thrive under pressure; it thrives in space. In quiet. In those moments where nothing demands attention and the mind finally gets to wander without supervision.

But embracing boredom requires a small rebellion. It requires stepping out of the cultural current that insists we should be sprinting at all times. It requires trusting that thinking, pausing, and doing absolutely nothing can be not only useful, but essential.

In running a circus business, this has become one of my most reliable tools. I don’t schedule brainstorming sessions anymore. I schedule boredom. An hour with no agenda. A walk with no podcast. A moment with nothing to fix or optimize. That’s where the unexpected lives.

If you’ve ever found yourself staring into space and suddenly stumbling on an idea that feels like it came out of nowhere, you already know this truth.

Boredom is not a void. It’s a signal. A quiet invitation. The mind’s way of clearing the stage for something new.

If we stop running from it, it might just show us the next thing we didn’t know we were ready to create.

[silvercircus]

Why We Still Need Circus

When I wrote recently about fear and failure, I found myself circling around something deeper that I didn’t name at the time. That piece was about the private landscape inside a performer’s mind. It spoke about the tightening in the chest, the moment before stepping into the light, the split-second choice to trust your own body. But running beneath all of that is a larger question: why does any of this matter to anyone watching? Why, in a world overflowing with digital distraction, do we still gather to witness people balancing, spinning, tumbling, flying?

It’s tempting to say it’s nostalgia, or tradition, or that old familiar pull of spectacle. But that misses the heart of it. Circus isn’t just entertainment. It is one of the last communal rituals we have left that asks us to put the phone away, sit with strangers, and surrender to something unrepeatable. I try to incorporate this sense of uniqueness into every one of my performances.

During each of my shows I include a routine where I ask an volunteer to walk through the audience and collect three items. These three items (whatever they are), I will try to juggle them. Without me giving any further instruction, the crowd begins searching for their keys, their shoes, their water bottles, whatever they think would be difficult for me. It is during this routine that I find the most joy in just standing quietly and watching the audience. Instantly, they are all collaborating and working together. They are complete strangers and yet, without any other provocation, suddenly become completely invested in each other and in the moment. Everyone is on the same side, working together to find the three hardest things for me to juggle. It’s incredible. And the beautiful part is that most of the time I am able to do it, and the audience cheers. But what’s even better is when I’m not able to do it and the audience still cheers, because they figured out a way to stump me. Everyone wins! There is connection, there is collaboration, there is creativity, but there isn’t a single phone screen in sight (unless one of them is brave enough to have me juggle theirs ;P).

Screens offer us infinite perfected moments. Every clip is polished, edited, compressed into something that looks effortless. If you stumble, you delete. If the light isn’t right, you adjust. You can control every pixel. But live performance refuses that control. A trick might falter. A prop might misbehave. Someone in the audience might sneeze at the worst possible time. What makes circus (And live theater in general) beautiful isn’t the absence of uncertainty, but the way performers navigate it.

And the audience knows this, even if they can’t articulate it. They know you are doing something that can go wrong. They know your balance is real, your breath is real, your risk is real. And that creates a kind of shared electricity that digital media can approximate but never replicate. There is a reason the collective gasp of a room full of people hits differently than that nose-exhale-laugh thing we all do when we see a funny meme during a doom scroll session. Its because we are in the action. We’re a part of the moment rather than a passive bystander.

In every show I am constantly making small changes, adapting lines, and altering movements in response to the crowd. If I hear a gasp, I’ll hold a moment longer. If I get applause, I’ll acknowledge it before moving on. If I sense the crowd losing focus, I’ll move on to the next bit. Circus is a constant communication between the performers and the audience. The audience can’t help but play an incredibly important role. And both sides share the same understanding that anything can happen.

Circus is a stubborn reminder that human beings can still surprise one another. That even in a world engineered for convenience, there are still places where the outcome is uncertain. Wonder requires uncertainty. Awe requires vulnerability. And both demand presence.

The acrobat climbing the rope isn’t just showing strength. They’re showing devotion, repetition, the invisible hours behind what seems effortless. The juggler isn’t just keeping objects in the air. They are keeping the audience in a state of suspended breath, teaching them something about rhythm, control, and surrender at once. The clown isn’t just being silly. They model permission, the freedom to fail publicly, recover, and still be worthy of attention.

In the digital age, most of what we see has been smoothed at the edges. Circus resists smoothing. It insists on the texture of the real: the grit of the mat, the humidity in the tent, the rope burn on the palms, the way time bends when someone hangs in the air longer than seems possible. It is an art form built on the premise that the body is enough.

But circus also gives us something we rarely talk about: permission to feel. Permission to gasp, to laugh too loudly, to root for someone without irony, to be visibly moved without explanation. The performer offers the risk, and the audience offers the response. It is a quiet exchange of trust. Both sides participate in keeping the moment alive.

And perhaps that is why we need circus now more than ever. Not to indulge nostalgia, and not simply because it is beautiful, but because it is real in a way that is increasingly rare. It connects us through our senses, our breath, our shared fascination with what a human body can do. It shakes us awake.

I can’t tell you how inspiring it is to see a child’s (Or adults) face light up when they see one of my shows. You can see how much they care and how invested they are. Not just to me, but to the story i’m sharing. It is a connection that I don’t experience anywhere else.

In the end, circus survives because humans are wired for wonder. Not the kind you scroll past. The kind you feel in your ribs. The kind that reminds you, for a fleeting second, that you’re part of the same fragile, improbable species as the person onstage. The kind that reminds you that the world is full of uncertainty, yes, but also full of grace.

Circus is not an escape from reality. It is an encounter with it. A reminder of our limits and our possibilities, our fear and our courage, our solitude and our togetherness. It takes everything we try to flatten or hide in the digital world and lifts it into the light.

And so we keep gathering. Keep watching. Keep holding our breath. Because something in us still wants to be astonished. Something in us still needs to sit in a room full of strangers and feel that collective rise of wonder, knowing that what we are witnessing will never happen in exactly the same way again.

That, in itself, is enough.

[silvercircus]

The Perfect(ion) Illusion

A conversation about imperfection; Onstage and Off.

There’s a moment right before walking on stage where my mind does this thing. It whispers, Don’t mess up. Everyone out there is expecting perfection.

Never mind that perfection isn’t real, that I’m a human with all the glorious unpredictability of gravity and nerves and muscles that sometimes decide to freestyle without telling me. In that moment, the pressure to be flawless feels very real.

But here’s the funny thing: the audience probably walked in thinking I had it all together… while they were the ones feeling imperfect, chaotic, behind, or not-enough.

It’s wild how we’re all doing this to ourselves, and to each other.

It doesn’t help that we carry around tiny devices that convince us everyone else is living their best, most aesthetically curated life. They’re traveling, meditating, parenting, performing, cooking, creating, thriving, glowing, laughing beautifully in perfect golden light. Even their morning coffee has better lighting than most of my headshots.

And you? You just found a granola bar in your coat pocket from 2019 and briefly considered eating it.

Social media specializes in the illusion of perfection. Not because people are trying to deceive, but because we tend to share the highlight reel, not the blooper reel. We crop out the messy parts, the awkward parts, the parts where we questioned everything.

Psychologically, it makes sense. We’re wired for comparison. We try to figure out where we stand in the tribe. But today, instead of comparing ourselves to 20 people in a village, we compare ourselves to 4.7 billion people online, many of whom are professionally staged, filtered, edited, or rehearsed.

No wonder we feel like we’re the only messy ones.

What’s funny is that the stage, of all places, tends to reinforce this illusion. From the audience’s perspective, performers look infallible. Confident. Balanced. Effortless. But backstage tells a different story altogether.

I remember one of my first ever solo performances. Back in 2015, when I was still doing a lot of card magic, I incorporated a card mentalism routine into my show. I would have an audience member pick a card at the beginning of the show, and at the end I would read their mind and reveal which card they chose in a grandiose fashion.

Well, without giving too much away, the trick did NOT go the way I planned. After they selected the card, and I walked back to the stage, my heart utterly sank. I had the horrifying realization that I had messed up, and genuinely had no idea which card they selected. None! At that point I had a 1 in 52 chance to get this right. Best part was… I had the whole show to dwell on this. Yup, 45 minutes of smiles and joy on the outside, and complete panic and existential dread on the inside. I was the only performer, so there was no chance to collect myself offstage and figure out a solution. Nope I was stuck on stage with a metaphorical countdown timer to my complete and utter public execution. What could I do? Standing in front of a full audience of people (who paid actual money to see me perform), I was going to completely bomb that finale of the show, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

Suffice it to say this story doesn’t end in some flashy revelation, or some miraculous divination. I got to the end of the show, my heart still pounding out of my chest, and when the moment came to reveal the chosen card, I did the only thing I could think to do… keep moving forward! I made my best guess at the card, got it wrong, and turned it into some offhanded joke. I got a small laugh, and we moved on. Internally, I was mortified.

That is, until I got some feedback from the audience after the show. Apparently everyone just thought it was part of the act, designed to be a distraction of some kind, or just a way to get a quick laugh. All seemingly part of my master plan.

But the truth is, performers mess up constantly. Sometimes you see it, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes it becomes part of the act so smoothly people think it was intentional. Sometimes it becomes the best moment of the night.

On stage, perfection is never the goal. Presence is.

The ability to fail gracefully, recover quickly, and keep going, that’s the real craft. That’s the muscle performers spend years training. Not perfection, but adaptation.

And honestly? Life is more like a circus act than a polished photo. Wobbly, risky, exhilarating, and unpredictable.

If you watch someone who makes something look effortless, you’re not seeing perfection. You’re seeing a person who has befriended failure so thoroughly that it no longer scares them.

In psychology, it is called resilience. In philosophy, you find versions of it everywhere, from the Stoics to the Taoists to the absurdists. And in circus, well… this is just what we call an average Tuesday.

Since that day, I’ve worked on incorporating themes of resiliency into every one of my shows. I dove deeper into clown, mime, and storytelling techniques that offer a message of resilience throughout my performances. I want to show that I am imperfect, because sometimes we just want to see that our personal struggles are not unique to us.

Last summer on tour, this idea landed in a much deeper way for me. I was performing at a county fair in Vermont where I had multiple shows each day. During my second show of the day a young boy and his family were seated in the front row. I didn’t think much of it at the time.

Later in the day, I had my third and final performance, and again saw the same family seated in the front row. The boys face lit up as I began my opening act, and when he raised his hand to be a volunteer for one of my routines, I of course called on him to join me on stage. He was great!

After the show, I typically sell branded merchandise to patrons, and without hesitation, the young boy ran up and purchased a “Silver Circus” Kazoo from me. He politely said thank you and he and his parents walked away.

Moments later, the father turns around and walks back to me. “I just wanted you to know” he said, “That my son really loved your show. We gave him a certain amount of money to spend at the fair today, and he decided he wanted to spend his last few dollars on your Kazoo. It really means a lot to him.”

I smiled and gave him a sincere “Thank you!”

He continued. “You know, over the past few years, my son has really been struggling with his self confidence. He has been afraid to try anything for fear of failure.” His eyes began to water a bit. “I think hearing you talk about failure, and show your mistakes on stage was so important for him to see. I was so thrilled to see him raise his hand to be a volunteer. Thank you for choosing him.” He shook my hand, smiled, and jogged back to his wife and son.

I was speechless. I had tears in my eyes. I saw myself in that child, and I was so happy he connected with my performance.

What struck me most was that he didn’t connect with the polished moments; he connected with the ones where something went wrong and I kept going. He saw a performer on stage make mistakes, and not break. For a kid who felt like mistakes were catastrophic, seeing someone fall and recover was everything. It reminded me that sometimes the most powerful thing we can model isn’t mastery, but vulnerability in motion.

We say “nobody’s perfect” like it’s a sweet little greeting card sentiment, but the truth behind it is much bigger. We’re swimming in a culture that treats perfection as normal and anything less as a personal failing. But perfection isn’t normal. It’s not even real. People on social media aren’t perfect. People on stage aren’t perfect. I’m not. You’re not. And thank god, because perfection is brittle. You can’t grow if you can’t be wrong. You can’t stretch into new shapes if you only move in the ones you’ve mastered.

What matters isn’t that we fall, but how we rise. How we adapt. How we keep going even when the script falls apart in our hands.

I still get that whisper before I step into the spotlight, the one that tells me that this time I need to be flawless. But every night, I walk out anyway. Not because I’m perfect, but because perfection was never the point. The point is to show up. To try. To wobble and recover and wobble again. To be human in front of other humans, which, ironically, is the thing that feels the most like magic.

And if that gives someone else permission to breathe a little easier in their own imperfect life… then that’s the real trick.

[silvercircus]

The Myth of Effortlessness

There’s a particular kind of magic that happens when you watch someone perform, whether it’s circus, music, comedy, or anything that lives on a stage. There’s a moment when everything looks light, easy, almost inevitable. A flourish that happens so quickly you barely register the mechanics. A transition so smooth it feels like the performer has slipped briefly into a world with different rules. And it’s so tempting, in that moment, to think, They make that look so effortless.

But the truth is, the appearance of ease is one of the oldest illusions in the book. Not because the performer wants to deceive you, but because the very nature of performance asks us to hide the scaffolding. What reads as grace is built on bruises. What looks like flow is assembled from repetition. What seems spontaneous has probably been rehearsed more times than the performer would care to admit. As the old saying goes, “The master has failed more times than the novice has tried”. Effortlessness is never the absence of effort, it’s the mastery that forms when you’ve worked so long, so intensely, that the work becomes invisible even to you.

No audience sees the late-night practice session where absolutely nothing goes right. They don’t see the series of drops you swear you’ve never done before. They don’t hear the muttered swearing or feel the frustration of the fifteenth attempt that still doesn’t land. Practice is awkward. It’s unglamorous. It’s honest in a way performance rarely is. And that’s why the contrast feels so stark: the practice room is where you’re human, and the stage is where that humanity gets distilled into something that looks almost superhuman.

In circus, and honestly, in any craft you care about, you learn quickly that failure isn’t just part of the process; it is the process. A drop isn’t a sign you’re behind. It’s data. Every mistake is a little note from reality saying, “Not quite, try again, but this time with this in mind.” You accumulate these tiny notes over time, and eventually they stack high enough to create something that looks like confidence.

Of course, this invisible mountain of effort becomes even more invisible once you add social media into the mix. Platforms built on highlights and edits make it almost too easy to assume everyone else is floating while you’re slogging. You watch a ten-second clip of someone nailing a move you’ve been wrestling with for months and think, Why does it look so easy for them? What’s wrong with me? It doesn’t matter that you know better, it still gets under your skin. You’re comparing your in-progress self to someone else’s final take, and your brain doesn’t care about context. It just sees the gap.

What we don’t see online are the dropped props, the forgotten choreography, the exhausted “one more time” that happens twenty times in a row. People rarely post their vulnerability because it feels risky, especially when they’re trying to present professionalism or mastery. But that’s exactly why the myth of effortlessness is so sticky. We’re surrounded by polished moments, and we forget how much polishing they require.

Somewhere along the line, effort became a kind of dirty word, as if struggling with something is a sign you’re not meant for it. But effort is not a sign that you’re behind; it’s a sign that you’re engaged. The days when you work hard and feel like you made only a centimeter of progress? Those are the days your craft is actually being built. Those are the days that matter.

If anything, effort is a form of devotion. You wouldn’t show up for something again and again if you didn’t care. You wouldn’t keep trying if some part of you didn’t believe in what’s possible, if not today, then eventually. And that’s the quiet truth behind every “effortless” moment anyone has ever performed: it is the visible tip of a very deep and very personal iceberg.

The magic isn’t that someone makes something look easy. The magic is that they’ve done the hard work, lived through the failures, put in the repetition, and still found a way to stand in front of you and offer something that feels light. Magic isn’t about ease. Magic is about commitment disguised as ease.

So if you’re in the middle of the messy part, if things are dropping, if timing is off, if your progress feels slow or uneven, don’t read that as a sign you’re not cut out for it. Read it as proof that you’re in the very heart of the craft, the place where mastery is being shaped. You’re not falling behind. You’re building the foundation for your own future “effortless” moments.

And when they come, and they will, they’ll mean more because you’ll know exactly how much invisible work made them possible.

[silvercircus]

The Discipline of Play

Why staying curious might be the most serious thing you can do.

When we hear the word discipline, most of us picture structure, focus, and repetition. Discipline is the thing that gets us up early, keeps us practicing, and pushes us to polish every detail until it gleams. But so often this mindset brings with it a stigma of relentlessness, great effort, and maybe a little bit of suffering. It brings to mind the image of sisyphus pushing that boulder up the mountain. Brutal!

However, there’s another side to mastery that often gets left out of the conversation: Play.

Play is curiosity in motion. It’s the spark that makes you try the ridiculous idea, the funny face, the untested route. It’s how children learn! What would happen if I spill this entire carton of milk on the floor? What if I kick this ball over the fence? What if I lock myself in this trunk, could I get out?

That last example is absolutely a real thing. I should know, I did it myself! Ok, quick story time. I was 10 or 11 years old and my parents drove an old sedan, and I had the brilliant idea to try my hand at being an escape artist like harry houdini. (If I only younger me could see me now! lol). So I planned the escape. I was able to unlock the back of the car seat to get out on every single practice run, so I was so confident. So confident that I invited another friend to join is me the escape. So, it was time to do finally go through with it. My friend and I climbed into the dark, cramped space, and for the first time I fully closed the trunk, locking it. I sat in the dark, smug with confidence. I lean over to the back of the seat, and wouldn’t you know it, the lever jammed. Yup, it was fully and completely stuck…

Unfortunately for me and my friend, I didn’t let anyone know what we were doing! We began to forcefully kick the back of the seat, it didn’t budge. We pressed on the trunk hatch, nothing. Then, after much consideration, we promptly began to panic. Only after a 10 or so minutes, my little sister heard us screaming for our lives, and my mother came to investigate. At the time, it felt horrifying, as if we narrowly escaped death. But guess what, I LEARNED! I didn’t know it at the time, but what I was doing was an experiment. And experiment through the act of play.

Children experiment without fear of failure, without worrying whether they’re doing it “right.” Kids somehow intrinsically understand that playing is the best way to learn. Yet, as we grow more professional, more serious, more experienced, that openness tends to shrink. We are taught that play time and learning time are two seperate things. Eventually, we stop playing all together. As if playing is seen as “childish”, unproductive, and a waste of time. Instead we are taught to work harder, to keep our nose to the grindstone, and be disciplined. We grow self-conscious, and prioritize protecting our reputations instead of our imaginations.

However, play is not the opposite of discipline. It’s a form of it. Sometime play is the fastest route to growth and understanding.

Curiosity Is the Engine of Growth

Every skill, whether it’s juggling, painting, coding, writing, or teaching, eventually reaches a plateau. Discipline keeps you practicing, but curiosity gets you unstuck (yes, I see the irony with my trunk story). The moment you start asking “What if…?” is the moment you stop repeating and start discovering.

Playful experimentation is what turns technical ability into artistry. It’s where happy accidents become innovations. It’s where humor breaks the tension and opens new possibilities.

Children don’t need to be told to stay curious, they just are. But adults have to choose curiosity. We have to deliberately make space for it. The best way to progress in any endeavour (especially a creative one) is to embrace a childlike sense of curiosity, play, and humor.

Humor as a Tool, Not a Distraction

Humor is a survival skill in the creative process. It’s the permission slip that lets you fail without shame. When you can laugh at your own flops, you create psychological safety. This is the fertile ground where risk-taking can thrive.

Professionally, humor often gets mistaken for a lack of seriousness. But in truth, it’s a sign of resilience. It says: “I can handle things going wrong and still keep going.”

And oftentimes, “things going wrong” is the only way to progress. I wrote entire blog about Fear, Failure and the Fine Art of Falling. If you’re interested in reading more about embracing your mistakes, I’ll link to it at the end of this post.

A playful mindset doesn’t mean being careless. It means un-sticking yourself from expectation, and opening yourself up to possibilities.

Uh oh.. I can hear a sigh from the audience. “That all sounds well and good” You might say, “but the real world just isn’t like that. I don’t feel a sense of creativity or wonder when I walk into my soul sucking office job every morning.”

And you’re absolutely right!

Protecting Playfulness in Professional Spaces

The professional world has a way of squeezing out play. It is so effective at extracting our sense of wonder and imagination. Deadlines, expectations, teacher feedback, they can all make us cautious. They give us a real sense of fear. “Failure will not be tolerated!”.

In every class we took in school, there was “the right answer” and nothing else. Experimentation and play was replaced by procedures and results. When did we stop taking risks? When did we stop pushing boundaries? Now, let me be clear, I don’t blame the teachers, and I don’t even blame the schools. I blame the way our society prioritized uniformity and efficiency. It permeates our entire culture.

So what can we do? Whelp, at the end of the day YOU are responsible for YOU. Now that you’ve read this blog post, you can make the active choice to prioritize play. You can choose to keep your curiosity alive. But like any other discipline, it takes practice and dedication. Just like exercising a muscle, exercising our curiosity is a process. Over time your resilience will grow, and you will find being creative comes more naturally and enjoyably. So I’ve included some actionable tasks you can do to keep that sense of wonder and imagination strong.

A few ways to do that:

Schedule time to play. Literally block it off. No goals, no productivity metrics, just exploration. There might be days where nothing productive happens, and that is great! That is not a sign you’re failing, but a sign that you are finally giving yourself permission to just be in the moment.

Welcome mistakes. Not as problems, but as invitations to learn something you didn’t plan on. There are only two option when you try something. You either succeed, or you learn.

Surround yourself with the unserious. Work with people who make you laugh, who challenge you to loosen up. Be a force for creativity in your workplace, in your hobbies, and with your family. Encourage risk taking! Be silly!

Revisit your beginner self. Remember why you started, the thrill of discovery, the joy of making something for no reason at all.

To Conclude!

Here’s the paradox: play requires discipline, and discipline requires play. Without structure, play becomes chaos; without play, structure becomes prison.

The craft thrives in the balance, where curiosity is guided by intention, and skill serves imagination.

So the next time you catch yourself tightening up, trying to be professional, take a breath. Smile at the absurdity of it all. And then ask the most important creative question you can:

“What if?”

[silvercircus]

Purple: The Impossible Color

The super nerdy reasons why I chose the color purple to represent my brand.

Hey all,

This is going to be a shorter post I think. I want to talk about why I use the color purple to represent my brand as a solo circus artist. Just a warning that this post is going to have a slightly different tone. We’ll be going into the scientific properties of purple and how it relates to my philosophy of performance. If you enjoy this writing style (or if you don’t), please let me know!

The Silver Circus Brand

I use purple in almost every aspect of my performance. It is the main color in my outfit, my logo, my props, my website, etc. Whenever I create anything for the show, I make sure to get it in purple. I’ve made an image for myself using this color, and now I’ve heard from fans of my show that when they see something purple, they think of me.

Perfect!

Branding is such an important part of marketing and growing your business. Having clients see a shape, color, or word and immediately think of you and your business is the dream. And while I have made purple a huge part of my brand, I’ve rarely ever talked about why I chose it. It wasn’t just a random decision, or because it was my favorite color. Although it does also happen to be my favorite color. But the real reason I chose it (and by extension, why it also happens to be my favorite color) is because it is one of the most scientifically astounding colors ever! Some might even say it’s an impossible color! I know… crazy, right? But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk about our eyes for a sec.

The Science of Color

Our eyes are incredible! Its wild that we can register light waves, distinguish between differences in color, hue, tint, tone, and shade, and then take that sensory input and develop a picture of the world in our brain. It may seem trivial at first, but the relationship between our eyes and our brains is deeply complex and fascinating.

Visible light waves vary in wavelength from 350-700 nanometers. That’s right, our eyes can pick up on subtle differences only nanometers across! What?! Crazy!

So at the high end we have red (above that is invisible infrared light) and on the low end we have violet (below that is invisible ultraviolet). And between these two ends, we have every color on the visible light spectrum. Or at least that’s what my pal Roy G Biv says. This is acheived by the three types of cones cells in our eyes; L-cones (red-sensitive), S-cones (blue-sensitive), and M-cones (green-sensitive).

But guess what? That’s not entirely true! Our eyes are even crazier than that. Because we can see colors that don’t even exists! If you take a closer look, you’ll find that there are some common colors that we see in the world that don’t exist anywhere on that color spectrum.

There is no wavelength for brown. There is no wavelength for pink. And wouldn’t you know it? There is no wavelength for purple!

We see purple when our L-cones (red) and our S-cones (blue) are stimulated, and our brain doesn’t know what to do. It freaks out just a bit, because those two colors are on opposite ends of the spectrum! But our brain doesn’t give up that easily, no! If there isn’t a color for that combination of wavelengths, than it just decides to make one up! Our brains take the linear color spectrum and bend it into a circle so that red and violet our now next to each other. It then invents a bridge between the two and shows is the result. That’s right, purple (and all the non spectral colors) is just a made-up illusion that our brains decides to show us.

The business of Illusions

As a circus artist, I integrate magic into many aspects of my performance. But why magic?

Magic constantly reminds us that we don’t have the whole world figured out. It removes the hubris of knowledge and engages our critical thinking skills. Through this intellectual humility, we may be more open to outside perspectives. We may look for more creative solutions, and engage in some outside-of-the-box thinking.

Magic stimulates the mind in a way that few other mediums do, and I try to incorporate that mentality in all aspect of my performance. So when someone decides to come see my show, I want them to see something impossible before they even enter the theater. From the moment they see my poster, my logo, or my website, their brains are already playing tricks on them. We had ‘em in the first half, not gonna lie.

I chose the color purple for my brand because it exemplifies our brain’s tendency to make stuff up. It represents my philosophy about magic; stay curious, and don’t always believe what you see.

Don’t ever think you have the whole world figured out. Only by staying open to the impossible can we redefine what is possible.

[silvercircus]

The Subtle Art of Selling Yourself

The balance between self confidence and humility

PSA: This blog post will take place in three parts. In part one I’ll make a case for why we should believe in ourselves more than we do. Why we should be confident in our own value regardless of what others may think (Or worse, what WE think others MIGHT think). In part two, I will contradict everything I said in part one. Then in part three we’ll try to find some semblance of a conclusion that doesn’t leave us feeling more lost than before.

PART I: Acknowledging My Value

There’s a moment, every year, when I trade my stage lights for fluorescent ones. When instead of applause, I’m hoping for a handshake, or maybe a booking. It’s conference season: the time when performers, artists, and entertainers gather near their vendor tables and pop-up banners, ready to sell their shows to the world.

And it’s funny, because in theory, I’m there to sell a performance. But the truth is, what I’m really selling is myself. Yet, no matter how many times I do it, there’s always that quiet voice that asks, “Why should anyone care?"

Because there are certainly days where I don’t feel like I’m worth the show I’m selling.

That’s the part no one talks about. The mental weight of self-promotion. The small sting that comes every time someone walks past without making eye contact. You can tell yourself it’s not personal, but of course it is. You’ve put yourself on display. You are the product.

It’s wild how much of life feels like we’re just standing behind invisible tables, trying to convince the world that we’re worth stopping for. Performers, teachers, small business owners, job seekers, it doesn’t matter the field. Everyone’s out here trying to prove their existence has value.

But what if we have it backwards? What if the only way for others to see your value, is for you to see your own first? It’s like the old adage in the magic community: If you don’t believe in the magic, the audience won’t either. If you don’t see the value in your work, no one else will.

Still, it’s not easy. There’s a vulnerability to saying, “This is what I do, this is who I am, and this is why you should be interested” and watching people decide if it fits into their plans. It’s humbling. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Sometimes it hurts.

But if we begin to doubt ourselves; If we begin to think we’re not worth other people’s time, then we will be stepping into a vicious cycle. A negative feedback loop of self deprecation. Because when you don’t see your value, potential clients will see that. They’ll think, “Well, if this person doesn’t believe in what their offering, then why should I?”. This rejection will perpetuate self doubt until we pull back entirely and refuse to share our gifts with the world.

How many writers do you know who write all the time but never publish their work? How many brilliant performers do you know who never audition or attend tryouts? The only way to break that cycle is to accept the value you possess before anyone else does. When you see your value, the world will too.

PART II: We should care what others think. (Here’s where I contradict everything I said in Part I.)

Now look… I’m going to be real with you. Some of the sentiment in the last part may seem shallow. We hear it all the time; “Stop caring what others think”, “blaze your own trail”, “Be yourself”. But that’s just not realistic. When I’m standing in front of my conference table selling my show to prospective clients, I feel the weight of rejection when I say “hello” to someone and they intentionally avoid eye contact as they walk past without saying a word. Or perhaps they listen to my pitch, and say something along of the lines of “Yeah, I don’t think that fits with the vision of our program.” It sucks! Am I doing something wrong? Why did the performer a few tables down book that show and not me?

I do care what others think of me! WE care what others think. And there are really good reasons for why that is the case.

For one, we are social creatures. The only reason we made it this far as a species is because we learned to work together. We learned to collaborate and to gravitate towards those that improved our chances of survival. If our ancestors didn’t care what the others thought of them and acted in ways that didn’t benefit the group, they wouldn’t have survived very long.

Not only is it instinctual on a global scale, but it’s also massively beneficial to our development as individuals. Only through a desire to find acceptance from others do we become better people. We learn to regulate our emotions, we learn how treat each other with respect, and connect with each other. The ability to develop into a mature adult comes from deeply caring what others think of us.

Being intune with other’s opinion is also very informative when refining a skill. If you’re a standup comedian and you tell a joke that never gets a laugh, should you be blindly confident in the humor of that joke and continue to tell it at every show? Perhaps not. What might be better is to ask yourself “why is no one finding it funny?”. Maybe the way I’m telling it could be better. Maybe I can reword it, put different emphasis on certain parts, or maybe I try telling a new joke entirely. Having unwavering self confidence doesn’t lead to self development, connection, or success. It usually leads to you seeming ignorant, prideful, and obstinate. It’s only by taking other people’s perspectives into account that you can refine how you communicate, reach more people, and get your message across more effectively.

When I stand in front of that conference table, I am constantly keeping a mental tally of what seems to resonate with people and what doesn’t. In front of that table, I’m not juggling clubs; I’m juggling confidence. I’m rehearsing my pitch the same way I rehearse a routine: trying to find the rhythm between sincerity and strategy. This is only possible because I care deeply what others think of me.

Part III: Ok yup, I contradicted myself… So now what?

“Then what am I supposed to do?”, I hear you saying. “I can’t both care what people think of me, and also be confident in my own work when others reject it.”

And you are absolutely correct. Telling someone to not to care what others think is just as unfair as telling them to have an unwavering belief in themselves. This year as I begin my conference season, I am going to work on finding a middle path.

I’m going to try to have confidence in my work, but also acknowledge the rejection. I know that the services I provide have value. I can see the joy my work brings on the faces of those I connect with. Simultaneously, I can learn a lot from those I don’t connect with. Instead of dwelling on their rejection, I can instead ask myself, “why wasn’t I able to connect with them?” “What can I learn about my craft, about communication, and about other people that might help me connect with them in the future?”

Feeling pride in your work, and being humble enough to say “I can improve” aren’t mutually exclusive. I think marketing yourself and your work is about learning how to stay open, even when the world is busy looking the other way. It’s about staying open to the possibility of connection as well as the possibility of rejection.

At the end of the day, believing in yourself and caring what others think aren’t opposites—they’re partners in the same dance. Confidence gives your work a heartbeat, but compassion and awareness give it rhythm. One keeps you standing tall; the other keeps you reaching out.

So as I stand behind my table this conference season, smiling, pitching, sometimes fumbling, I’m trying to hold both truths at once. I’m learning that it’s okay to want to be seen, and it’s okay to feel the sting when I’m not. Because both the confidence to show up and the humility to listen are acts of courage.

Maybe that’s what self-worth really looks like. It’s not a steady flame, but something that flickers and changes, bright enough to illuminate the space between pride and curiosity. Between believing in your own magic and letting others help you refine the trick.

[silvercircus]

Fear, Failure, and the Fine Art of Falling

How the circus teaches us to embrace mistakes and turn them into moments of growth.

In the circus, falling isn’t a failure. It is part of the process.

Before a juggler can keep five objects in the air, they have to drop thousands of times. Before a tightrope walker can dance across a wire, they have to wobble, stumble, and step off more times than anyone watching would believe. Falling is the journey we make in pursuit of balance. It is often said that a master has failed more times than the novice has tried.

As a clown, my whole job is to fail in spectacular and clever ways. People enjoy seeing a clown fail because it is relatable. It is ubiquitous and universal. On stage, you can’t hide a dropped ball, a missed catch, or a mistimed gag. The audience sees it — and that’s the beauty of it. The circus doesn’t pretend perfection. It celebrates effort, resilience, and the grace of getting back up.

We all collectively understand that seeing failure in a clown routine is wonderful, but we don’t extend that same understanding to ourselves and to the world. In the cultural zeitgeist, we are taught that failure is horrible. It is drilled into us at an early age that you need to get perfect grades, excel at extracurricular activities, and achieve greatness in your career. We are told that “failure is not an option”. But here’s the thing: failure is always an option. And sometimes it is the best option! It is the only way we grow and learn. It the only way we figure out how the world works. From the moment we are born we are failing. Failing to walk, failing to talk, failing to understand. But no one blames a baby for falling down when they try to walk for the first time. Why?

It’s because we understand that failing is a part of the process. We have patience for that child and know that they should keep trying, keep failing, and soon they will be able to walk. The thing we seem to forget, however, is that failure doesn’t stop at adolescence. We should never stop learning new things. And as we all know, the first step of being good at something is to be bad at something. Failure is required for growth. So, we should extend the same level of patience to ourselves as we did for that baby learning to walk.

Whenever I talk about failure in my workshops and performances, I am always reminded of a scene from the movie “Meet the Robinson”. It is a heartfelt Disney original about embracing failure and believing in yourself. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you do. The scene features the main character building a small contraption in an attempt to resolve a conflict, failing completely, and getting praised for making the attempt. I would love to see a world where we embrace each other’s failures like this.

Every time we fall, we have a choice: to retreat in embarrassment or to lean in with curiosity. “What can this mistake teach me?” becomes a far more useful question than “Why can’t I get this right?”

In that sense, the clown routine becomes a mirror for life. The falls we take — the missed opportunities, the awkward missteps, the things that don’t go as planned — they’re all part of a larger routine. We can either fight them or learn to fall well. Falling well means accepting that we’re human, that growth is messy, and that sometimes progress looks like landing flat on your back, laughing, and trying again.

When you watch any circus performer recover after a mistake, there’s often an audible shift in the room. The audience exhales. They connect more deeply. They see the humanity behind the act. The performer, in that moment, teaches something greater than the trick itself — they teach courage.

The truth is, every great circus act is built on a foundation of small failures. A juggler’s rhythm, an acrobat’s timing, a clown’s comedic instinct — all of it comes from thousands of imperfect attempts. What we see on stage is the refined result of trial, error, and persistence. The art of falling isn’t about avoiding mistakes; it’s about transforming them into moments of magic.

So the next time you drop something — literally or figuratively — take a breath. Look at the ground, smile, and pick it back up. That’s where the real performance begins.

Every stumble is not a setback, it is a rehearsal for excellence.

[silvercircus]

Life Between the Performances: A Day in the Life of a Touring Circus Artist

A behind-the-scenes look at my daily rhythm on the road — travel, setup, warm-ups, shows, and the quiet moments in between.

Like any art related profession, there is so much that goes into the conception, preparation and execution of your craft. All this work in an effort to create something for people to see, experience, and enjoy. But what they see is only the final product. They don’t see the hours that you put into your craft to get to that point. If you’re a performing artist, they see the 60 minutes you’re on stage, and that it. The world rarely sees the amount of time, attention, and energy, that goes into creating art.

With the advent of technology and social media, it has become a lot easier to post progress videos or photos. Sharing one’s process has become easier. But for Studio Artists and Performing artists alike, this “in-progress” content that we see online is typically still taylored and edited to look polished and professional.

We can get into the online culture of performative posting. How we tend to create perfect versions of ourselves online, and how that poses massive mental health risks for the general population. However, that is a deeper subject that deserves its own blog post. For now, I’d like to bring you through a real day in the life of a touring solo circus artists. What goes on when the stage lights go off?

Let’s start at the beginning.

1: Creating the Material

I’m going to assume for this post that you already have the performance created. You’ve already written the script, edited it, choreographed the routines, memorized the monologues, produced the music, designed the lighting, purchased the props, and built the costume, etc. I’d love to go into this creative process in future posts as well, so stay tuned! There is so much that goes into developing material. But for the sake of this “day-in-the-life” summary, let’s assume you already have the show ready to perform.

2: Early morning office work.

Before the hustle and bustle of the day begins, there is work to be done. Any full time artist will tell you that they are really just a part time artist and a full time businessperson. There is a lot that goes into running a business, and it’s not all glamorous. There’s time spent marketing your business, reaching out to clients, sending contracts, tracking expenses, and a whole myriad of other tasks that need to get done. Personally, I am more productive at this kind of work in the morning, so I typically start my day by making breakfast and sitting down at the computer to catch up on emails. I know, not the glamorous lifestyle people expect, but when you own a business this is necessary. I always dedicate a small portion of my day to staying on top of office work. Sometimes it’s not easy to get motivated for this kind of work, but I can tell you from experience that it is far better than falling behind.

3: Time to hit the road!

Okay, the office work is done, and it’s time to get going! First I double check that my car is packed with everything I’ll need for the day. This includes my show props, outfit, speakers, computer, and snacks for the road. I typically do this the night before, but I’ll quickly recheck it in the morning, just to make sure.

Depending on when my show is scheduled to start and whether I have multiple shows in a day will dictate how early I have to leave. The interesting part of touring life is that every day is different. I may have to wake up early and hit the road at 3am, or I may have an evening show and not have to leave until mid afternoon. This is actually one aspect of this work that I really enjoy. I never get stuck in a repetitive schedule. Every day is a new day and a new agenda. Some people really enjoy the consistency of a regular job, but I’ve always enjoyed the feeling of novelty in my schedule each day.

The day before I make sure to calculate the distance to the destination. I typically book shows within a 4 hour drive distance. For every hour of travel, I add an extra 15 minutes to my departure time. You never know when you might hit a traffic jam or take a wrong turn. I’d rather get to a venue an hour early than get there late. In shows that are further than that, I typically fly. But that’s a whole other topic for another blog post.

While I’m on the road I like to listen to podcasts and audiobooks. My favorite podcasts are ones that focus on Psychology (“Hidden Brain”), Philosophy (“Philosophize This”), and Science (“Startalk”), but I’ll also listen to general knowledge podcasts like “Stuff You Should Know”. If you listen to any of these, please reach out as I’d love to hear your thoughts about them. Also, let me know if you have any suggestions for other ones I should listen to. Listening to podcasts is my way of staying awake and alert on the road while also learning new things at the same time.

4: Arriving at the Venue

More often than not, I arrive at the venue early. I enjoy this extra time as it allows me to scope out the performance space and take a look at the marketing materials at the venue. I then meet with my contact for the event, and begin unloading my equipment into the space. My setup time for the show I am currently touring, “The Silver Circus”, is about an hour. I organize my props, set up my sound equipment, or meet with the lighting and sound technicians if I am in a venue that supplies that. I try to be ready at least 30 minutes before showtime so that the audience has plenty of time to enter and find their seats.

5: Backstage

The house is open, and the audience is arriving. Typically performers will sit backstage and warm up during this time. This is honestly my least favorite part of this whole process. I despise sitting and waiting in anticipation of the performance. It drives me crazy. At least by warming up, I am keeping my body active and my mind focused which helps a lot with the jittery nervous energy.

However, instead of doing a warm up backstage, I’ve begun doing something that most other performs don’t do.

Instead of waiting backstage for the show to begin, I just walk out on stage. Right at the beginning when the doors open. This might sound terrifying to some, but it actually accomplished a few really nice things. First and foremost, I don’t feel that dreaded nervous anticipation of waiting backstage with nothing to do. I get right out on stage and start interacting with the audience. Nervousness in many cases is just energy that has nowhere to go. You’re adrenaline is pumping and if you just sit and wait, that energy just builds. But once that energy has a focus, once you’re on stage, you don’t feel that same sense of nervous dread anymore.

It is on stage, in front of the audience that start my warmup. That’s right! I’ll juggle and practice some of my skills on stage. This does a couple things. First, it allows the audience members who got there early to have something to watch. They can see a few sneak previews of the skills in the show and get excited to watch the rest! Obviously I don’t practice anything that might ruin the surprises in the show, but everything else is fair game. Warming up on stage, also give me time and space to interact and build rapport with the audience. I might even bring up an audience member and engage in some circus play with them. I can invite them to try spinning plates, or balancing. The pressure to be in full show mode won’t begin until the show starts, so I have the freedom to chat and interact with audience members in a more casual setting. I can ask them if they’ve ever seen a circus before or whether they’d like to try their hand at juggling. This connection brings the audience onto my side before the show even begins.

The other important benefit of warming up on stage is that the audience gets to see my mistakes. There is a powerful psychological effect in showing mistakes and humanizing yourself. One of the main themes of my show is “Failure is good”. It is the only way we learn and grow. So I like to demonstrate right from the beginning that I am not perfect. I mess up sometimes, and it means when I do succeed at the trick during the show, the audience is even more supportive.

So, my preshow is just me hanging out on stage, warming up, cracking jokes, engaging with the audience, and sharing my love with circus arts with them.

Then it’s time for the show to begin!

6: The Performance

Finally! The show begins! After all that effort; The show creation, the marketing, the scheduling, the packing, the travel, the setup. After all of that, it is finally time to do what I love to do. This is the part that most people think of when they think about my profession. This 60 minutes of magic and juggling and physical comedy is what the world sees. However, as I’m hoping you are beginning to see, this is only a fraction of my daily schedule. So much preparation goes into being a touring artist. And most of that effort, no one will ever see. Sometimes people are surprised by the price I quote for a 60 minute show, but what they don’t realize is that I’m essentially doing the show for free. That’s the easy and fun part! What they are paying for is the prep, the travel, the setup, and everything else that goes on behind the scenes. When I’m on stage, that’s not the work. When I am on stage, I am rewarded by the smiles on the audience faces, by the connections I make, and by the joy I share. That I would do for free.

While we’re talking about the performance part of my day, a lot of people ask me whether I get nervous when I’m on stage in front of an audience. It really depends on how familiar am I with the show? Is it a show I’ve done hundreds of times, or is this the first run of a new show? At this point, I don’t get very nervous when I perform The Silver Circus. I could do that show in my sleep, with my eyes closed. There is an inverse relationship between the amount of nervousness that I feel on stage and my familiarity with the show.

That means if it’s a new show, I do get nervous. However, I’ve come to appreciate that feeling of nervousness before a show. Being a little nervous keeps me focused and sharp. It means I’ll be in the right headspace to perform. Too much nervousness is a bad thing, but I’ve learned that there’s a nice sweet spot of nervousness that makes for the best performances.

7: Post-show

Once the show is done, the performance high doesn’t go away immediately. That’s why I typically like to take some time after the show and hang out at the front of the stage. I can connect again with people from the audience. I get to give high-fives, sign postcards, and interact with people in a more personal way. Talking with patrons after the show is such a delight for me.

But once the audience has left, it is time to start the process all over again. It begins by packing up the sound and props, loading everything back into the car, checking in with my contact for the venue, and leaving the space in the same condition that I found it. This can take another 45-60 minutes. Once I’m packed up, I hit the road. Depending on the day and scheduling, I may head to a second show to do it all again. The most shows I book in a single day is typically three. Most of the time I do two, and sometimes I do just one. In either case, I plug in the gps for my next location, crank those podcasts, and head to the next location.

8: End of day

After my shows are done for the day, I head back home (or a hotel if I’m staying on the road for multiple days). Sometimes I do a little office work when I get home, but more often than not, my brain doesn’t want to focus anymore, and so I just tell myself “Eh, you work better in the morning anyway, so just go to bed and worry about it tomorrow.” Before turning in, I make dinner, check my calendar to see what the next day’s schedule will be, and I head to bed. All in all, it’s a pretty busy day, with many moving parts. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes that people don’t see.

Going forward I’d love to give you an insider peak into my process for developing stage material, as well as my take on social media as a performative art form. Finally I’d like to share my experience of touring while also dealing with a chronic illness. These are so many things I am looking forward to sharing with you.

[silvercircus]

I May Delete This Tomorrow and That's Okay!

The pursuit of perfection

You wake up in a panic. Your head springs off the pillow as you sit upright. The sudden spark of inspiration consumes you. The lightbulb of epiphany illuminates as that one brilliant idea appears in your mind. This dilemma that you’ve been struggling with for months has consumed your every waking moment. You’ve racked your brain for a solution, but it continues to elude you.

Suddenly and without warning, the veil is removed. The answer becomes clear.

An idea.

A marvelous, elegant idea. It just appeared in your mind like a coin in a magician’s hand.

You throw off the blankets. The room is dark. In a frantic blind shuffle you find a pen and a partially crumpled shred of paper. You scribble down your revelation and sit back on the bed to marvel at your sudden brilliance. Simply magnificent. As you lay your head back onto the pillow and you begin to fall asleep once more, a smile stretched across your face. You’re an absolute genius.

…

After a restful slumber, you awake to sunlight streaming through your window. You rise from the bed and stretch. A beautiful day is before you.

You glance down, and the small crumpled paper lays next to you on the nightstand. You grab it, straighten out the folds, and scan the disheveled scribble you scrawled the night before.

The world fades to gray. The light and beauty of the world evaporates. As you look over the paper, your heart sinks. This idea.. This brilliant, inspired idea that you had the night before, is…

Absolute garbage! I stinking pile of putrid filth. A cacophony of ignorance and short sightedness. How could such a useless and dull concept ooze from your consciousness? Such disappointment, such betrayal. The embarrassment of birthing such an insensible collection of thoughts overwhelms you. You are not brilliant. You are not inspired. You struggle to even consider yourself an artist.

…

This is an all too relatable anecdote for many. It certainly happens to me on a regular basis. I am all to familiar with that feeling of pride with a new idea, only to have my ego crushed the next day when I realize the idea was absolute trash. What happens during that gap in time? How can an idea seem so gifted in the moment? Then, after only a few hours become an idea of such indignation? It’s frustrating, and demoralizing. And yet, it is the process for creation. In this process, we sift through the dirt to find the gems.

Over the years this repetitive story has shaped my creative process. I am less likely to post, less likely to share, for fear that I take a look at it the next day and regret throwing it into the world. My instinct now is to sit on a project; to pore over it again and again. I seek perfection, and even when I get close, I doubt its integrity. What if I regret showing this to the world? What if the world sees how flawed it is? So I hold onto it. I keep it hidden.

And you know… I’ve gotten really good at finding reasons to discard a perfectly good idea. So good in fact, that I barely share any of my thoughts or opinions anymore. This fear is crippling.

So, when I say I might delete this tomorrow, I’m not joking. If that impulse to tear down my own work wins out, it’ll be gone. But for right now..

right in this moment..

I want you to see that I’m trying. I want you to hear my voice, even if its not perfect, or refined, or polished. I want you to know about this struggle that I have as you read my future work. Know that if you struggle with this too, you are not alone.

If you are feeling stuck as I have, and do, and will, I’d love for you to share your stuff with me. Unedited, unpolished. Let me see the creative vomit that you have splattered onto a page. Let me be that second pair of eyes that tells you what you’ve made is important, and worth keeping, and working on, and showing people. Let’s create together.

[silvercircus]

The Pros and Cons of No Social Media

Was it worth it? What did we learn?

Alright, let’s just get right into it. I took the summer off, but not from working. As a touring circus artist, I had a BUSY summer! I had the pleasure of performing all over New England and beyond, and had an absolute blast doing it. But if you’d perused my Facebook or Instagram account during that time, it would’ve seemed like I crawled into a dark hole and hibernated for 4 months. So, as promised, I’d like to share my experiences from that time, and take a closer look into the pros and cons of such a decision.

PROS

Let’s start with the immediate benefits of that decision. I’m sure many of you have considered these benefits if you’ve ever had the desire to step back from social media.

1: Living in the moment

Before I took the summer off, I had been an average business person on social media. I’d post photos of my live shows, of projects I’d been working on, of new tricks, and of photo shoots. I’d share posts from venues and promote my upcoming performances. It wasn’t over the top, but it did take time and effort. I would find myself in situations on tour when I was consumed with my next post. Can I turn this event into a post? How can I caption this funny moment? How can I capitalize on this interaction? It was as if I was living my life with the express purpose of marketing it to the general public. I know this is a feeling many people can relate to, even if they aren’t in the performing arts industry. Although it was just a few minutes of my attention, a quick blurb with a photo, it added up over time. That’s how social media works. A few minutes here, and a few minutes there and without noticing you are spending HOURS of your day scrolling, posting, and thinking about your online persona. I didn’t feel present. I always felt distracted and detached from the moment. I felt like I was putting on a show.

Now, I hear what you’re saying. “But Andrew, that’s literally your job! You put on shows for a living.” And yes, you are absolutely correct, but consider this…

2: No pressure to constantly create content

Have you ever worked a full day in the service industry or skilled labor, or any other job for that matter? Have you ever arrived home (whether you feel like it was a rewarding day or not) and you suddenly realize that there is now another project that needs to get done at home? You’ve had a long day, and now its about to get even longer? This project takes extra time, extra effort, and extra attention that you may not have. Maybe you’d rather just sit and relax, or engage in a hobby that interests you, or connect with a loved one. But instead, you have more work to do. In a lot of ways, this is what social media feels like a lot of people. I’m sure many of you can relate to that. That extra chore, that extra assignment, that extra responsibility.

So I stopped, and truthfully, it was pretty fantastic! I didn’t think about posting. I didn’t think about turning a moment into a marketing campaign. I gave myself permission to not think about social media, and it was great! I found myself making deeper and more meaningful connections with people. I took time to just relax in between shows. I even picked up a few new skills this summer! I may have started learning how to lockpick (which I promise I’ll only use for good) but it is such a cool and complex skill! I just felt like I could relax and enjoy the present moment. This was probably the biggest benefit, or at least the one that I recognized almost immediately.

3: Not Being Inundated with Social Media Toxicity

Whether we like to openly talk about it or not, social media, and the open platform content that it provides, is a breeding ground for toxic culture. Now I’m not saying that your grandmother sharing a post about a homemade recipe for cornbread is ruining our society. However, I believe that our constant dependence on instant gratification, our tendency to compare ourselves with the perfect versions of others we see online, and the algorithms that keep showing us exactly what we want to see regardless of its context, are all contributing to a growing mental health crisis in our world today. Now, I don’t want to come across as holier-than-thou. I’m addicted too, and I’m not proud of that. I still find myself doom scrolling and watching click-bait videos at 1am. Sometimes it just feel inescapable. But when I took a step back, it felt like I took one tiny step towards reclaiming my freedom. I’ll be going into more detail about how social media and online entertainment has shaped the performing arts industry in future blog posts, so stay tuned. But, if you ever have the chance to just try stepping away for a short period of time, I highly recommend you give it a try.

That being said, this decision wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. There were some definite drawbacks too…

CONS

While taking a step back from social media was probably one of the most beneficial things I’ve done for my mental health, it wasn’t without its drawbacks. Lets talk about the ramifications and whether it was worth it.

1: Attendance

Unfortunately over the course of the summer I got a few messages from friends and fans saying that they had wanted to see my show, but didn’t know about it until it had past. The last thing I want is for people to feel like they missed out on connecting with me at one of my shows. Being able to share my art with the most amount of people has always been my number one goal. One of the biggest advantages of social media is reaching a wider audience over large distances.

While I do keep an “On Tour” page on my website which includes all my upcoming events, it just doesn’t reach as many people as my posts on Facebook and Instagram. So, as I reacquaint myself with social media, I plan to refocus my efforts by keeping my fanbase well informed about my upcoming events.

2: Bookings

When I started this project, I intentionally wanted to see how my bookings would be affected by this change. While I did have one of my busiest summers ever, I did notice that inquiries for my show slowed down after I stopped posting regularly. While I don’t get a lot of bookings directly through social media, posting regularly does help my online presence by keeping my name and website at the top of the search results. Even if it doesn’t feel like it’s doing any good, I’ve learned that having a strong social media presence helps me stay top-of-mind, and keeps me competitive in search results. When I stopped regularly engaging, my insights went down.

Interestingly, I only have a handful of shows for the rest of the year. That’s right, just a few shows between October, November, and December. Now, before we jump to conclusions, I want to give some context. First, I’ve been talking with other colleagues and friends of mine, and it seems to be a bit of a slow season for everyone this year. Please reach out if this is true for you, or if you’ve experiences the opposite. I’d love to have a conversation about it!

Could this be because of the political climate? Could it be because of underlying financial insecurity in the marketplace? There are so many factors that we need to consider before making assumptions. That being said, I did notice a sudden drop in leads and inquiries after stepping away from social media. While it’s hard to assign the blame to any one thing, I feel confident that keeping your business top-of-mind for your clients is the best way to find success. As I jump back in to social media, I am looking for healthy ways to engage my audience and grow my community. So, what now?

Conclusion

So, what did I learn? First and foremost, I learned that social media is a double-edged sword. That may seem like an obvious conclusion to draw, but now I am armed with specific experience. I got to see exactly how my mental health improved, but also precisely how my business was impacted by that decision. I am now able to make more educated decisions about how much I engage and in what ways. So, here is the new plan going forward. Feel free to use this as a guideline for your own business if it feels right for you.

Step 1: Collect

Collect photos, videos, and ideas for content while on the road, but don’t worry about posting. This will remove the stress of creating content while trying to also engage in work. But it also keeps you thinking about your business and how you want to grow.

Step 2: Schedule

Create designated times to schedule posts. Intsead of putting my life on pause several times a day just to post something, I will designate a single block of time to go through my photos and videos, create posts, and schedule them in advance. I can take one night and schedule the next month of posts. Now instead of thinking about it every day, I’ll only need to engage once I month. I’ll still be reaching my audience, keeping them informed, and grow my community, but without the daily hassle of detaching myself from the moment.

Step 3: Create content that interest me.

What is the best way to find engagement in an activity? Find something in that activity that really excites you! If we find a task rewarding and interesting, we are much more likely to engage in that task in an enthusiastic and healthier way. So, how can I take that idea and apply it to my online presence? Well, you’re already reading it right now!

As I’ve said before, I have a difficult time engaging in short-form content. I am a storyteller, and that is where I feel most comfortable. So, lets create a space for that! In addition to the social media posts, I would also like to start regularly posting in this blog. This will be my way of satisfying my storyteller impulses, while still staying engaged on a platform that I don’t find as rewarding. This is the compromise I am making with myself. Often times compromise is the best way forward, and connecting with my audience in this format is my reward. Now I wake up and actively want to engage online. I want to share my experiences and thoughts. And mostly I want to engage with my fellow community of fans, colleagues, and all lovers of the performing arts.

Wrap it up!

Thanks you all for reading this far! I know it was a long one. I hope this has gotten you thinking about your own relationship with social media. I believe we can all learn to use this tool to build our community while also being cognizant of our mental health. Please be well everyone. Looking ahead, I want to start diving into the intricacies of a touring circus artist, and give you an inside look into my life on the road. See you all in the next one!

[silvercircus]

The Silver Circus and the "No Social Media" Experiment

An introduction to the benefits and repercussion of a social media-free summer as a touring circus artist. And also, why this blog is a thing now.

1. The Experiment

Are you an artist? Is taking a break from social media something you’d like to do? Are you worried about the ramifications of stepping away? When one makes the decision to disengage with social media, there are a lot of factors to consider. This is especially true if you are self employed and work in an industry that depends highly on networking and publicizing yourself. You must consider how your business will be affected and how it must evolve in order to reach people. You must consider time management, and how you should reallocate your attention. You must consider your mental health, and how stepping away from social media might impact that.

I made the decision at the beginning of the summer to take a break from social media and I want to share my experience with you. I want to share the thoughts I had, the questions I had to ask myself, and the conclusions that I arrived at by the end. I also want to share some of the inner workings of my life a touring artist as well as my thoughts on circus, clowning, and theater as an artform.

I don’t have a super clear picture in my head about what this blog will be quite yet. But, I have a general vision, and the desire to share my thoughts with you and get your feedback. I would ultimately like for this to be a safe place for discussions and dialogue about this industry. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with the basics.

Hello, My name is Andrew Silver, and I am a touring circus artist. My show is called, The Silver Circus. You can find more info about me here: www.andrewsilver.com

Let me tell you about my summer of no social media.

2. What motivated the change?

I’ve never been great at short-form content. I have a hard time limiting my thoughts to 280 characters or less, and it has always felt like a chore to create content for my circus entertainment business on social media. In addition, I found it difficult to always be thinking about my next post. I’ve never liked disengaging from the moment to whip out my phone to take a picture or video. It wasn’t natural for me, and so it took serious attention and effort to constantly be thinking in that way. I didn’t realize until I made the decision to stop how freeing it felt to just exist in a moment and connect with people.

Now, I want to be clear here, and I should clarify, that I didn’t stop all-together. I considered what was the bare minimum effort I could put in, and I arrived at the following ruleset.

I could reshare a photo, video, or post that was created by someone else to market one of my shows.

I could respond to direct inquiries from clients that I received through social media.

I couldn’t spend time creating posts, uploading pictures or video, or running marketing campaigns.

This gave me a framework that I felt comfortable with. It allowed me the freedom to live in each moment, without having to think about making a post or constantly document and publicise every experience. But it also allowed me to continue to operate my business in a simple and professional way.

So, what did I learn?

3. The Pros and Cons

The stage is set! And the house is open. We’ve arrived at the heart of this discussion. As I’m sure you can imagine, there were a lot of positive changes but also some negative ones. Going into detail about these ideas is what I’d like to explore in future entries of this blog. I’d also like to share with you the behind-the-scenes look into making a career as an artist. What is it really like? Can you really make a living doing this? What is the current reality of this industry, and how is it affected by our current technology and culture? There is so much to consider and to talk about. Thank you for joining me on the ground floor. I look forward to seeing how this blog develops over time and hearing your feedback as we explore these ideas.

4. Money?

No. I am in the beginning stages of creating this blog and growing a community, so I will be posting all content for free. I believe this content should be accessible for everyone (much like the circus!).