Where in the world am I today?: The Panama Canal
Years ago… Many many years ago at the tender age of thirteen years old I was putting laundry away and started messing around with three bundles of rolled up socks – tossing them around, trying to keep the aloft. My brother had shown me the basic move behind a three ball cascade several weeks prior to the laundry basket incident, but it wasn’t until that fateful day in September 1981 that something clicked and the skill of juggling combined with an already peaked interest in performing gave birth to what has served me well ever since. Served me as a passport for seeing the world, the key to unlocking some amazing doors which have lead to some amazing adventures, friendships, my wife, and the resources to provide a roof over head, clothes on backs, food in tummies for myself, wife and our two boys and a pretty amazing life.
I’ve been reading some blogs over the last year or so and have noticed a few things – some blogs are straight up comedy, some are a bit preachy, some seek to teach and inform. I know myself well enough to have figured out that I like to catalogue and document things – people/events/information and thought that this might be the best way to hack out my little corner on the Internet and allow me to spew the contents of my brain into a somewhat cognitive arrangement.
Mondays – Marketing • For years people have commented on the fact that I seem to be able to market myself well and have a plethora of promotional materials at my disposal. On Mondays I’ll have a look at some aspect of the world of promotion and/or marketing that has either worked for me or impressed me for some reason.
Tuesday – Technical • I certainly don’t know everything, but in the nearly three decades of performing I have picked up a few bits of information about props, costumes, sound equipment, computers, etc. and will explore these aspects of the biz on Tuesdays.
Wednesday – Work • I seem to work a lot. Not as much as some performers, but enough that I’ve been able to make my living from nothing but performing for a long time. Wednesday’s will deal with some aspect of getting gigs and impressing the client so you can get the gig again.
Thursday – Thoughts from inside the Checkerhead • As the heading suggests, Thursdays will be my day to pull out some random nugget that pops into my head. It may relate to one of the daily topics, it might be a story from the road or it could, quite possibly, be something completely unrelated. It’s my ‘free pass’ day to talk about what ever I want.
Friday – Friends, interviews with folks from the inside the Industry • I’m lucky that I get to travel around the world and share the stage with some pretty amazing performers, work with some amazing producers and agents, not to mention world-class technical staff. I’m going to attempt to profile a different industry professional each week with a standard-ish format of stats, questions and comments in an interview format that will hopefully grow to be a catalogue of the folks I’ve run into along the road each with a different take on the industry and what it takes to make it as a professional in the entertainer world.
I’ll be taking the weekends off to let my brain wander and come up with content for the week ahead and be right back at it on Monday again.
This is the plan anyway…
How long I’ll be able to keep it up, whether this format, which seems do-able and a useful way to organize info will hold up or whether I’ll change things remains to be seen, but I’m hoping that this becomes a daily habit that will help me share some of the information that’s in my brain with folks who might want to know…
Like that!
d. – checkerhead
