Looking into the future

[fbhjr]

Phoenix Swords has currently done 465 shows as I count them.
I count per site per day. So, in the past 4 days we’ve done 3 shows. Two at the Delaware Ren faire and one at the kid center last night.
I don’t count whole events as one for several reasons. Some years they change length. Delaware was one weekend 2 years ago, three last year and three and a holiday this year. So, I counted it as 2, 6 and 7 shows respectively. Otherwise, I don’t think it would be accurate.
Also, I track who goes to which shows. When you have shows over multiple weeks, you get different folks who can perform. Even this summer my wife and I missed a weekend when we were in Iceland. Or, a day when we went to my cousin’s funeral.
Days we’ve done more than one show in different places for different audiences I count different too. Once long ago we did birthday parties for kids at two different homes in different towns and then a dinner show in a third place for a third group. I counted that as three shows.
I don’t track how many individual performances we do at that site per day. In Delaware we were doing three performances per day. Last night, Casey juggled fire for half an hour. I count both as a show.
So, to me, per day per site makes sense. I’ve been doing it that way since 2002.

We are currently at 465 shows.
Projecting out the remaining 5 shows this year and if we do all the shows next year we did this year, our last show of 2025 would be our 500th show.
It would also, if the pattern holds, be my 62nd birthday.
That would be one heck of a birthday present.

Now all sorts of things can go wrong with that. This year we are doing the most shows we’ve done since 2005 and it will be our third biggest year ever.
I should NOT count on that continuing.
At least one show we did this year I do not want to do again, but I already took that off the list, so it doesn’t count in this.
Another show I don’t want to do, but we haven’t agreed to it yet, so who knows? (It’s run by my wife’s friends, so she wants to do it. But, it’s folks I don’t like and they don’t pay us, so I’m not big on the idea…)
All the shows on the list are likely to have us back. Some we’ve been doing for more than 20 years and I am very confident.

But, in 2008 the world economy crashed.
The number of shows we did a year dropped by more than 50% and has only recovered post Covid when the number of events has exploded.
We had a bunch of customers call us and tell us their shows were cancelled and they couldn’t hire us. Who could blame them? I got laid off and was out of work for 7 months myself. I couldn’t have paid myself.
I certainly don’t want the world economy to crash again.
But, the Sea People are out and about again. I remember what happened 3300 years ago with them. And, I worry.

It would be nice to hit 500 shows on my birthday 53 weeks from now.
I’d really want to do something big to celebrate that. And, I don’t know what.