‘You Can't Be A Magician!’

Family, friends, work colleagues… pretty much everyone in my life told me ‘You can't do magic as a job!’ I even had a guy rant at me in a pub one night, for the best part of an hour, telling me to ‘get real’, ‘grow up’ and ‘wise up’.

I get it. Sort of. It's a bit of a fantasy, but I've never been too keen on growing up, so I stuck to my fantasies, and my guns, and learned as much magic as I could (a bit too much), and started offering my services to wedding parties, parents and everyone else. And I worked hard!

It took off, and I did… okay. It did take a few years before I was able to make a living from performing. But eventually I did it.

And I still have people asking ‘But what's your real job?’ 🙄

An actual conversation I had, earlier this year, went like this…

‘What are you doing for work these days, Leigh?’

‘I'm a magician. I do kids parties, weddings, things like that.’

‘But what's your full-time job?’

‘That… doing magic.’

‘Really? And are you making a living?’

‘Yeah, I'm not rich, but…’

‘So you have another job on top of it.’

‘No, it's just the entertainment.’

‘But you're struggling a bit.’

‘No(?)’

‘Because you have an actual job too.’

‘No!’

‘Well… uh, well, I expect you'll be at the Edinburgh Fringe this year then!’ (Getting frustrated and trying to catch me out)

‘Yep. You can buy tickets for my show online.’

I'm not writing this to say 'See?!’ to the people who told me that I can't do it though. I'm writing it because I don't think anyone should give up on their dreams. If you want to sing, sing! Don't let others dull your light… show them what you can do!

Imagine Paul McCartney went to John Lennon's door, in 1957 to be told 'Nah, I’ve listened to the adults, Macca. I've given up on music and I'm just going to work at the factory until I retire.’