After wrapping up a three-day music festival gig in San Francisco, I found myself unexpectedly upgraded to first class on my way home. This is a perk I no longer feel guilty about. Essentially, it's Delta's way of acknowledging, "Hey, you've contributed a good deal of money to us. As a token of our appreciation, here's a seat designed for human comfort. And please, continue to support us financially!"

Having spent what feels like an eternity on planes, confined to seats seemingly tailored for individuals with the body mass index of a small child, I've come to appreciate the luxuries of first class. This sentiment was particularly reinforced after enduring twelve-hour days at a music festival featuring over a hundred bands, where, as I approach the age of 36, I could only recognize three of them.

My wife found Rolo from a dachshund rescue in southern Florida. It’s like a regular rescue, but with many exclusions. Most importantly, if you aren’t a weaner dog, they can't do anything for you. Dog rescues are amazing organizations usually run by frantic middle-aged women named Karen. They had found him walking along the side of the road in Miami. Maybe he was out for a nice Cuban sandwich, or maybe he just left his current residency for something more.

“Why do you want to be a therapist?” questioned my professor from her poorly lit room into my computer screen. I stood sweating and said, “I...I don’t...?” Then improvised some jargon about how I’ve been told I would be good at it and that right now my degree was just a MA in Psychology.

Out of everything, I miss pre show the most. I love to sit back stage and listen to people shuffling into the show room with anticipation, excitement and skepticism. Wondering if I am any good, what is about to happen, why they haven’t heard of me before, and how soon they can get back to the buffet (that’s just on cruise ships).

The perk of your brain not forming the part that involves reasoning and rational until your late twenties is that you will willingly audition to do children’s assembly theater for a paycheck. When Magic was slow a year out of college and living in an expensive downtown Chicago apartment, I met a friend in musical improv class at Second City who told me about an opening in a “touring” children’s show” (I later find out that touring involved me driving across the lower Midwest in my Chevy Aveo to make $75 a show plus a few bucks for gas and food).

I think a lot of solo performers are feeling really lost right now. The thing that gave them purpose and relevance in a world that would otherwise ignore them, has been taken away. For roughly only eightyish years, entertainers were celebrated. Before that it was a shunned profession equivalent to prostitution (both satisfied customers, but in different ways).