mary-masked

Wary of Objects

Published: June 7th 2017, 6:57:21 pm

I really didn't think this photo would come out since I took it from across the street and my finger was covering most of the shot to block out flare from the sun, but I think this looks great.

Last night a friend, who's spending July in Barcelona asked if I wanted to come with her. I did, of course, because traveling is one of my all time favorite things but told her I had no money. Then she said, "Well, do you want to do street performance with me in Barcelona? It pays a lot more than you'd think."

It did pay a lot more than I thought. Not as much as my best hourly rates but certainly more than burlesque. I have enough booked in July that I couldn't go for the whole month, but maybe I could do the last month with her and then spend another week in Madrid. If I perform 3 or 4 hours a day, I think I could *just* make it work.
We were also planning on trying to book some burlesque gigs out there, but have been told that Spain in general doesn't really have a burlesque scene. I guess it wasn't *just* a language barrier when I tried to tell people in Barcelona what I did for a living (the closest my limited Spanish could come was "bailar picante.")

There's upsides and down sides to this plan. I've already been to Barcelona, so I'd be ok with spending a lot of my time there performing and but I'd get to see the Sagrata Familia again and I could take a day to go to the Dali museum in his home town. The down side is my friend wants to rent an apartment, which would be more expensive than a hostel. And it's in the height of summer, so flights are pretty expensive.

But I also have a LOT of unbooked time in August. It's usually my slowest month and I don't have any reliable plans for changing that this year so if I'm not working anyway, I'm wondering if I'd be better off kind of working in Europe. It would be later in the summer so flights would be cheaper. I could go to Berlin, which has a VERY low cost of living, and burlesque shows that I've heard pay much better than anywhere in the US. It's also close to Prague, Brno, and Vienna, which also have burlesque scenes. I'd really love to see Prague in the summer but I've also seen enough of it that I wouldn't mind spending time performing there. I assume I could probably make bank domming in Berlin but that's complicated enough in America, I don't think I want to take my chances in a city where I don't speak the language.

But I'm also worried about covering my expenses in august so maybe adding airfare and hostels to that list of bills is not the best idea (even if some of those hostels are obscenely cheap.) And part of me thinks I should stay here in case any work *does* show up. 

I *could* just stay in New York and street perform here, or do the same in Boston or Philly but that's a lot harder to get excited about. And I don't if this opportunity will come up again. Sure, it's possible (or depressingly likely) that I'll have the same jobs situation next year but it's also totally possible that I won't.

I am bad at decisions, is what I'm saying.