This Month's Schedule

It’s been 21 months since I’ve had a break from working on the site. I used to take a long break every year for a month or so. And I would take weeks off during the year. You might say, “But Andy, you take the end of every month off.” Well, yes, I’m not actively writing blog posts in that time, but I am working on ideas for the blog, and writing a monthly 20-page newsletter, and creating and testing tricks and writing the next book.

You might be thinking, “Oh, wah-wah 😭. Go suck on your momma’s fat nipple, you big baby. ‘Writing a magic blog is soooo HARD!’ Fuck right off. You know what I do for a living? I work 90 hours a week in the scorching hot sun, sponging up the decomposition and rot from the interior of the carcasses of special-needs horses whose stomachs burst from consuming too much of their own feces and menstrual blood. AND I DO IT THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY!!!!”

Ooookay… to be clear, I’m not complaining. It can just be mentally a little taxing to not take any downtime. I’ve mentioned this Lawrence Kasdan quote in the past, “Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.” And there’s certainly that element of always having a “paper due.” But I’m used to that. I’ve been writing as a supplemental or sole source of income, in one form or another, for a couple of decades now. And while it would be nice to have a job I could “leave at the office” and forget about when I’m done for the day. It’s also nice to have a job that doesn’t have an office.

(I’m writing this in a small coffee shop while Brooke, the barista, handles customers. Between customers, I’m helping her hang up Christmas decorations as we discuss our favorite albums of 2023. I know that’s a pretty charmed existence. You don’t get to casually interact with people and spend time in cozy cafés when you’re teaching kids, working fast food, or power washing empty oil barrels (all of which I’ve done). I once had a job loading boxes of aluminum siding for commercial buildings onto semi-trucks. The boxes were heavy and cumbersome. 24 feet long. And I’d spend 8 hours loading one identical box after another into a truck from the warehouse. So don’t think I don’t appreciate my current situation. (As if to emphasize the “niceness” of it all, Brooke just came by and gave me a piece of toast with almond butter, sliced bananas, and drizzled honey because she “made a little extra.”))

My point is just to explain my mindset at the end of November when I thought to myself how nice it would be to have a little more time off this holiday season.

“Maybe I’ll reach out to some magicians I know through the site and see if they’d like to contribute something this holiday season: a trick or an idea or something. That way they can do the heavy lifting for a post.”

So I made a list of a few magicians who follow the site. Then I figured, “What the hell,” I added some of my other favorite magicians as well. And then I added some magicians whose work was relatively new to me but who I thought were doing interesting things. And finally I added some magicians whose work I’d always enjoyed but I hadn’t heard anything from in a while. Primarily because I wanted to see what they were up to.

So I reached out to these people and a bunch of them got back to me saying they’d be happy to submit something for the site.

So now, instead of 15 posts throughout the course of the month, you’ll get all your content on one day.

At 4pm (New York time) on Friday, December 22nd, The Jerx Holiday party will commence.

And—like the best parties—it’s not going to stop until sunrise the next morning.

For those who follow along live, you can check back every 30 minutes or so to see the post as it grows and grows and special guests stop in—all with a gift to share. It will be up in that format for a couple of days, after which I will break it down to its component parts, with each guest’s contribution being its own post.

Tomorrow I will post the guest list.

I may stop in once or twice more before the party, but really the heart of this month’s posting will happen on the 22nd into the 23rd. See you then.