Whoah, three months in and things are flowing nicely!

Monday Mail Call will be back next week as I wanted to get a quick update out about the improvements I've been able to make to the site. Don't be fooled though, I actually received a handful of things last week that are pretty awesome -- the extra time between posts will give me a chance to add some extra info!

Speaking of Monday Mail Call, I also kicked off a new feature called The Road to Recovery that goes into some of my performances that have gone... well, not quite right. If you're a magician who's ever made a mistake or had a spectator who has, you'll likely find some common-ground in these posts. Maybe you'll know of better recovery methods and can help me out too!

I've been sticking with a fairly solid Monday & Thursday posting schedule for blog posts and I've also been able to add new library entries almost all of the other days so far. There's still so much left to enter in though, it'll take me a while before I get everything done. I'm considering moving to a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule but I don't know if I can fully commit to the extra day yet so I'll be sticking to Monday & Thursday for now.

Free Facebook Ads

Some of you may have come here from Facebook or Instagram ads, and if so I sincerely say "Welcome!". Facebook gave me a free ad credit so I figured why not give it a try. It kind of feels dirty using it though since I'm not a "business" but just a blog. But hey, free money! Or, free ads rather. I don't actually get any money (though that would be nice =P).

I have to say, their tooling is actually really cool. By accepting the credit I gained access to their "Business Suite" which linked my Facebook Page to my Instagram account and now I have full access to post scheduling and even more insights than are available through Instagram itself. Like, there's a calendar that legit says "Thursday at 10am is the best time to post on IG" -- how cool is that?! I've been using IG for almost 3 years (this coming Saturday is my account's 3-year bday!!!) and haven't fully figured that out yet, the fact that they have a tool to for it is crazy.

UI Changes & Related Content

I've been steadily updating the site's UI (User Interface) to make things look better and, in some cases, more accessible. If you've been visiting for a while, you'll have noticed the right sidebar on content pages has changed a bit. That's the largest of the UI changes, the rest are fairly minimal.

Ah but one, per reader suggestion, was actually on library pages (like Books). For every book, or video, I list the full contents of the material. Like, the entire table of contents. For some books like The 80's Called... that's not terribly long. For others, like Revolutionary Card Technique, it's ridiculously long. To make the page more easily consumable I've made it where individual chapters (or sections) are collapsed and can be expanded per your desire! Honestly, it looks a lot better - really happy to have added that!

Another change that came in was Related Content. I mentioned this as being a desired widget in the previous Site Update #1 and I was waiting for more content before working on it. Well, I think I'm there! I've added it for books right now, so after the book's contents you'll find a new "you might also like" section that lists a few items that are related. Either reviews, other books or tricks or videos, or general posts. It's still a work in progress and will be coming soon for the other content throughout the site, but it's available on book pages now if you want to check it out!

What's Next?

Hmm, what's next indeed...

Well, first things first I want to finish the Related Content stuff. To me, and sure this is entirely personal opinion but hey -- my blog =P, but to me having an easy to find list of related stuff right there for you will make it much more interactive. If you've read about a book or video and want to know more on the topic, it's so much nicer to have it curated for you already rather than have to search for it yourself. Granted, if you're really interested in the topic you definitely should search more on it yourself too, but at least I'll be providing a starting point =]

Data entry, data entry, data entry. Wow there's a lot of data entry. Who knew typing a book's table of contents would take so long... and then coming up with descriptions of the books and all of that fun stuff. Wowzas! But, and I'm really excited for this, but I've thought of something else I really want to add. I haven't built the requirements into the site's framework for this yet so it'll be a larger effort, but I really want to make a way to track the different sleights used in different books, tricks, and videos. Not just "this book has a trick with a double lift", but "trick X uses a double lift" and "trick X is in book Y". My library is getting... big. Having an easy-to-access way to find out what books to grab when I'm looking for work with a lateral palm would be very beneficial. And, when trying to find references for different moves or origins of sleights it will help a lot too. The Conjuring Archive has a lot of this information already cataloged so I might look to see if they have an API I can leverage. Otherwise, I'll have to figure things out on my own (and maybe even more data entry =P).

Plenty to do, and it'll all come in time. If there's anything you'd like to see on the site (i.e. more reviews, more photos, a different feature or two, etc), please feel free to let me know and I can see about adding it to my queue!

The Road to Recovery will be a new feature here, though sporadic at best. It's going to focus on when things don't go as planned during a performance and how well I handled it. Sometimes I recover quite well. Other times, well, we'll just pretend that never happened. I hope that you can find something in these to relate to and if not, perhaps you'll be able to use the background for a future out yourself. With that said though, here's the first Road to Recovery!

There are a few books that talk about the theory behind tricks, like Card College, specifically focusing on outs for disasters and disturbances. Some other books actually provide outs for individual routines. Most, however, don't.

To repeat that, most magic books don't cover what to do if the spectator does the wrong thing. Or if you lose track of the card. Or if something else goes wrong and the trick deviates from how you've spent so many hours practicing. But, that's okay! This is where experience comes in, or cleverness. Or, perhaps thinking quick on your feet.

The other night, I was at a dinner party that had been in full swing for over 3 hours already when the cards came out. Plenty of food and drinks, and a decent number of guests. Around that 3 hour mark though, one of the guests asked me to show everyone a card trick.

Now, when I say "asked me", I mean that if she had a deck of cards in her hands she would have slapped me with it. I politely declined at first because I wasn't prepared. I had performed for all of these folks before and I hadn't planned on performing this night so I didn't really go over what I've showed them and what they haven't seen yet. Also, I had already had one or two (or three) drinks and it was late. However, the group now persisted and "whoah, where'd that deck of cards in my hands come from?!"

Kidding of course =P. They did persist and  I did say I would show a trick or two but I'd need a few minutes grab a deck of cards (... and prepare). I excused myself and left for about 5 minutes and used the time to figured out what routines I would perform, to prep the deck, and to get the other part ready. When you read below and still don't know what "the other part" is, feel free to reach out and we can chat =]

The Performance

I started off by shuffling the deck and having the lady who made the initial request select a card. Without looking at the card or showing it to anyone, I had her put it on the counter and set her glass on top of it for safe keeping.

Moving right into the next bit of business, I was excited to perform the next routine. It's one I created about a year ago and have practiced it at least 100 times. I also performed it for a small group once this summer and it went over extremely well -- now was the time to see it hold up against a larger group, fully surrounded!

I handed the deck to the same lady and asked her to shuffle it until she was happy. Then taking the deck back I had her peek at a card, but only her. Promptly handing her the deck back she shuffled again, again until she was happy. Once thoroughly convinced that there's no way I could know where in the deck the card is, she gave the deck back and I proceeded to make four piles on the counter.

Uh oh.

At this point, it's important to tell you what the expected ending of the trick is. You see, there are four piles of cards - maybe the same size, maybe not. Four different people, myself included, are shuffling our individual piles and then the first spectator, the one that peeked the card, turns over the top card of their pile. Would you believe it, it's their card! Then, the other three of us turn over our top cards and we've made a four of a kind. Hot damn!

At least, that's how it is supposed to go. Unfortunately, as I was making the piles I realized that the fourth card we need is currently on the counter. Sitting under a cup. Crap.

Okay, quick out -- I'm making two piles instead of four. I'll simply have a matching card that she has. It's not as strong as all four but it'll still be good. Easy peasy, all's setup and we both have our packets.

I say to her to do as I do and take the top card and put it under the deck. Take the next card and deal it down. Take the new top card, or two, or three, and put them under, then deal some down. And continue doing this until all cards are on the table.

Uh oh.

I'd like to repeat my statement up above in that I've practiced this trick at least 100 times. That is not an exaggeration at all, but apparently I need a lot more. I've never messed this up once in practice, but for some reason... for some reason I didn't start with "deal the top card to the table." Why did I say put it under the deck?! Crap x2.

As soon as I said it I know I messed up. But I didn't break stride, I kept it going as if it was all part of the routine but all the while trying to figure out how I'd get out of this. She was struggling, comedically, to do this funny shuffle. It was hilarious, everyone was having fun - so I played on that!

"This funky shuffle bit is all on purpose," I said. It was meant to show how, for magicians, when we have to learn a new way to do something we're really slow and sluggish at first. While I said this, I shuffled both piles together with a few variations. A tabled-riffle. An overhand. An in-the-hands riffle. And then a fancier one-handed cut. I recalled to the group it took weeks to learn each of these without dropping cards or thinking of quitting. And all of this, which took maybe 30 seconds, was enough time to spot and control the card (during the overhand shuffle) and move into a card to pocket.

So much build-up for a simple card to pocket, I really felt bad about it but the group was really having a fun time so I think it went over well.

Someone did actually make a comment akin to "so much shuffling and it was in his pocket the whole time!", so I did a quick impromptu routine to show that sometimes it's more fun to do a longer skit. For this one, I had him select a card, place it back in the deck and I did an immediate ribbon spread that had the card face up in the deck! And then I said "ah, yeah maybe the quick ones are fun too" =P

The final routine, using the card that's still sitting under the glass, was a voodoo themed card-to-ashes trick that got screams out of everyone! I'd love to go into more detail but that one actually went extremely well so we'll skip it today!

In Hindsight

Thinking things over more, which I've done several times since the performance, there were other things I could have done to correct the trick as it was going off the rails.

The first and probably easiest would have been realizing that the card she peeked was the same value as the card on the table and just going with a "ah sorry, I saw the card too - let's pick another" type of out. That would've worked, assuming she didn't see another one of that value on the next peek =P. It didn't even dawn on me during the performance though, but it really should have. If you know anything about the ashes trick, it really should have. But hey, what happened happened.

Another way out could have been to just used the card on the counter as the "it's always been there" fourth match. It would have caused me to lose the final routine from my set but I think it would still have been super strong since there's no way I could've known that was her selection. Actually, writing this out now I just realized that I could technically have been prepared to do an impromptu ashes trick too. Hmm...

Unfortunately, right now, the main recovery I think of is always a card-to-pocket. I love doing card-to-pocket routines, don't get me wrong. But, that's when they're on purpose. To me it just feels cheap. "We just spent 3 minutes doing a ton of stuff with the deck but your card was in my pocket the whole time lol". I'm going to invest some time, research, and development for different card reveals (and recoveries) that can match the expected impact of the different routines I perform, especially for the ones that I want to perform more often.

Spectator Feedback

After everything was said and done, one of the guys was asking me a few questions. You know, the typical "how'd you do that?!" and "when you had your back turned, was that when you put ashes on your arm?". "Very well, thanks!" and "no, you saw my arm was blank before I started rubbing the burning napkin all over it" were my responses.

But then, he brought the heat for real. "That second trick, we could tell something went wrong but damn you recovered nicely." The way he said it made me feel like I was having a conversation with another magician, someone who knew what was going on. Did he know what was going on?!

Maybe for magicians who perform constantly it's easier to tell if a recovery or out is a success or not, but for someone like me who only performs rarely, it's hard. Having someone say, with the exact words you're looking for, that the recovery was good (or bad) is amazing feedback. The loud screams of excitement were great, don't get me wrong, but at the end of the night that feedback was what stuck with me the most. To me, it means I've grown =]

Do you have any fun, scary, or just plain sad experiences with tricks going sideways? How did you get out of it? Or, how did you end it abruptly?

I'd love to know, and hey, maybe I can help share it here too! Let me know <3

Monday Mail Call is a new feature on the site that really needs no introduction, but you know I'll give it one anyway. The idea is to highlight some of the deliveries I've received throughout the week, either at my front door or to my inbox. New books or decks I've ordered, tricks or videos I've downloaded, questions or suggestions from readers and/or friends, and the list goes on!

Will there be a mail call every Monday?! Probably not, but maybe. I think there's been a week without a delivery before, a long long time ago. Also, if any reader writes in and it's time sensitive (or I'm not lazy), I'd like to get it out there sooner rather than later too. So hopefully it's semi consistent.

Before I jump into things, now's a good time to let you know that if you have any questions about magic (or anything really), or suggestions or site feedback, just let me know here! Unless it's completely unrelated, there's a good chance I'll write about it too.

In this initial installment, we have three deliveries that came in (technically four, but I'm grouping two together... you'll see).

We start with the Keep Smiling Playing Cards. This is a deck series that was a campaign on Kickstarter. It was successfully funded back in January, 2020.

I didn't catch it back when it was on Kickstarter (though 320 other folks did and crushed it with 557% funding!), and in fact I had never heard of it until quite recently. I saw a post on Instagram from a buddy of mine almost a month ago now  and it had only the back of the tuck on it. That back design alone is what sold me.

Looking up that one deck, I quickly found that it was a series of 5 -- whoah! Each deck, a different tuck and different color scheme. The faces of each deck are the same design, but each deck features a different colored backgrounds that matches the tuck's theme, not to mention the back design of each being different.

I caved and decided I needed all of them. There were several places to pick them up online but I really wanted to find a box set with the cool collector box. Unfortunately, I didn't find one that came with the box. There was one full set of 5 on eBay, but coming in at $100 I opted to buy themindividually which drove down the price considerably. If you're interested, pick up a deck of Keep Smiling V2 Playing Cards here on Vanishing Inc.

Next up we have two decks from King's Wild Project. Last year I had the basic STANDARDS subscription, but I didn't really understand it at first. I had signed up after seeing the announcement of the Sherlock Holmes deck and, well a little secret about me -- I really like Sherlock Holmes.

But yeah, long story short, I renewed my subscription for this year and ended up signing up for the No. 13 Club and Table Players. Oh boy!

Oh yeah, back to the delivery. I received the final deck from the STANDARDS subscription and only a few days later the first deck from the Table Players! Now I have a fancy Romeo & Juliet deck and a... uhm... a well I guess "Table Players" deck. Small letters on the side say it's Volume 13, so perhaps that's the name? Table Players Vol. 13? The Vol. 10 deck has the same "13" insignia on the front too, so dunno. I haven't opened it yet, but I will soon =]

And finally, No Man's Land. If ever there was an order I forgot I placed, it was this one.

The mailman came to the door yesterday with a box covered in Chinese writing, but he's used to it by now and frankly, so am I =P. This box's origin was pretty evident with the TCC tape covering it, but the first time I had a package like that I was really curious with what I ordered. This time, I was even more curious because I couldn't remember ordering anything from TCC in the past few weeks.

Well, I was kind of right.

About a month and a half ago I ordered No Man's Land Volumes 1 & 2 by Kiyoshi Satoh, from TCC. I'm typing this right now, staring at both books on my desk -- beautiful books, by the way. But having not opened them yet and forgetting I actually ordered them, I seriously have no idea what they're about. Okay, so I looked them up real quick (rather than opening them) and yes, they're card magic of course -- but specifically they're card magic by Satoh, who's hailed as Japan's King of underground magicians! Ah, I can see why I ordered them =]

Both come with a packet of gimmicked cards which match the book case colors, and that's pretty cool. I'm not typically an impulse-purchase person, and I seem to have placed my order in the morning, well after my first cup of coffee... I'm still racking my brain as to how I forgot I ordered these and now I'm going to go back through my inbox for order history to see what else I may have purchased that never arrived.

I don't have a review or even an opinion about these books yet given, well, I haven't read them yet. However, if you want to check them out for yourself, they're on sale right now over at TCC. I'm going to head over there after I write this too because there are 8 performance videos for the books and I'm excited to see what's up!

All-in-all, it's a pretty decent haul for the week if you ask me. Sometimes getting in multiple decks in a week is a lot because it doesn't give a good chance to get to know the decks individually, but at least I'll never get bored! And more books for the library -- gotta love it!

As a reminder, if you'd like to offer suggestions for books, tricks, decks or if you have questions about magic (performing, routines, sleights, etc.), just reach out here.

p.s. I spent way more time than I should have making the header image for this. I'm going to spend even more tweaking it until it's what I really want though... maybe one day it'll be a real image and not photoshop =P

Penn & Teller: Fool Us is a TV talent show that is filmed in front of a live audience (or, virtual audience during the pandemic). Oh, and we can't forget to mention that Penn and Teller are there too -- they're the judges!

During each episode, four magicians perform a magic act for Penn & Teller which, at the end of each act the magician-comedian duo try to deduce how the trick was done. In very articulate speech, Penn -- as Teller remains characteristically silent -- commends the magician on a job well done. If the magic act fooled Penn & Teller, they win a sweet Fool Us trophy and a trip to Vegas to be the opening act for Penn & Teller's show!

I want my opinions below to reflect those of a spectator who just saw a performance live. To achieve this, I've only watched this episode once. In real time - no pausing. No slow motion. Once through, with commercials and with my kids enjoying it with me too. Did I remember everything I saw? Did I see everything that happened? Do I remember the exact words that were said? Maybe, but likely not -- which means if I over-portray an effect below then it was just that great of a trick. If I under-portray it, well, yeah. So let's see what this episode's got in store for us!

Episode Recap

The episode P&T's Big Game Halftime Show first aired on January 28, 2022 as Season 8's episode 12 (episode #117 overall!). At first I thought it was called "Super Bowl Halftime Show" and Wikipedia says the same... but now everything I'm seeing is "Big Game" so maybe I just completely misremembered. However, I think that the flag Teller was holding during the final act by Penn & Teller was for a sports event, so perhaps that's why the episode's rocking that name. Well, that or maybe because the Super Bowl is in a few weeks?

The fooler of the night's episode was the duo Rick Smith Jr. & Rokas, the first performance of the show. They put on a pretty neat demonstration of card throwing -- something I definitely can't do -- and mixed it with magic. Penn described it as "a combination of juggling and magic" and I think that really sums it up quite nicely. My instincts on this one were identical to Penn & Teller's, so the fact that it was wrong is definitely a fooler to me! I have two other ideas as to how it was done (which came to me while writing this, not during the performance) but I think I'll keep them to myself since I'm interested in coming up with a similar routine... except, without throwing cards.

One really cool thing about this performance though, and I honestly think they deserve even extra credit for this, is that they had met in person for the first time ever only 24 hours before their act! Before then, they'd only communicated remotely. How awesome is that?! They had great chemistry, like friends that have done this for quite a while. Now that's magic!

You can check out their card throwing performance on YouTube.

Lindsey Noel's performance, while extra bubbly and whacky, lacked a real climax in my opinion. It was what I would imagine a fairly straightforward card trick to be, except performed with polaroid pictures instead. What would have made it much, much stronger would have been Lindsey "reading and revealing" the word that was written down and then building that into the revelation of the photo that was selected. Or, making the written word somehow appear in the bubble itself -- that would be pretty cool. She had no real chance at a peek at the slip of paper during the performance so yeah, to accomplish these "extras" the routine would need to be altered. Going through this big grandiose act and ending it abruptly by saying exactly what polaroid was selected rather than what was on the paper draws all attention towards the cards, or rather the photos, and the first thoughts are that it had to have been forced or marked in some way. Unfortunately, Penn kind of went straight to the point and called those things out so he didn't really skirt around it too much.

This routine though, it irked me on a different level. I've seen a few like it in the show's history and my problem with it is that there have been red-herring's added in specifically to try to force Penn & Teller to call one of them out to make it a fooler. The tricks themselves aren't anything special, but these extra slow card drops, the fidgeting hand towards the pocket with the slip of paper in it, little things that magicians know are sleights … purposefully added in only to try to grab that trophy but not having any actual impact on the performance. I think that P&T are very keen to this too and pick out the obvious solutions (like how she very carefully tried to force a polaroid...) and throw them out. Which left, of course, the real solution.

I really enjoyed Jason Suran's "swear jar" performance. It is a classic mentalism routine, so there wasn't anything super original about it other than the personality and theme added to it, which was fun. Similar to Lindsey's commentary from Penn, he didn't skirt around the solution to this one either. Well, actually, I guess he did a little. He built up a nice story about being in a swearing competition with Al Koran. If they did actually have that competition "in real life", Penn would have been in his low-to-mid teen years given Koran passed away in 1972. But either way, directly calling out Koran's Medallion is a bit of a tip to the crowd there.

Roddy McGhie, what a fun routine. Or, skit? Yeah, definitely a skit. I could see this being an actual stage show, or heck a virtual show. Build up the theme of mindlessly thumbing through channels and your brain turning to mush. There were a lot of gimmicks used in this routine and the ending felt a little overboard to me but I did enjoy it all overall. To comment on the overboard piece though, with all attention focusing on the box in the middle of the screen and having it change before our eyes makes it pretty clear that it's just a trick (e.g. flap) box. If there was a little added misdirection pulling our attention elsewhere and it subtly changed without us noticing, then when the "remote" changed we'd kind of naturally notice the box too and that would be a much stronger ending. Same ending, but stronger. Totally in my opinion though. Really cool to see it all done in one take with no camera edits too.

Penn & Teller ended the show with a little levitation act. Penn talked his head off, more than usual I feel because it sounded like his voice was giving out a bit. And Teller went up and up and started flapping a flag around! My youngest said "oh oh, I know how he's did that! strings!". So I (contrary to what my introduction paragraph said... but this doesn't count =P) rewound the show to when Teller was just getting up in the air and started waving the flag around his head. "Wait what?! yeah I have no idea then" were the next words from his mouth!

I have a guess as to how it was done -- levitation acts only have so many possibilities -- but my guess is actually fueled by what was under the flag that the bowl of chips was hiding. If the timing and camera angle hid that lump it would've been a lot more fooling (to me). That, and Teller's legs remaining robotically still the entire time.

Takeaways

I liked this episode a lot more than last week's. The acts were very different, featuring card throwing and a full skit even. It was just fun. Given that they only have a single fooler per episode, lining up the first act to be the fooler is kind of a let-down for the rest of the episode though. Sure, I keep watching to "watch the magic," but knowing that they won't actually fool Penn & Teller does kill the whole "will they fool them?!" suspense. Maybe next season (yes, it just got renewed!) they'll throw us a twist and put multiple foolers in a single episode!

Speaking of episodes, I can't tell if there are more this season or not. I looked up the episode list (for the "Super Bowl" comparison) and the lists I'm seeing only show 12 -- this one being the last. Most of the other seasons have 13, last season had 28. Why drop this one at 12?

Either way, I'm excited for the next round of magic!

I don't know about you, but every once in a while I just get bored. Not like a random Saturday afternoon when I'd rather sit inside instead of being out in the sun, but also can't find anything to watch on TV and yet still don't want to get off the couch. No, it's more like I want to do more in magic but at the same time I just don't open the book that's sitting in front of me and I don't practice any routines. You know?

There are waves of inspiration and breakthroughs, and then there are crashes of failure and stress. In between all of them, more often after the crashes than not, there's a lull period where I find myself simply fidgeting with cards rather than practicing with them. No actual ideas are going through my head other than "I should practice something" and it's really bothersome.

I would like to say that social media (i.e. Instagram) is to blame, but that's also probably just a crutch I'd use rather than admitting that every once in a while we just need to take a break. Those crashes that I mentioned above, they often happen when trying to film a routine for Instagram though, so maybe there is a shred of truth to the feeling. It's kind of funny, but I'll practice a routine for a few days -- nothing complicated, maybe one or two sleights. It feels good and fluid, in the mirror it looks like I'm doing it in all the right ways, and then on camera bam. Flash. Angle's wrong. Fingers are too stiff. The clicks are too noisy. Another flash. Ugh. 236 takes later and another destroyed deck and instead I just film a Cardini Change and I'm done with it.

What's interesting, or sad, about this is that I set out to film a routine just for practice with the expectation of "if it's good, I might post it online eventually." And then after a few bad takes, something kicks in where I need to get it right because now I want to post it. I think it has something to do with a perception of the routine's difficulty level increasing each time I fail to do it, so nailing it is a greater accomplishment. What I really want to work on is developing better practice methods where "recording a trick" is just to make sure I can do it properly. If after a few takes I don't get it, keep practicing and record it again some time later. This would definitely help reduce stress and it's not like I don't have hundreds of routines I could do instead.

The same actually goes for photography. I'm not an expert or professional photographer by any means. If you look at my Instagram (@gbabbits), you'll see that I try a little here and there... but coming up with ideas is hard. I try to pull inspiration from some other really great photographers (I post shout-outs to them every now and then) but I don't want to "replicate" those accounts either. I think that that's a good thing on a few levels as a lot of their photos, even though they're with different decks or EDC (every day carry) objects, are really the same "scene" just, well, with a different object of focus. I have no problem with just showing off a deck of cards, but I feel like my goal is to try to capture something more than that. I don't know, I'm still trying to figure it out myself so we'll see where that ends up.

After two or three months of posting a new photo and/or video almost every single day, I'm exhausted and frankly out of ideas. Maybe posting the same scene is the smart way to go... or, maybe I need to go back to my original use case and only post when I have something cool to show and not "just for content."

What I really need is a better way to organize my thoughts. Or, rather, to prioritize what to practice! I've been working on just that too - I'll post about it soon after I've given it a decent trial. If it works, it might actually solve a lot of my boredom issues too.

I've spoken with at least a dozen different people on this topic too, the lulls in between interests that is. From my small sample group it actually sounds like this is a normal thing too and they have, as well as their magician friends, have all gone through the ups and downs. Unfortunately, more than half of those I've spoken to haven't picked up a deck in over a year so I think that the inspiration never came back for them. I don't see that happening with me but like they say, never say never.

If you're falling into a rut and don't know what to practice, or can't find the right type of inspiration, reach out! Talking to a friend has always helped me and I would be more than happy to try to help you too.