Look Who I Met

ok, so lately I've been doing a little bit of promo work as a way to fund my art. It is a really good deal since you work as little or as much as you want (given that there are jobs to do at the time) so it is quite flexible for my art schedule. in September I went around downtown with TELUS giving out roses and footballs for TELUS, in August I worked at cirque du soleil as part of the infiniti tour, and this month I am working with TD with their hot chocolate truck.

I've found that doing promos has actually helped me in more ways than just earning some money. I have always been a rather shy person who didn’t talk to a lot of people and when I did, if I didn’t know you I would feel kind of awkward talking to you. Now I may not be as outgoing as I would like, but I am more likely to start up conversations with people. I guess this started with when I first started doing "promotional" work at the beginning of summer(I use "" because technically what I was doing - it was illegal to promote it and no, it was not prostitution or anything like that). I remember telling people, "I got a job where my main job is to randomly talk to people, I know.. I hate talking to people". Now I am more comfortable meeting people and I think this is a step in the right direction :)

For this TD job, I have been rotating between beeing a mascot and being a spotter. This job is deff different because my job is not to talk to people but as the mascot interact and get peoples attention to bring the experience of the promotion to a higher level. basically I just dance non stop the entire time Im in the suit and well it seems to work haha. Funny how I keep getting finding jobs that pay me to dance while carrying heavy things lol. Last week we were at wordfest and they pulled me aside to pose with franklin! If I had known franklin would be there I would of brought my sister along to see him.

working at cirque du soleil had its perks, other than seeing the show every night on the screen in the tent. I learned that 5 minutes before every show the mosquito would come out and shoo people into the big top. So when I saw the show for the SECOND time I made sure to stay and wait to get my photo with the bug!

OH and one of the big perks of working promo? The people you get to meet. At cirque du soleil I got to talk to the traveling employees about the textile department for cirque, got to go into the vip tent to take a close look at some costumes and talk to head of security about how they are made. At my current promo my manager even has connections to people from marketing of cirque du soleil in montreal.

Oh I may not have mentioned this, but I would maybe like to spend a part of my life learning and being a part of the textile team behind cirque du soleil (if you didnt already figure that out). All I need to do is become fluent in french :)