Whence to pirate?

Recently I’ve been thinking about the benefits of being a pirate. I play bass in a little pirate band for kids, and we’ve been at it for almost ten years. Ten years. We have four albums to our name, and we draw decent numbers for our shows here in Portland. We pour our little pirate hearts into each show, even the ones that are… challenging, and I think everybody has a grand time. Every now and then we get emailed adorable photos of kids rocking out at home, or pictures they drew of us, and it bouys our hearts beyond compare. But on the whole, this enterprise is not a money-making machine. We’re generally in manageable debt, and the money we make does help with the bills. But it’s pretty nominal, and we all have other full-time jobs. With five of us in the band, with families and loved ones, it gets difficult to schedule and get on the same page. We get told a lot that we must have a lot of fun – and we definitely do – but there is a lot of overhead that weighs heavily. The crew are such wonderful people, it’s hard to imagine they need to do any other work; but the reality these days… I don’t know.