Hi, I'm Victor. Magic is Therapy

Hi everyone.

I'm Victor, and my situation is very similar to user wind68's.

As a kid, I found a book among my uncle's collection that really caught my eye. With it, I discovered I could amaze my friends. The book was "Pastimes and Society Games" by Antonio de Armenteras.

Later on, Juan Tamariz's part-work course came out, but with the little I could save from my allowance, I could only afford one out of every five issues.

As I got older, between school and work, I slowly drifted away from it.

I thought magic wasn't for me. I enjoyed watching it, but I felt like I couldn't do it, unlike when I was little. As a kid, I wasn't afraid; our lives were all about discovery... now (I don't know why) I'm more shy, my hands shake (at the bar, if I'm carrying coffee from the counter to a table, I spill half of it).

Similar to what happened to wind68, my mom has slowly started to experience cognitive decline that's becoming more pronounced... and of course, she's aware of it, she knows what will happen eventually, and because of that, she has days where her spirits are very low.

Recently, without even realizing it, I spontaneously performed one of the tricks for her that I used to do for my friends as a kid, and it turned out that in that moment, her "funk" vanished, and a smile appeared.

By chance, my nephews were also there. In that moment, they pulled themselves away from their screens (phones, tablets...) and asked me for more.

Unfortunately, I didn't have much more to show them because I barely remembered anything, and what I did remember... my technique was non-existent.

After everything I've just told you, I've decided to try and learn something little by little: to try and make my mom's days a bit more bearable, to try and help my nephews discover a magical world beyond their device-ridden lives... and I think also to see if I can finally scratch that itch I've had for not continuing to enjoy something I loved as a kid.

I hope that shyness, the fear of failure, my tendency to make a mess at the bar (as I mentioned earlier with the coffee)... won't be an insurmountable problem.

Warm regards to all.