Most of what I worry about never happens.

Yeah.

But, you know, I mean, to be a little morbid about it, you're like, well, what if the worst case is that, like... you know, my mom passes away or something like that, you know? Which 100% will happen.

And that's the thing.

It's like Marcus Aurelius said, memento mori.

Remember that you will die.

It's on your arm.

you've

So I'd love for you to introduce yourself to our audience, and then we'll dive in.

Sure.

Yeah.

My name is Ben Bliss and I'm a professional opera singer, freelance soloist.

I work with different companies all over the world singing roles.

And I have kind of a unique path to this career.

I grew up in a very musical household where there are lots of singers around and kind of describe it as music and singing and harmony being the second language spoken in my house.

Okay, so how have your fellow colleagues dealt with this?

Mm-hmm.

Uh, the mostSort of pragmatic one is that I did, uh, two contracts back to back in Paris.

Uh, Rake's Progress at the Palais Garnier at the Paris Opera, followed by Semele at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.

And during that process, I was doing some budgeting, uh, and I was trying to figure out, let's see how much of my paycheck is gonna be withheld for French taxes.

And so I googled freelance nonresident tax withholding in France, which is a bit of a, you know, snake pit to begin with.

And I realized, well, you know, I'm not really a freelancer.

I'm technically working for the Paris Opera.

[laughs]