Where does a clown go?

I was seventeen, and adventure beckoned...I left my childhood home in Modesto, California, and caught up with a mudshow, a traditional circus under the big top, in Grants Pass, Oregon. I kept the dream alive through Clown College and two years with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Then I had a more normal life for a young person: college, job, apartment, etc. However, I was never completely cured of circus fever and made efforts of varied success to come back to the big top in subsequent years. This pursuit came to a crashing halt, literally, in Pahrump, Nevada, at age thirty-eight. It was there that I logged the shortest flying trapeze career on record. My circus journey took me to dozens of locales, from the Big Apple to Boise, from Lima to Lodi. Was I a maverick, or simply someone who refused to grow up? You decide...