Piercings, body mods, and suspension (mild rant)

I’ve been obsessed with piercings and bodymods, pretty much any weird shit within that realm for a very long time. I remember seeing those extremely tattooed, modded and pierced people in the “Ripley’s: Believe It Or Not!” books in the school library as a kid and thinking “That’s so sick!! I want to be just like them.” As an adult I have somehow managed to wiggle my way into the piercing industry as an apprentice, and I could not ask for a more fulfilling job. Even though my primary source of income is working as a line cook at a cafe downtown part-time, I hope one day I can ditch the restaurant gig and maybe work as a piercer full-time or eventually open my own shop. I live in a relatively conservative city, which sucks because the best place for piercings is where I work. I want to one day go out of town or even out of state to see what one of those fancy APP certified shops is like. Though we follow APP protocols we aren’t a part of the actual program itself and I have never attended any conferences, though I would like to. I also noticed theres nowhere in Colorado (save for Denver which I avoid like the plague), that have shops that do anything like suspension, tongue splitting, play piercings, or extreme body modification which sucks. I want to try suspending so bad but there isn’t anywhere in SoCo that does it and I am not about to drive 4 fucking hours in traffic 🫠. Our piercing industry down here is so limited, and frankly most of the shops here suck as I, an apprentice, can somehow pierce a bellybutton better than some of the scam artists that call themselves “piercers” and charge buku bucks to ruin people’s bodies. Idk how many times Ive had people say they got something done wrong from other shops who claimed to be professionals and I have had to fix it. Maybe I will take the trek to Denver and NorCo eventually, but otherwise I’m stuck here for the time being.