To use what I've been paying for....

I’m sitting in the airport, waiting to board a plane back to Nashville where I currently call home. I came to California to perform in a show along with several other musicians and family members wherein I arranged the music for this entire show, which included 17 songs from old Portuguese records. It was amazing to feel so much love and appreciation from the people that were involved in the project. It was difficult for me to plan this trip knowing that it would cost me a bit of money to be a part of this project. I’ve been following the Dave Ramsey “baby steps” to get out of debt and get into wealth and part of that formula involves not going on trips, which will always cost more money than just staying where I live and continuing to work normally. But I was able to cover the flight with rewards points and got the best deal that I could on a rental car. That worked out as well as it could. I’m working really hard these days to make as much money as I possibly can so I can finally pay off all this debt as fast as I can. This debt that I’m paying off (the last of it) are my student loans, of which, I’m delighted to say, is already down to $5000 where at the start of this calendar year alone was around $28,000. Those student loans were the multiple programs I went through to study music theory… the very thing that enabled me to arrange this music for this show. At first, I was really okay with not coming home for this show. After I decided to go for it, though, I felt so much more peace and excitement about coming home to perform with my friends and family. I definitely took a “hit” on the rapidity of paying off my debt by taking this trip, but it was a great weekend where I saw so many people and did so many things. I was alive. I made memories. I strengthened bonds. I put into practice all the experience I’ve been building over the years and it was a fantastic trip!

The safety of social media

In saying “safety” in the title, I’m referring to how easy it is for us to post on Facebook some meme where it attacks someone without having any need to be based in truth. It can just be our “opinion” even though it’s making a claim that is based is something that is factual. A recent one I saw was about Obama being good at lying and that Trump is good at telling the truth. The implication is that Trump is telling the truth and people don’t like to hear it. I added a comment asking for proof, and there were no responses to this. What I find happens most of the time is that people will post stuff like this and other followers won’t want to get involved so they won’t comment at all. But this has a different effect because the original poster thinks that if no one is comments or saying something to the contrary, they can easily say, “Yes, I am right and people are not fighting me on this because they know I am right.”

If I come at them with fact checking to show that Trump is more likely to say a false claim, they can use the label of “fake news” or that the media is making that up, so the conversation ends. But if we were sitting together and discussing this in person, it would be much harder for someone to just say that this is how it is because they would have to look someone if the eye who may be willing to challenge them on their “beliefs”. This is why social media is good for people who don’t want to be challenged. It doesn’t matter that my account shows that it is me who is the user, there is still some removal from myself there. Not just for me but for anyone. The more connected we seem to be, the more disconnected we actually are.