Blackout, Unplugged, Passive Income
Yesterday around 3:45pm, the power went out in our house. I thought it was just us, but after checking Facebook on my iPhone I saw that all of my local friends had lost their power too. I soon learned that the blackout spanned from Baja California all the way up to southern Orange County.
Then, apparently, the cell phone towers went out and I couldn’t get online at all anymore.
I was totally unplugged from the online world, and to be honest – it was really nice!
As a result, I wasn’t able to get to my regularly scheduled blog post (that’ll go live on Monday), but I wanted to write this short post to tell you about what did happen.
First, I realized just how much we all take things for granted. The ability to just turn a light on, open the garage with a push of a button, check an app that tells us the score of the football game – we don’t realize how awesome things are until they aren’t there anymore. It made me appreciate the time we do live in and all that we have the ability to do (when the power is on, lol).
Side Note: If you haven’t seen Everything’s Awesome and Nobody’s Happy, I recommend that you watch it. It’s 4-minutes long and it’s hilarious. Louis C.K. is awesome.
Secondly, when the hours kept passing by and the power still hadn’t turned back on, it made me wonder what would happen if the power was out for days, or even weeks. What if there was an emergency and we had no water (we still had water during the blackout, fortunately) and what if food ran out. Based on what we have in the house we could probably survive for a few days, but that’s definitely not enough to feel safe about. It’s always better to be safe than sorry and with a family to take care of I have to really make sure we have the ability to survive in case of an emergency.
I should catch up on my Man vs. Wild survival skill training.
Side Note #2: During the blackout we were listening to the radio and heard somebody talk about a store that was up-charging for bags of ice, obviously taking advantage of the situation to earn a quick buck. I couldn’t believe it, and whoever made that decision should totally be ashamed of themselves.
What if they gave away the bags of ice for free instead? Do you think that would leave a better impression on the people who received the bags of ice (and everyone else who heard about it)? I’m sure people would be extremely thankful and find ways to pay them back many times over later on – but some people don’t see that and always want the quick buck, unfortunately.
Anyways, after our son went to sleep my wife and I had the rest of the evening to ourselves. We popped open a bottle of wine (Ecco Domani, Chianti) and just sat on the couch with some candles nearby and chatted. No television and no internet to distract us – it was the best. The nice thing is that you don’t need to be in a blackout in order to do that, and we enjoyed it so much that we’ll probably do the same thing again in the near future.
Lastly, when I woke up this morning the power was finally back on. I wasn’t as anxious as I thought I would be to turn on the computer and check my email, so I just had some breakfast with my son and then we played for a bit until I finally checked my email on my phone.
It was nice to see that while the power was out I had earned over $600 in passive income from several of the various income streams I have working for me. It’s a great reminder that once things are set in place, one doesn’t have to be totally active (traditionally directly trading time for money) in order to earn an income.
And if you haven’t done so already, I recommend listening to SPI Session #25, which is currently the #1 podcast episode in the entire Marketing and Management section of iTunes!
Thanks again, and I hope all of my fellow San Diegans survived the blackout.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Cheers!
Tagged as: passive income, unplugged
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