Cognitive Dissonance
A friend of mine quit her job this month. Unlike many of us, she actually had a well laid out plan of what to do to keep herself financially secure during the period when she's seeking another job, which is ongoing as I write this. I had a chat with her the other day during which she told me about a part-time job she found that makes a certain amount of money which she depends on right now. It's nowhere near a full time pay, but it helps to slow down the depletion of her savings.
She had saved few thousand pounds, which gives her a few months to find a new job while maintaining her current standard of living - which is quite frugal already. I was really impressed with her prudence. I wish had that skill. On paper, all things remaining equal, it's a good plan she has and it should work. Unfortunately, though, we live in uncertain times. Even the best plans can be punched in the mouth, to paraphrase Mike Tyson.
Me arriving at an unknown city somewhere in South America, probably Brazil. Except, even though that is really me, I'm not actually there. That photo was taken in my living room. I removed the background and overlaid it on this beautiful free photo from Canva. Took me like 10 seconds to do. Technology eh?
When I left my 9-5 (6-whenever actually) job so many years ago, I had no such plan laid out. I just up and left. I decided to go face the big bad world all on my own terms. It was scary and daunting, but I did it anyway. For me the decision was quite easy though. It was a choice between a highly paid but soul destroying job and the uncertainty of self-employment.
This ways before the days of social media on the blockchain.
If I had Hive back then, the decision would have been a total no-brainer. In a way, I'm glad I didn't. I had to grind my way through the online entrepreneurship world trying my hands at nearly everything to find what worked. I've written about this on here before so I won't go into it again.
You kids have it easy these days I tell you. Imagine sitting in a cafe typing whatever the heck you want into a blog, and getting paid for it. Absolutely crazy! I still can't wrap my head around this whole Web 3.0 thing and how life-changing it has been for me and so many others. What's even more amazing is how most people are still yet to hear about it.
Case in point - my friend that I described in the opening paragraphs of this post. She's actually a video content creator, and has been so for many years. Over ten years even. she creates very high quality stuff too, and it's her dream to do it full time! I mentioned the concept of Web 3.0 to her and tokenised social media on the blockchain. She drew a blank! Not only had she never heard of such a thing, she can't fathom the concept at all.
"So, where does the money come from?"
Exactly right? That was the same question I had when I first discovered this thing. I already knew about Bitcoin, and kind of understood the concept, but it took a while to wrap my head around the idea of an inflation reward pool. To get it, I had to re-educate myself about how "money" itself works. It was a pretty good exercise because once you get that, everything changes!
I think my friend is dealing with cognitive dissonance. Like many, she's so well trained in the old ways, that anything new and paradigm shifting is so hard to take in. So many comfort zones.
Talking of comfort zones, I think this plays a big role in why we see more crypto adoption in so-called poor nations than here in the west. They don't have that many comfort zones to get out of. A typical job over here comes with some levels of security; a retirement plan of some kind, insurance, legal protections, e.t.c,. Mind you, that's changing now too. Over there, a job is usually just a job, and you can lose it just as quickly as you got it with no safety nets.
In the end, my friend is "not that interested" in this "ponzi scheme looking" thing. She will be sticking to her "IRL" plans of making money the "traditional" way. Fingers crossed, she will find another job soon and all will be well. I hope when she does, the issues that made her leave her previous job would have been resolved, otherwise the cycle would simply carry on and she'd be back to square one.
Peace & Love,
Adé