Social Circle Investments and Me

dunnepaulerik — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:03:13 +0000

When it comes to social circles, knowledge is key to helping you expand them. There is no such thing as having too much knowledge.
How is this gained? What do you already know? Who do you know? What do they know? How quickly can you find out more about what you want to learn, and get to where you want to go? What influences you? Where did those influences come from? A friend, colleague, a complete stranger?
How did hearing one minute of the song “Forgiveness” by the band Goldfinger in my cousin’s car on the way home from high school in 2001 directly result with me purchasing a Say Anything concert t-shirt in 2009 through various social circles?
Wrap your head around this. I still am.
In December of 2001, my cousin drove me home from high school. She was three years older than me and I couldn’t drive. FRESHMEN, FRESHMEN! It just made sense. She was into a lot of punk and ska music at the time. Goldfinger fit into that category. She let me borrow the CD. It was a compilation of stuff she had been listening to at the time. On it was stuff like the Aquabats, The Get Up Kids, and Saves The Day. It was all new to me. I was used to whatever 93X was playing at the time, which ironically is the same exact stuff they play now. The song “At Your Funeral” by Saves The Day was on there and I was instantly hooked.
After finding the lyrics online, I purchased the CD, Stay What You Are. It’s a masterpiece. I still listen to it. Anyway, as stated before, I was enthralled with Goldfinger, and a year or so later I was on the interweb and noticed they were coming to The Quest Club (now called Epic) in a few months out. Forward to April of 2003. Some friends and I attended that sold out show. Life from that point was forever altered. The live energy, the sweat, the noise; something awesome just happened.
I went to every show I could with whoever would go with. April of 2004 came around and Saves The Day was in town, again, at The Quest. It wasn’t sold out this time, but it was still a great show. I had started talking with a girl there and it continued throughout the show. At the end, we exchanged numbers. That turned into going to a prom, numerous family functions, and best of all another Saves The Day show, in CHICAGO. The girl had friends there we could stay with. And we were off. This time the show was at The Metro, right next to Wrigley Field. It was sold out. After another exhilarating show, I purchased a shirt from Saves. It was orange and had an Indian on the front of it.
I still had another year left of high school and fully used it to attend more concerts. Then college happened. I went a few hours away from home in southeastern Minnesota. There was culture you could look for, and you had to in order to find it. Everything felt wide open. It was a great time to discover new music and different groups of people who shared the same, and different, tastes in music. Concerts attended dropped because of the distance to the venues. This was 2006, 2007, and 2008.
Then in the summer of 2009, June, I took a rather boring drawing class at my college. I knew one person in the class. It wasn’t until I wore the orange Saves The Day shirt to the class that I met the only other person I would meet in that class. Art kids are a quiet bunch. Ironically, the second person I met, a girl, wore the same shirt to class, but had a sweatshirt over it. Small world. We got to talking and exchanged music. It turns out she had an internship with Fueled by Ramen, home to bands like Panic! At The Disco, Paramore and Cobra Starship. With that internship she was able to get into just about any concert she wanted with a monthly allowance for going to concerts.
Finally this brings us to October 2009. Say Anything had a new album coming out the next week. They played Station 4 in St. Paul, and that’s when I got my Say Anything shirt. I attribute everything that was written before this sentence to hearing that minute of “Forgiveness” by Goldfinger almost nine years ago. Exhale.

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Social Circle Investments and Me