II am always learning. You’ll often find me doing deep dives into topics I know nothing about on YouTube, Audible, podcasts, and other online resources. We are living in times where all the information in the world is available to us, and we know that our most valuable resource is the we are able to retain and apply in our lives. I wouldn’t have been able to buy this newspaper or quit my day job if I had not made a conscious decision to learn about money and financial independence. Now I am practically an evangelist on the topic because it felt like I found a secret backdoor entrance into a world that felt completely out of reach for most of my life.

While I am not immune to making bad decisions, I feel like now I have some basic principles to apply to avoid them. A few years ago I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and that was really a breakthrough moment. Since then, I have listened to hundreds of audiobooks and podcasts on financial literacy and real estate investing. For years, I could not get enough of that stuff, and it completely changed my approach to life. I started thinking in terms of what I would like to optimize my life for and what would need to be true in order to make that life possible. Sometimes how you frame a question in your own mind helps you deliver completely different results in terms of your ideas and creative solutions. For the longest time, I had a personal mantra that I have all the resources I need to achieve my goals, and whenever I think like that, it forces me to take inventory and realize how many resources really are right here waiting to be called upon. Tacoma is full and of incredible resources that many people may not even know about. I want to use Weekly Volcano to share this information and hopefully bring a little hope and inspiration into our lives.

Last month, your Duchess of Downtown royally messed up. I used ChatGPT to remove some extra lines in the calendar, but it was such a long list that it kept stalling in the middle. When I asked it to continue it just started at the beginning, so I decided to be more precise in my request and told it to start the 12th and continue to the end of the list. This was in July when I was preparing the August paper. I accidentally said July 12th, and since I had used it to get rid of the lines for the July calendar also, it remembered all of the July events and did just what I had asked it to do—it listed July 12th through the end of the month. I was in a hurry, and I didn’t notice. I just thought I had my list, so I hit copy/paste right into the newspaper. Some astute readers may have noticed that half of the calendar was August events, and the second half was July events! But I didn’t until I had already printed and delivered the paper. Gut punch. I am so sorry! Now we have a rule that at least three people need to look over all of the pages before we go to press—even if we are in a rush to meet the deadline!!

BTW, if you liked the cute stickers pictured on the cover, you can buy those from our online store at weekly-volcano.com. You will also find t-shirts and some other fun stuff on there like ART BUS Tickets!

The September ART BUS Tour is happening September 19th, and the theme for that tour will be back to school. We are planning on some hands-on are projects for passengers to enjoy while we explore some arty locations throughout Tacoma. If you have a business and you’d like to put a promotional gift into the VIP bags we give out on the tours, reach out to us at Advertising@weekly-volcano.com.

I hope you enjoy this back-to-school-themed issue of Weekly Volcano! Remember, you are never too old to learn new tricks! You too can become an autodidact or sign up for one of thousands of local and online classes.