A Soul Trip

I'm not a concert person. There are very few artists I care about enough to see live, and Jack Johnson is one of them.

I bought a ticket for Jack Johnson's concert at the Gorge the day they went on sale, back in April 2010. The show was in October. I was that excited.

It was tough to find people who wanted to hang out at the Gorge in October, but a friend finally bought her ticket and agreed to go with me. When it came down to crunch time before the show, someone (eh-hem, Rachael) found out she couldn't get off work, and couldn't go. (It's OK, Slice, I forgive you.)

I wasn't about to go to the Gorge and freeze by myself, so I put my ticket up for sale on the Facebook event page for the concert. Almost immediately, a man messaged me with interest. But not just any man — a man on a soul trip.

I'm always happy to assist someone with their soul trip! I ended up selling him my ticket, and it was a win-win for both of us.

The concept of a soul trip stuck with me as I started looking into the next time I'd be able to see Jack Johnson in concert. I found out he holds something called the Kokua Festival, a weekend of concerts to benefit the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, every year in Honolulu.

Hey, I could make a soul trip out of that! A weekend in Honolulu for the festival, plus a few days to bum around Oahu and have adventures sounded good to me.

Sadly, there is no Kokua Festival this year. It's taking a break after six successful years, and I'll have to wait a little longer to see Jack Johnson play.

I'm still going to Hawaii, though. Flying out tonight, in fact.

This trip wasn't about getting to Hawaii; I just wanted to go somewhere warm for a bit with my best friend. But, coincidentally or not, we decided to spend eight days on Oahu swimming, sunbathing, snorkeling, surfing, running, hiking, sightseeing and taking photos all over the island.

Only after we booked the trip did I realize that I'd fulfill my original idea of a soul trip after all.

A soul trip doesn't have one definition. It's whatever adventure you want to have, for whatever reason. Jason's soul trip consisted of driving around the country by himself, which would be more like a nightmare for me. I'd get bored and lonely within two days. But it was what he wanted, and he didn't have to justify it to anyone.

Chris Guillebeau challenged his readers to think of one place they've always wanted to visit. He wrote that wherever you wanted to go, you'd need, at most, $2,500 to get there and back. Using that example, you could take that trip in three years — plus have money left over for meals and shopping — if you saved $2 a day. (My "one place" is not Hawaii, by the way, but Greece.)

Chis wrote:

I use this example to prove that money isn't what prevents many of us from going somewhere we've always wanted to.

Instead, most of us stay where we are because of inertia more than anything else.

Sure, it takes money to travel. But if you decide that something is important to you and you focus your energy on making it happen, it will happen.

As far as money goes, I've decided there are three things that are important to me that I'll spend money on: running, photography and travel/adventures.

Running costs include my gym membership, race entry fees and running clothes and shoes. Photography costs include buying my camera, lens, memory card, camera bag and a laptop that I could upload photos to without crashing it. Travel obviously includes plane tickets and hotel costs, but also any activities I'll do once I'm there.

All these things add up to quite a bit of money, but I'm able to afford them because I've decided the following things are not important to me: wearing new/stylish clothes; driving a nice car; eating out and going to bars frequently; getting manicures and pedicures; buying all the newest gadgets when they come out; and much more.

Sure, I'd love a new car, but I need a car payment like I need a hole in my head. I'll keep my '93 minivan with the cracked windshield and missing hubcap and go to Hawaii instead.

You can have anything you want. You just can't have everything you want. Decide what's really important to you and save your money for that. Screw the rest.

I hope it gets you closer to your soul trip.

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