BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

Replacing My Laptop

So... I'm fairly sure the fan is on it's way out on my laptop.  I'm kind of using it as an excuse to purchase a replacement.  It's also important though for me to have a top notch working laptop because it's my trade.  I'm a computer dude!  I was planning on buying one for the last 6 months or so anyway...

Here's the thing... I wanted to wait because I spent super all kinds of money last month between the car stuff and traveling and all that.  Buuuuuuut... I think I'm just going to go and take the plunge.  Then I'll cut back on spending for the next several months to make the money back.

So the problem is... I can't just buy a new laptop.  See, I currently have Snow Leopard for my OS and I have Adobe CS4.  All the new laptops come with Lion as the OS.  Adobe CS4 doesn't play well with the big cat... aka Lion.  So I have to purchase the upgrade to CS6.  I'm going to be doing that tonight.  That's pretty pricey in itself.  Then I have to update my music software... but that's only 50 bucks... THEN I can go buy the laptop.

I've been looking up the specs of all the Macbook Pro's that they have listed on Apple's site and the little cheaper 13 inch macbook pro of the i7 model is about the same specs as the one I have now.  The one I have now is 2 years old and it was the beefiest one they had at the time.  Two years ago I lived at home and had very little expenses so I could afford to just kinda buy whatever and not have to worry about it.  I live on my own now in my own place and such so I have rent and electric bills and insurance and such.  So I've decided instead of buying the super big crazy one I'm going to get the 13 inch little one.

Then I'm going to get a cheaper but big 24 ish inch monitor.  That way I can just plug the little guy in and still enjoy the same processing power I have now but also have portability on the go.  It's also a good deal cheaper than the really expensive one as I said.

I may wait to buy the big monitor until maybe next month just so I'm not spending ALL this money at once.  I use this equipment to do what I love and make music so it's very important to me.  As well it's not like I'm just booking a vacation to hawaii and the money is bye bye forever... the idea is that I am using this equipment to one day start making money in return.  So I'm trying to make it more of a business investment than just buying it because I have to have it because it looks all pretty and cool.  There's always times and places for that too though.  Sometimes it's just fun to buy something because it looks cool!  Or hop a flight to Hawaii... But... for now I'm trying to make a return on this... Hopefully though I can start getting more YouTube videos up and monetized and then as well get more songs uploaded to CDBaby and hopefully start making money to put towards buying equipment.  My current dream is just to make it sustainable and be able to just make making music and videos sustainable in that it pays for itself buuuuut...

Making money from music isn't very easy.  I've only made 26 dollars so far and it cost me 30 dollars to upload the 2 songs I have up.  So I still have another 4 dollars to go before I even start breaking even from uploading the music.  There's also the 70 dollars it cost to copyright the songs... then obviously the thousands of dollars it cost in hardware and software and guitars and mics and all the time and effort to make the music in the first place.

I have a long way to go before I can even make my first penny of actual profit.

And my goal one day is to live off making music and youtube videos and maybe even writing...

WOW!  I feel like i'm a little tiny ant staring up at the Rocky Mountains!

Just gotta keep walking one step at a time to climb up.

I'll get there eventually.  Even if it's just 1 or two pennies at a time.  They will add up and as long as I never stop and just keep going... I say consistence and persistence wins out.

Just have to keep doing what I'm doing and never give up and try and try and try again... and one day it will pay off.