You may not think you’re paying anything by reading this.
You’re wrong. You’re paying me with your time. As this pact with myself to write an essay a day becomes ever more set in my being, I realize that my goal has become humble: I don’t want to waste your time. Okay, my goal is actually a tick more than that: I’d like for you to feel as if you’re glad that you spent time reading this. That’s it. Really. Of course there are things I would love to happen. I would love you to read this and feel inspired and invigorated, but I have no idea if that will happen. If you read this and say “man, I wish I were writing an essay a day the way that he does,” and then say “you know, I’m going to start a blog of my own,” that would be fantastic. If, at some point in the future, my work appears between two covers and you want to actually buy it and send money my way, that would be beyond my dreams. The fact remains, though, that these are things I’m teaching myself not to expect. If I expect them, there are going to be many times I’ll be disappointed. Then I’ll get worn down, and writing will become far more difficult. So instead, I once again state: my goal is simply for you to feel, after you read this, that the time reading this was time well spent. Time is a universal currency; no matter how rich or poor we are, we all have only 24 hours to work with each day. A lot of that time involves sleeping, eating, working, and a number of other things too numerous to mention. Some take a matter of seconds, but they add up. There’s a great article in The Daily Mail that takes these slivers of time and puts them all together, so that we have a full inventory of just how much of an 80 year life span goes to these assorted things. 26 years sleeping. 12 years working. 8 1/2 years shopping. 235 days waiting in line. 4 months shaving. 30 hours crying. It adds up. Once you add up all these things, there’s so little time left to just…live. So when you sit there at your desk or stand on a train platform reading this, you’re giving me something far more precious than a few dollars (not that I wouldn’t mind if you eventually do that). You’re giving me those precious minutes that you will never get back. Sometimes, I think a number of artists and writers don’t think about this. We’re so reluctant to look at the business end of things that we forget that even here, there’s an exchange going on. I’m giving you my writing, and you’re giving me your time. And if time is indeed money, I want you to get your moneys worth. I want you to feel as if spending that universal currency on my humble blog was worth it. So I keep these daily essays short, because I know that time is precious, and that you have many other things on which you want to spend it. With that said, you were good enough to spend that precious time with my words. Thank you. I hope you were satisfied with your purchase.
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