Adding up time dust

Now that the snows are melting, all of the road dust trapped underneath is being thrown into the air to wreak havoc with my eyes, nose and throat, as an entrée to the main event - the onslaught of the pollen allergy spring season. The rowan trees have already started, but it won't be long until the birch and alder follow suit to really smack me a round a bit. It wasn't until about 12 years ago that I started to get allergies at all - but now I have to take medication all year round in an attempt to reduce the effects and hopefully, control my asthma a bit - something else that started around the same time and I had never had before.

Besides the red eyes, sore throat and runny nose, I am looking forward to the spring this year, even though the winter for some reason has felt very short. I think part of this is due to me being very busy, but the other part is that I haven't spent much time outside at all - just trapped inside and mostly in front of a screen. It is like an extended period of gaming, where time no longer follows the normal experience of it and stretches and warps, with large quantities of it falling into the time abyss - a blackhole where no time escapes.

As they say, "time is money", but not in the sense that every moment should be spent earning, as most people seem to consider the saying. It is "money" because of the way that time can be spent, meaning the direction changes - the money isn't an incoming earning potential, it is an outgoing cost. The way we spend it can be value-adding or, value-detracting in the sense that we aren't doing something useful with our time.

It is a funny thing though, as while I am working a lot, I don't always feel it is "time well spent" in the sense of earnings, but it can be well spent in terms of adding value to others. If I really wanted to maximize my earning potential (not considering risk), I would be full-time crypto, spending my time in charts and exchanges, creating content, looking to build projects and whatever else I can turn my hand toward that is crypto related. There is just so much potential in the blockchain ecosystem that for those who are willing to take that leap and face the volatility and uncertainty, they could come out very far ahead of pretty much any other opportunity out there. Of course, knowledge, skill and a general willingness to work are required also.

Now, it is not that I don't spend my time in these areas either, it is just that currently, I split my time between a traditional job as an employee, my own sole-proprietor position as a business consultant and then, my crypto activities. The first offers some stability to enable me to not stress about the second and the third, well that is the Hail Mary into the endzone in the hope to cute 20-odd years off my retirement age.

Not that I will ever retire - as that is for people with nothing to do, and I hope to never be in that position. But, while I want to work "forever" I don't want to work for anything forever, meaning, I want to be able to pick and choose how I spend my time, so that then, I can spend more on value-adding, without feeling like it is a punishment for not paying more attention when I was younger.

In some ways, it is like a person who used to waste a lot of food and then when they are very hungry, thinking back to how good it would be to have that food available. However, like food, that is not how time works - once it is gone, it is gone and while a lot of people I think feel this means they have to spend it in enjoyable pursuit, I get the sense that if we spend it on the right things at the right time, later we are able to do more of what we enjoy. Spend it poorly though and it could have an impact on every outcome of the future.

You know, I hear these stories of retirees having to live off of dogfood (which is obviously not ideal), but I also wonder how much of that outcome is self-inflicted. Yes, no one should have to be in that position, but circumstances enabled by bad decision making earlier in life can't be blamed on the current government or pension - at least not always. At some point, we have to take responsibility for the role we have played in the outcomes we receive.

I feel that there is an allergic reaction in society at times, where the spreading pollen encourages poor decision making, by convincing us to consume more, proxy our control and give up ownership in favor of convenience, entertainment and an unwillingness to be the ones to blame for the consequences of our actions. We would rather say that the reason we are suffering is because of "other people" - but not acknowledge that the real cause could be because of the way we spent our time doing things that seemed so valuable in the moment, but gave no return on the investment, making them ultimately a cost. When those costs affect future potential downward, it is an becomes an ongoing cost, far higher than we would have been willing to pay if we had known when making the decision.

This of course works in both directions though, as some of where we spend out time might not seem that valuable in the moment, but down the track, could have been the most valuable time we have ever spent. Often, we don't realize this until it is too late to invest more, but once we realize, we wish we could go back and buy a little more time in order to make a better decision.

All that time dust, might add up, if spent well.

Writting by JulioBorgues

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