Today I spent the day doing some energy upgrades I’ve been putting off because our energy audit is coming up next week. Essentially by doing these upgrades, we stand to not only improve the energy efficiency of our home (thus saving money), but we also stand to recoup some of our costs via a government grant (thus regaining money).
I could say that I exchanged writing today to get this stuff done, but that would be inaccurate. Instead, I delayed doing this stuff to the point where I had to exchange writing today to get this stuff done. Why did I make the choice to delay?
Because I hate doing that kind of work.
I am not a handy person1 to say the least. But instead of paying someone to do the work for us, I opted to do it myself to save money. Surely I could have made that money writing or editing, but I would have had to do writing and editing I wasn’t fond of doing to make that happen. So I chose to stick with the all-encompassing disdain I feel when trying to be handy over infecting the thing that I love with something I didn’t.
So I did a bunch of exchanges. A bunch of of compromises. A bunch of stuff I didn’t want to do at the cost of not being able to do the stuff I really did want to do.
Essentially, I made a bunch of choices.
Another choice I was able to make — thanks to the help I received from my truly awesome wife throughout the day — was that I found a way to write at least one thing here today. I got to write about the cost of choice. And I got to finish some much-needed home maintenance done that will go a long way in terms of money saved (meaning I can spend more time writing my stuff since our bills will go down and we will recoup some money already spent), and in making my wife happy.
I think I got a pretty good deal.
Photo credit: Truthout.org (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
1 Which should make for some interesting times when I build my backyard cabin in time for the summer.
