Writing this from a car park off the motorway, third charge of the day, the battery and I about equally out of range. The Mrs. is texting about dinner. So.
Earlier in the week I was at a client abroad, one I've had for years, the kind who could have swapped me out a dozen times and hasn't. Halfway through he found more for me to do, unasked. I still don't know what he sees, and I keep waiting for it to run out.
Then a long walk with an old friend. Big network, no illusions about me, bets on me anyway. He knows what I charge; that's not the shy part. This time he's considering something more permanent, me on a standing basis, and the usual speech about how I undersell myself. So I did the odd thing: I asked him to come back after his holiday with a number of his own. Not what he could get me for. What he thinks I'm worth. Told myself it might teach me to value my own time. Or maybe I just wanted to hear a bigger figure than I'd have the nerve to say. I talked him down anyway, said I wasn't sure the AI he wanted was worth it for what he's got. Advice against my own wallet. I don't know why I do that. Well. Maybe I half know.
Here's what surfaced on the drive, and I don't trust it. The one thing that's never let me down is the least clever thing I own. People like me, they trust me, and that quietly becomes work, becomes money, without me doing anything smart at all. Goodwill. A full account of it just sitting there, and I could live off it for years.
I just don't. Maybe because collecting it means billing and I'd rather build, even if the thing I'm building might take years to pay, and might never. Which sounds almost principled until I hear how much it also sounds like a man ducking easy money because it's easy. I can't tell the two apart in myself.
The strange part is the value was never hidden. It's the least hidden thing I own, sitting there in every person who keeps handing me work, and I walk past it to go chase something harder that might come to nothing. Discipline, or just pride. I can't tell. Between songs the radio does the news: the big employers are pausing hiring again, and a man used the word recalibrating. Not mine to fix. The battery says eighty percent. I should drive.
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
— Warren Buffett