Writing this from a car park off the motorway, third charge of the day. The battery and I are about equally out of range. The Mrs. is texting about dinner: one photo of the fridge, no words. 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 - cheaper ones exist, I've met them - and hasn't. Halfway through he slid a list across the table. More work, unasked. I said yes before he'd finished, and in the taxi the old thought came back, the one that waits until I'm alone: one day he'll notice he doesn't need me for it. I still don't know what he sees. 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, plus the usual speech that 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. Ten minutes later 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. He looked at me the way you look at a dog that buried its own bone. I don't know why I do that. Well. Maybe I half know…
Anyway, 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. My shoulders can. Up when I open an invoice template, down the second I open an editor.
The value was never even hidden. It's the least hidden thing I own, sitting there in every person who keeps handing me work, and I walk straight past it to go chase something harder that might come to nothing. Discipline, or just pride. Idk.
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 Mrs. sends a second photo, a pan on the stove this time. The battery says eighty percent. I should drive.
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
— Warren Buffett