Happiness or Misery

There are days when you wonder if what you’re doing is worth doing.  First, of course, you would have to define worth.  During a personal questioning period, I tracked the hours I spent writing and promoting a book and calculated my hourly rate.  Let’s just say it is not a rate I would accept in any “normal” job.  The minimum hourly wage when I graduated from high school was $1.25.  My book writing wage was only a fraction of that poor rate, considering inflation it might as well be zero.

Okay, now we’re back to worth.  How about the joy of being creative, isn’t that worth something?  Uh, no, it isn’t.  The value of bringing joy to your readers—sorry readers, that is worth only a little bit—it’s something, but not much.  (Plus, it is discounted further due to a few nasty reviews from readers who received the book for the astronomical price of zero).

Why do you spend time doing something that brings such minimal reward?  Because you thought this was the one—it’s going to sell thousands and thousands of copies.  Yes, sell hundreds of thousands, not sold at 99 cents or given away to people who never read them; actually, sell at a level that would exceed the piss poor minimum wage of $1.25 per hour.

After writing 14 books it is apparent to me the only worth is my sense of accomplishment.  Not in money, but in that wonderful feeling you experience when you finish the final version. You feel very, very good about what you have accomplished.  That is worth a lot.

The question then becomes is that enough?  I think it is.  I’m still writing.  While I’ve sold a few, the $1.25 minimum wage looks good– so money is not the motivation.  It’s something that cannot be measured monetarily. 

My first book, The Bootlegger’s Legacy, was a story of two friends who were at a no-value stage of their lives and wanted something else.  What they wanted, they thought, was money.  In different ways they both found money, but only one understood the value of what else they had discovered.

One discovered happiness, the other did not.  Starting their journey as friends their different perspectives eventually drove them apart.  The deep sadness I felt while writing the book was because of their lost friendship.  Through much of our lives we define worth then make decisions based on that definition.  Often, we miss the whole point of a short-term life; thinking owning something has real value, while we overlook what does.

A Greek philosopher Epicurus said, “happiness is the greatest aim of life”, of course he lived 2,500 years ago, what does he know?  Maybe a lot.

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We are a divided country.  Why do you think that is so?  Politics has not divided us, it just reflects the divide, something else is causing us to drift apart.  With couples that split, if no one understands, it is usually the classic “they drifted apart”.  Meaning, I guess, they didn’t want to be together any longer and the reasons didn’t really matter. 

When a country drifts apart there must be a reason.  Something to explain what happened.  My guess is that the reasons are not really very large.  We are tired of being in a country that can longer seem to bond and enjoy the goods things we have.  We are so focused on what is wrong, we forget what is right.

Not sure how to fix a relationship if it’s just grown tiresome.

I have suggested in some posts that the country needs to be run by younger people.  Maybe some of our weariness is because it seems we keep doing the same thing over and over.  Living in a rapidly changing world where the leadership looks a lot like it did fifty years ago suggests we have missed an opportunity to listen to a new voice with some new ideas.  In the oddest of ways, we still seem to be struggling with issues that have the scent of the Civil War—from 150 years in the past.

Our country is depressed and needs a quiet week in the mountains to reflect on the good stuff and stop being so grumpy.