At the moment, I am sitting in the office on a Sunday and have been for the last six hours or so, finishing material creation that I will need this week for training. With my workload so heavy of late, this was delegated to someone else to do partial prep, but they failed to do it properly, which means it all has to be redone from near scratch - requiring a translation from Finnish to English - and I don't speak Finnish very well. After this, it will be home to paint some walls that have to be done before window framing and cornices go up tomorrow morning.
I need a job to pay the bills and I am not one to live off government handouts anyway, but I am also not living in complete poverty financially, but I am living in poverty based on time. Due to everything that is going on simultaneously, I am time poor and falling into time debt - along with financial debt regarding the house renovation.
Often when we think of poverty, we look a the economic factors of it as this makes sense, since money is a resource that can buy other resources, including time. For example, if I had more money, I would be able to pay more tradespeople to work on the house rather than me doing it myself. If I had more money, I would better be able to pick and choose the work I do without having to commit to whatever arrives. If I had more money, I would be able to use my time to increase my level of health so that there would be either less down time, or more effective time spent.
If I had more money...
It is the internal "if" it seems, with money being a surrogate for resources. However, there is always going to be an opportunity cost of some kind, a trade-off where to have one thing is going to cost another, to chase all will be to be to spread oneself to thin and miss all, to spend too much time avoiding the uncomfortable ones will make getting the wanted ones less likely. Life is a constant position of accepting compromise in what we can do and have, whilst trying to enjoy what we actually do and have. This sets up a problem of constant scarcity and with the explosion of choice, we become even more aware of what we are missing out on.
I used an example the other day with colleagues while we were talking about cars with one of my colleagues buying a new car unseen and undriven, while another colleague thinks that is crazy. As a person who has bought two cars unseen and undriven in my life, I understand it well enough.
For example,
If there are three cars (eg. Audi, Mercedes, BMW) all in the same class and a person test drives all of them, each are going to have pros and cons. One will be more comfortable, while another more powerful. One will have more space, while another handles better or has a better entertainment system. No matter the final decision, gaining one trait of "best in class" will be bundled with another of potentially "worst in class" and that means, living without something.
We are constantly compromising and constantly living in some kind of psychological deficit, while from the outside looking in, another person in a different situation would just be happy to have a car. For example, I see this as a bit like my Hive stake, where a lot of users would want to have similar, but they may not be willing to forego the same as I have foregone over the years - with time spent being a very big one, which takes time away from other things.
However, as I was saying to someone recently, I see Hive and crypto in general as my way to "buy back" some of my time in the future, using the time I have invested now to earn. Time is a resource that can be invested and as they say, time is money, which means time invested well has earning potential - but that relationship can working reverse if the money is subsequently turned into time.
I have probably spent 10,000+ hours on this blockchain over the last 4 years and the hourly rate definitely doesn't make for pleasant viewing. But, I do think that the value of my total holdings might not have been possible if I had spent my time doing something else, as do not think it likely I would have to a third job to create resource availability to invest and even if I did - would I have invested it?
But, 10000 hours of work is likely to be somewhere around 5 years of "real work", but I couldn't have done the same with a real job, especially since I work daily on the blockchain, meaning weekends too. But, 5 years from now, what I have earned in the last 4 years could potentially outstrip everything I have earned in the last 10, 20 or ever - who knows. The trick is, being able to hold on until the value of the time I have spent now is worth more than what it was to spend it in the past. I have no idea what percentage increase that would require, but the "ROI" as to factor in all resources spent, including the time, energy, effort and what has been foregone along the journey.
How much is four years of time and effort worth to you?
I know what it is worth to me in terms of my current employment return, but I also know that what I get is unlikely to ever be enough to truly be financially comfortable, meaning I will always have to be somewhat tied to a job to make ends meet, often a job that means I am sitting at a desk on a Sunday.
In the future, I am not looking for a gigantic payday, although that might be nice as well - but I do hope that there I will have built a significant income stream that allows me the flow of resources that provides the possibility to buy back time, rather than continually bleed it away to make ends meet on tasks I am less interested in than others. Even in attention, we are at a deficit - which is why so many people FOMO - because they are spilt in focus and know they can't have everything, so panic into a decision.
For now though - it is time to head home so I can give my daughter a kiss goodnight. That is always time well spent and the ROI is astronomical. I guess that makes it a family value and in that, I am very wealthy.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]