The value of nothing

I caught myself in a little bit of a mind-fuck this morning. It’s really weird how the more I think of my attachment to stuff, the more stuff like this makes me go, “hmmm”. More on that in a minute.

Last night, I was on the way to the radio show and I realized I’d forgotten my ginger ale at home. I always bring one to the show, and I was cursing myself for forgetting. So, I stopped in at a Timmies and grabbed a bottle of 7-Up, which was a compromise, but okay. It cost me $2.02. I finished half of it, and the other half is waiting to be consumed.

When I got home, I sat down to meditate. Little digression here–for those of you who were wondering what I was up to for Lent this year, I decided to try to double my meditation time over the season–that’ll take me to 40 minutes a day. So far, it’s been okay, although I have slipped a couple times. Still, I’ve now done 25 consecutive days of meditation (most of them with the double time) and I think that’s a record. So anyway, I use a meditation app for my iPod Touch called “Insight Timer” (formerly “Zen Timer”). It’s a decent app that basically times my meditation and lets me have a nice Zen bell sound to indicate start and stop times. I got it mostly because I was looking for a bell sound–something oddly missing from all stock iOS and Android alarms and countdown timers. It’s also got some extra features, like keeping track of stats, which is how I know how many days I’ve done. I’ve been more than happy with the app; it’s free and does what I need it to do. Of course, there’s a paid version of the app too which unlocks functionality that I don’t need at all.

Thing is, I like the app, and some part of me wants to show appreciation to the guy who wrote it. The paid app is, coincidentally, pretty much what I bought the soda for: $1.99. You’d think that I could fork over the two bucks it’d take to keep a useful app that I like going, but I always hedge, thinking, “well, it does what I need it to, and it’s 2 bucks for something I essentially already have, so why would I pay it?”

But then, think about it: I use this app every single day; for Lent, twice a day. It’s served me well for hours and hours of my life as I try to better myself through meditation. It’s helping me to accomplish something that I consider to be good and healthy, with far-reaching positive consequences. And yet I can’t be arsed to give the man who made it 2 bucks, even to say thank you for the useful tool. Yet, I’ll drop 2 bucks without a thought on a whim for essentially water and sugar I could buy for less than it took to manufacture the bottle it came in. The end result is that I take stuff into me that’s decidedly unhealthy, makes me fat, decays my teeth and put me out of getting where I needed to be at the time I wanted to be there. And any ‘benefit’ I derive from this stuff runs its course within the time it takes me to drink it. Seems like a pretty shabby ROI.

There’s something weird there.

So, this morning. This morning, I was sitting at the computer, looking up some reviews for a book that was recommended last night at the radio show. There it was, gets great reviews, story looks like something I’d love to read, I am looking for my next read having finished with Grisham, and there’s a link right there to buy it for my e-reader, a device which I’ve recently lauded and enjoy using. I can buy the book for $9.99. And I hedged.

It’s like, if I spent this 10 bucks, I’d have the book in my e-reader, but it didn’t feel like I’d be buying anything because the volume of physical stuff in my environment wouldn’t go up. There’s another, similar, mind-fuck.

Now that Gen X is no more (I still can’t believe that…sigh), I went to Blockbuster to rent a movie last week. I felt dirty just walking through the doors, but I found the film and was shocked to pay $6.70 to rent it. Jesus! But think about that. My 6 and some-odd bucks bought me about 2 hours of entertainment. A book, electronic or otherwise, provides at least 10 hours of entertainment depending on how long it is. Heck, Something the size of Mists of Avalon can keep me busy for a month if I read every single night and weekends. Assuming I spent the cash to entertain myself for say, 20 hours at Blockbuster, I’d spend something like $135. And that’s extremely conservative. Arguably, the book is a far better way to spend spare time, too, but that’s a debate for another entry.

Yet here I was, sitting there staring at the screen and questioning with an inward snottiness that blows my mind the ‘worth’ of paying 10 bucks for something that some part of me feels I won’t even have, damned collection of 1′s and 0′s that it is.

I’m hopeful this is the next step in a shift of the way I think of the value of things. When I was younger and computers were just getting to be an interest of mine, I paid for nothing at all after the hardware. Everything from the operating system to the software was pirated, mostly because I couldn’t afford it all. Even after I got a real job and had the cash, I rarely paid for software. Then 5 years ago when I started down the path of Apple, the software wasn’t as readily available and I was pretty much the only person I knew of who had Apple computers. Thankfully, they came with the OS on them, but I found that I also wanted to keep my machine as ‘clean’ as I could, so I bought the stuff I used. Aperture, iLife, iWork, MS Office for Mac. It’s all on my system because I paid for it, and I have the serial numbers to prove it. The benefits are enormous. Updates when they come out, support when it’s needed, no viruses or all the associated bullshit that comes with trying to hunt down all this crap online. I actually like that I have the stuff legally.

I don’t know how I made that leap with desktop software, but I want to make it with apps and books too. I don’t know what it is that makes me think that apps and e-books aren’t ‘worth’ it. It’s a strange thing. They aren’t nothing, much as they take up no physical space. They serve me better in many ways than any stuff I go out and buy without a single thought about questioning its worth to me. Strange thing, that.

For the record, I bought the e-book. Time to start using this reader of mine in the way that I envisioned I would. I’ll buy the app too.

It’s so strange. I spend so much time agonizing over the fact that I don’t know what it is I want. Then when I do find some things, I automatically hedge on getting them due to some incorrect belief about their worth. Maybe I ought to admit that ‘nothing’ is worth a lot. That’s something I’ve been saying for a while now, but it seems to have gotten to the point where I’m feeling it too. I dare to think that may well be a good thing.