There aren't many things I want. If I were rich I would still drive a Honda and would still dress the same. It might be nice to have a house — not in the eastern US — and a washing machine and health insurance and stuff. It'd definitely be nice to have more time to work on my book. But possibly the nicest aspect would be freeing up brain cycles.

See, on the rare occasions that I do think I might want to buy something, I tend to obsess about it. If something catches my eye at the Bread & Circus I'll look at the price tag and then stand there and run a dozen different comparisons. These crackers look good... but, yikes, five dollars! Here are some others that are only $2.50... but if they're only half as good, doesn't that even out? Five dollars is less than two slices of pizza, and the crackers will last a lot longer... but even if they're great, they won't be as tasty as pizza... but it's only nine minutes' worth of teaching MCAT... give them a nine-minute drill and there are your crackers... in the time you've spent deciding this you could have earned that money... Meanwhile, the crackers have shuttled between the shelf and my basket five times.

A while back I saw a piece of art up for sale on ebay.com that was a nice companion piece to the one hanging here on my wall. The "Buy It Now" price was almost exactly the same as a month's rent. Wow, that would be nice to have. I could put it on my credit card and it wouldn't dramatically affect the balance... on the other hand, if I didn't buy it, I'd be that much closer to getting the card paid off... but it wouldn't be like taking a trip or buying a sandwich or something where the money would be, in effect, consumed... I'd still have the money, it would just be transmuted into art form and hanging on the wall... in fact, it would be turning into more money... but then, the debt would be collecting interest, so it would simultaneously be turning into less money, since art appreciates in value... it'd be an investment... but then, if I were willing to sell the piece to get my money back, then I wouldn't be interested in buying it in the first place... There's a personality test that asks whether you prefer having bought something or having the option to buy it; I am obviously in the former category, because when I'm considering a purchase my brain turns into a hamster wheel. In this case my eventual decision was that if I bought this picture, then I would certainly not feel comfortable buying another, and so I had to ask whether this was the picture I anticipated wanting most out of all the pictures I was likely to encounter before my financial situation significantly changed, and I decided that, no, there might be one I liked more, so I'd save my money for that one.

More recently, I went to a record store and found a CD I wanted, but it was $14 — a bit more than I expected. I'll just go home and order it online... but wait, am I sure that it'd be cheaper online, considering shipping? hmm, Amherst College is nearby... I could drive over there and check the price on the Frost Library computers... but that'd take at least twenty minutes, and I'd only be saving, at most, two or three dollars, and the twenty minutes are worth more to me than the money... but maybe I should just go home, since I'd be going home in any case... of course, then I'd have to wait a week for the CD to arrive... surely the extra week of enjoying the CD is worth the extra three dollars... but a year from now I won't care whether I've had the CD for 51 weeks or 52, but I will care about having three dollars more than I would otherwise have... but then, if I'm going to wait a week, I might as well wait a few months, and there'll be used copies going for a couple of bucks... maybe I should pay the extra money to reward this store for carrying this extremely obscure CD... the time I've spent considering this is worth more than the three dollars, I think...

I ended up buying the CD mainly so that I wouldn't be thinking about it on the drive home.

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