Chapter 9 — The Hours Left Over

They say everyone gets the same twenty-four hours. When I actually counted mine, I had four.

The Hours Left Over

The first time I really added up my day was after I got out of the military. I subtracted sleep. I subtracted work. I subtracted the commute, washing, eating. What was left that truly belonged to me came to four hours at most, five on a lucky day. More than ten years later, that math hasn’t changed much. It hasn’t changed now, either.

It’s true that I have the same twenty-four hours as any successful person. Having the same hours didn’t mean I could use them the same way, though. However I ran the numbers, they didn’t add up.

Act as If

Back then, every self-help book seemed to say the same thing. Act as if you’ve already made it. Borrow that energy. I stood in front of that advice for a long time. How is someone who has never succeeded supposed to act like someone who has?

After the military, I spent two years at rock bottom. My wife and I lived in one cramped room, and some days there wasn’t enough money for a meal. One payday, my wife saw how hard I was taking it all and said, “You got paid. Go buy yourself some cigarettes. You’ve gone a whole month without.” She must have been as hungry as I was. No, let’s get one more side dish instead. I knew that was what I should say. The words didn’t come. I couldn’t say okay, either. Without a word, I went out to buy the cigarettes.

Being hungry and miserable was poverty. The real failure was that silence.

To someone in that place, “act as if you’ve made it” didn’t land. It made me angry. Whoever wrote it, I figured, had never tasted a cigarette that bitter.

Borrowed Time

If I couldn’t stretch the day, the only option was to bring in time from somewhere else.

People spent tens of thousands of years turning the sounds they made into language, and about five thousand more learning to write it down. I picked all of it up in a little over ten years of being alive. Not because I was special. Someone else had done the work, and I got to use it. Reading was the cheapest way to borrow that time. What someone spent a lifetime figuring out, I could borrow in a few days.

After I gave up the café, I started reading everything, no matter the genre. I’ve kept at it for about ten years.

Somewhere in those ten years, I hesitated. It was after I blew up my account. I was too scared to put serious money back into the market, and instead the thought came to me that I should write a book. But I have a family now, and writing might never bring in a cent. To pour four hours a day into a manuscript, I needed a reason of my own. Maybe even this is just an excuse to run from investing.

Not long ago I happened across two videos. One said that ten thousand people want something, a hundred start, and one makes it to the end. The other was about the piano. If you hit a wrong note, don’t stop. Play through to the end. One clunker won’t ruin the whole piece.

My manuscript surely has its wrong notes. I haven’t stopped.

Heaven moves with unfailing strength. Seeing this, the noble person makes himself strong and never rests.

— I Ching

This Writing

These days my four hours go to reading and the manuscript. While I work, I jot down whatever comes to mind and look at my day through that lens. After I get home and eat dinner, I write and delete until I go to sleep. This is how these words are getting written, too.

The time I borrowed over ten years of reading is starting to come out as sentences of my own. I don’t know yet whether any of it will ever make money. But I used to live on time other people had left behind, and now, little by little, I’m leaving some for someone else to borrow.

The few minutes it takes to read this also come out of someone’s leftover hours. Hoping those minutes won’t feel wasted, I’m here again tonight, writing one line, and then another.