Spend It All, Now

I think it was the summer of 1998. I made a pull tab flyer offering my services and placed it on the community board at the Weekapaug Innlet. Responsible babysitter for hire. I’d give anything to know what the actual words on that flyer were.

At the end of August I opened my canvas bifold wallet and processed my earnings. More than $600. I’d worked hard and frittered away very little of it at the candy store. I was quite pleased with myself. What exactly I was saving my money for was unclear, but the point was that I had saved it. And of this fact, I was very proud.

The inclination towards savings continued into adulthood and, it turns out, makes me a real buzz kill of a craps partner. Let’s first recover our initial investment before pressing a bet! No one wants to be next to a person like that at a poker table. One time, right after college, I even made my husband attend a timeshare presentation so that we could get a $100 gaming card. This would be our gambling allowance for the trip. Boy, am I fun!

Whereas fiscal responsibility can be a great (albeit buzzkill) trait, the inclination to save does not serve oneself quite so well in creative endeavors.

As we look at our craft, perhaps the best advice is spend, spend, spend.

I cannot stop thinking about these words from Annie Dillard in The Writing Life:

One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Don’t hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The very impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice, in the handwriting of his old age: “Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.”