I sometimes thought that if I announced the most important secret to life in my classes, a majority of the students would miss it or misunderstand it. No matter how important a given message may be, it can be overlooked, especially in today's flood of information, deals, revelations and important messages from Mom.
For years, I associated the word "afford" with my father. He was the only person in my life that used the word. Now, I find the word is a good one for expressing limits. I heard Dad use it in connection with money. That price for that purpose didn't strike him as a good idea.
I am a follower of Google News. I like the approach of finding somebody"s or some algorithm's selection of the important headlines of the day or the morning and offering a link to an article. Most of the articles are ok for me to skip - just the headline is enough, for me, especially in sports and entertainment. I still like the idea of looking through my hours to find items of either thought or experience to write about.
I don't spend much time making money, repairing cars or hunting ducks so those activities don't come up as writing subjects much. I just checked and there are a few posts about repairs and ducks. But as happens as we age, a new affordability factor is becoming more important. That is the matter of time. Once a human has lived long enough, it makes sense to give a little thought and then more thought to the number of days likely left.
There doesn't seem to be value in spending too much time thinking about declining time but the subject does come up. Whereas before, I looked at Google News, now I have NumLock News, Significant Digits, Good Morning from CNN, BBC "Today's Headlines" added to ads, deals and Facebook notifications. I know that some of the stuff I delete has something good or interesting or valuable or fun but I just can't afford to spend the time reading it all.
