The bill arrives, again

You're at a restaurant with five friends, some months on. It's the corner place, because when the plan came round you said "can we do the corner place? I've been wanting to go back", and two people said yes before anyone else could suggest the other one. You had a main and a glass of wine. When the bill comes, someone starts to say "shall we just", and you say "I'll put in for mine" as you get your card out, and the person next to you says "me too", and the bill is sorted in three minutes with nobody at the far end minding in the slightest. Your share is thirty-one pounds. You had a good evening. You weren't watching anything.

Lisbon happened without you. You asked the organiser what it would come to, and she said "about four-fifty all in, I think, is that OK?", and you said you couldn't make that work but you'd love to do the day in town, and the day in town happened, and four of the eight came to that as well as Lisbon, and two came to that instead, and the bride was at both. Nobody has mentioned Lisbon since, except to show you the photos, which you enjoyed.

The kitchen is fine. It was fine last year, and when you held the twelve thousand pounds against the wanted column, the wanted column had a fortnight in Italy on it that you've talked about for six years, and you're going in May. The car is seven years old and starts every morning. The ski trip letter came and you said not this year, and your daughter spent the week at school with four others and did a project on volcanoes she still talks about.

The list is in the notes on your phone. The matched column for this month has four things on it, down from nineteen in the first month you kept it, and the total at the bottom is a number you'd have called impossible in the other direction. The wanted column has a date next to Italy.

Your friend from the corner place said something a few weeks ago that stuck. She said she'd been dreading the expensive one for a year and hadn't known how to say so, and that when you asked what it would come to she'd felt something loosen. She's the organiser now for half the group's plans, and the plans have prices on them from the first message.

None of this is a transformation. You paid a split last month at a work dinner because you were tired and it was easier, and you noticed in the taxi and put it on the list. You still buy rounds. You still go to the expensive place sometimes, when you want to, and you know you want to because you asked the price and said yes anyway. The evenings are better than they were, because you chose them.

If you take one thing from this book, take this. Next time a plan arrives, ask what it's likely to come to before you say yes, and hold the number against the thing you actually want this year. That's the whole method. Everything else is detail.