What the daily costs you

If you've read this far you're expecting a chapter about money or health, and there's a paragraph of each, but they're not the cost that matters. You've heard them. They haven't changed anything, which tells you they aren't where the daily lives.

The first cost is the marker. Chapter 4 said a reward marks, and the daily can't, and the consequence is that you've lost the ability to reward yourself. That sounds small until you need it. The report goes in, the difficult conversation gets had, the month ends, and there's nothing to mark it with, because the thing you'd use is what you had on Tuesday. The daily has spent your currency at the rate of one a day, and you're left with nothing to pay yourself with on the day it counts.

The second cost is the hour. The daily owns six o'clock, and the evening gets built round it. You can't easily go for a walk at six, or ring someone, or start something, because six is when the glass is, and by half past the evening has taken the shape the glass gives it, which is sitting down. Whatever the treat is, it tends to be the last active thing you do. The rest follows from it. An evening that begins with a pour tends not to begin with anything else.

The third cost is the afternoon, which chapter 12 covered. The lean towards six takes the last two hours of the day with it. The fourth is sleep, and the earlier books on each treat have that. The fifth is money, and if the daily is an order or a takeaway it's more than you'd guess, and Ask the price of the evening and Put the card away are the books, but I'm not going to put a figure on it because I'd be inventing one. The sixth is health, and for wine chapter 6 did the count, and for sugar and screens the earlier books have it, and it's real, and it's the cost you've already discounted.

The cost I'd put first is the last one. The daily stops you looking at the day. Every evening ends the same way, so no evening asks what kind of day it was. A day that was empty ends like a day that was full. A day that was bad ends like a day that was fine. The treat is a full stop that goes at the end of every sentence regardless of what the sentence said, and after a while you stop reading the sentences. Chapter 15 is about the one sentence that most needs reading.