Choosing is the work

Think of someone in Alexandria who has meant, for a couple of years, to start teaching the piano from home.

Her days are full and productive. The flat is spotless. The bills are paid on time. Her mother's appointments are booked, the car is serviced, the cupboards have been reorganised twice.

Each of those is real work, and each comes with a small reward: a thing done, a line crossed out. The effort is known before she begins, and so is the outcome. Nobody will ask why she paid the electricity bill.

Teaching is different. None of it is a task yet. First it needs decisions. What to charge, whom to tell, whether to put a notice up in the building, whether the neighbours will mind the noise, whether she is good enough. Each one looks tiny, a yes or a no, this week or next. Yet each carries a story about what happens if it goes wrong, and who will have looked foolish.

That story is the weight. It is why a day can be full of finished jobs and empty of a single decision, and still feel productive.

We tend to budget for the doing and treat the deciding as free, something that ought to take a minute between proper jobs. It is not free. It is the hardest part of the work, and the part most worth protecting.

Starting anything new begins on the day we admit that choosing is labour, and give it an hour of its own.