Opportunity Cost, Getting Older, and Artistic Conviction

Opportunity Cost and Getting Older

Opportunity Cost— the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen.

My birthday is tomorrow, and that’s got me ruminating…

I don’t tend to think of things as a zero-sum game. But! There’s always a but. ;) But the older I get, the more that Opportunity Cost is relevant to me, particularly as I’ve focused my free time more and more on painting bigger, more ambitious paintings and selling art at festivals and writing poetry, rather than teaching art and designing gardens (my other business). They are all things I love to do, but one has only so much time. Every choice to do something has an Opportunity Cost.

At 48, I’m just really aware of time, how much time has already passed and, potentially, the limits of how much time I have left. When I have to choose between two things I really want to do, I have to ask myself now, “What do I really, really want to do with the time I have available to exist? What do I want to share? What has the most value? What fills me up, connects me, and makes me the happiest?”

One of the things about approaching 50 (I’ll be 49 tomorrow) is that… well, I suppose I have a couple of things in my back pocket that I didn’t have at 30, or even 40. Experience. Failure. The loss of loved ones. The arrival of others. Conviction. On one level, benefits like these seem painful or limiting to me. They define you. They cost something to arrive at. But on another level, knowing yourself is very freeing and powerful because you know better what you want. And even more importantly, you know what you don’t want to do. Opportunity Cost.

Knowing the two sides of this coin has been so hard for me to learn. To really believe it in my bones. I’ve watched so many videos where they start with the idea that you have to know what you want, before you can go about striving for it. Lordy! I don’t’ know! :P

I guess that’s what you learn when you’ve had failures, or, just as importantly, striven for things that in the end you recognized you didn’t really want. Or at least not enough to make the effort worth it. Hahaha! And how could you know, if you hadn’t made the attempt? I suppose that’s the power and importance of failure.

I wonder if it’s the same for others?

The Value of Saying No

Nowadays, I know that I’m going to miss out on things. You simply can’t be equally ambitious about everything! And that’s ok to me. Saying “no” has infinitely more value to me than it did in the past, when I was worried that I would miss out on things, because… Opportunity Cost. Saying no means a yes somewhere else. :)

Choosing is the very nature of engagement. If I really want to be fully engaged in something, I simply need to let other things go. Sometimes they’re things that are actually quite interesting! Just not as interesting as what really, really drives me. And sometimes they’re all just so very mundane, but necessary. You know… chasing the dollar, doing what “makes sense,” playing it safe, paying a mortgage. That sort of stuff.

So, I would posit that the core strength of getting older is really knowing yourself better. I wonder if folks older than myself think this? What do you think is the strength or value of getting older?

Joy and Conviction

I guess the real pleasure I feel with this year’s birthday is that I’m excited about arriving at the doorstep of my 50’s with greater conviction. That it’s worth leaning into that feeling of “connection” and not feeling like I need to explain myself so much. I believe in the value of what I’m doing as a creator (as an artist, as a writer)— and that belief was born from experience, from failures, from stress tests.

Really understanding what I feel compelled to do has helped me devote the time required to the creative process with a deeper kind of joy. With a kind of liberation and open, giving feeling to my actions. I don’t have to feel so chintzy about my time because I’m very aware that making art, and selling it to others and connecting to them through it, and writing poetry about the earth and relationships, is valuable to me. I’m saying no to other things so I can say yes to these things that motivate me on the deepest level first. Because I’ve lived the other version and found it did not make me happy enough.

So, as this is a bit of a birthday post for me, I wanted to wish you all a very merry unbirthday today! May we all make our peace with Opportunity Cost. !! Please share your thoughts on aging, opportunity cost, and conviction in the comments below. It’ll make an interesting read! :)