Money Costs Value Etc

I was thinking about the idea of how being a person relates to work. Someone offered me a job redoing his webpage for him. Its a simple job of coming up with a few different possible designs and then copying all his old material into a new format. And I wondered at what to charge him.

Could I estimate a cost by means of hours? Decide how many hours it should take to do the job and then charge him a rate based on that? But then... I'd feel like I owe him that amount of my time, and I could easily run over time and get resentful about that or just as easily find that I do the work ing half the time. No, the cost has to be unrelated to the number of hours. He's paying for the job, not for the time.

What is he paying for? Really, its a job I'd love to do... I could do it easily, no problem. I feel silly in some ways even charging him because its such a fun quick little job. On the other hand... I could use the money. I wish in some ways... that I could do the job because I love to do it and yet be given a gift of money from him... as a way of him valuing my presence here and my existence and my worth as a person who loves to do such things.

There was an awkward silence before either of us mentioned how much money we were picturing changing hands here. He named an amount way, way beyond what I imagined, and I've declined that. We haven't actually set an amount yet, because I said I'd check what other people were charging for the same job, but he's okay with not knowing yet because I promised him it would be way under the amount he named.

Should I have just accepted that high amount? No... because I'd be wripping him off. Because he could go elsewhere and get it done a lot cheaper. See... that's part of my problem with this whole money-exchange-for-job thing. I'm not a capitalist! I'm not going to make lots of money simply because he doesn't know what any going rate for webpages is. I'm not going to charge him so much that in the future I'm embaressed about it and don't want anyone to know.

I'm not a capitalist. I think that my job in life is just to live life and to create the beautiful things I love to create... I think other people should be willing, if they value what I create, to pay me simply for existing here and continuing on what I do. And I should be willing to let whatever I create move whereever it goes, into the hands of people who would appreciate and treasure it.

I am not a capitalist. I don't like this world. I don't belong in this world. Want to join me in making a better one?

- Christy

http://www.smokylake.com/history/ http://www.smokylake.com/Christy/