What am I actually paying for?
The price of electricity is going up? Again? I've had it with you people! I'm going back to my old steam generated computer. Enough of this robbery! I squeeze out a living by writing, squeeze being the operative word. In order to do this I have to run my computer. It runs 24 hours a day, sometimes live and working and sometimes sleeping and dormant but it is always there for me when I have to pull in a few cents. It runs on electricity. Not much, that's true but every kilowatt counts. What's more I cannot even claim a rebate from the tax department on the use of electricity as the means by which I make my living. So from Monday morning I will fire up the boiler which runs on good old wood and coal, generate a head of steam and run my computer that way. What's more I will have instant boiling water for tea or coffee any time of the day or night.
Electricity is a basic commodity, like water and air. Okay, so we pay for water because they filter it and pump it. No one pays for air, or is that on your list too? As for electricity, you make a million volts, send it down the wires and you get back a million volts. What are you actually charging for? All I did was allow a couple of stray amps and watts to pass through my computer. It hardly touched sides.
These cost increases are an ongoing, never-ending battle. If it's not one commodity it's another. To aggravate the problem, the people who hire writers are offering less and less payment. When I first started out in this occupation - it is not a profession - I use to drool over adverts that offered 50 cents a word. Now the most generous clients offer less than 20 cents and the price of bread keeps rising faster than the dough.
Finally, and you may think this funny in the electrical world, writing is age related - the older I get the slower it goes. One of these days I will quit and then where will you sell your electricity?
