Every hour on the couch was secretly bid on by a dozen other things. Sometimes one of them was your dream.

Hours are never actually free; they are simply spent without a receipt. Whatever you did with an evening, several other possible versions of that evening quietly lost, and most of the time none of them mattered. Occasionally one of them was the thing you say you want, which is what makes the arithmetic worth glancing at.

Once this week, before an empty evening starts, name what else was bidding on it. Choose deliberately, rest included, and the same hour tends to feel different by the end of it.