“It’s only… what good could it possibly do… don’t bother…”

Putting off setting up a recurring library donation

I’ve been meaning to set up a nominal monthly recurring library donation for an embarrassingly long time.

Every time I borrow a book, or return a book, or browse the shelves, I think about it. And mean to do it. And fail to do it.

Sometimes I consciously think:

• “I’ll get to it when I’m at my computer.”
• “I do it the next time I get my wallet out.”
• “I’ll put it on the list for admin time.”

But most of the time it’s more of a soft and sly whisper of a voice, that is very familiar, but does not sound like me:

• “It’s only… what good could it possibly do… don’t bother…”

I doubt I’m the only one who hears this voice. (For the sake of other people’s minds, part of me kind of hopes I am the only one. At the same time, I doubt it and appreciate the company.)

Individualist thinking about collective resources

But I had a realization this morning that finally got me to do it.

That soft, sly, whisper of a voice is speaking individualistically – where a nominal donation by definition does not do much. “Nominal” is right there in the name.

What that voice neglects is that a library is not an individual resource, it’s a collective one. One nominal donation is one nominal donation. But 50? 100? 1,000?? Or more?

The voice is right that one donation doesn’t really matter on its own, but the voice is wrong because one donation doesn’t have to matter on its own. Because we’re not talking about an individual’s resource, we’re talking about a community’s.

Even when any individual action is not the linchpin holding everything together, it still needs to be done.

When the task is too small to bother doing, make the task bigger

I finally did it while writing this piece. It turns out it was not the easiest button to find, and it was not the smoothest checkout process, and it still involved digging out my wallet.

But it is done.

Photo by Shunya Koide on Unsplash