It was a little thing. The cavity was probably less than a millimeter per side. I’m glad I could pay for it to be filled. As usual, I’m in the midst of substantial projects that take months or years, and in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars. Gotta keep doing them. But can’t ignore the small things. The other day I was given a reminder that the smallest things can have enormous effects.

What do you do when sitting in the dentist’s chair? I ponder, then wince, then ponder and wonder, and wince, and wonder how it can take a half hour of effort and hundreds of dollars of expertise to patch a cubic millimeter of me. They did a fine job, but my jaw was sore for the rest of the day. Of course, that’s better than the eventual pain if I ignored it. That would cost time as I complained, more money to fix, and the recovery could’ve taken much longer.

Later that day, I was taking drugs. Legal drugs. You know, the ones the doctor prescribes. None of them were for that pain. The pain was temporary and manageable. (As I type, I’m waiting for ibuprofen to dull a familiar muscle spasm. I started the day with a good hike, three hours on Hurricane Ridge. My body is reminding me that exertion was expended. Temporary and manageable, but it makes it hard to sit and type.) A couple of the doctors’ drugs are tiny, about half the size of an aspirin. I weigh over 200 pounds. Somehow, the chemicals in those pills can survive my digestive system, wander through my body, and work their wonders. And as I recall, most pills are mostly filler. That’s concentrated power. 

By this evening (I’m typing in the late afternoon), my twitches will recede and I’ll be able to sit in front of The Big Computer (really just my newest laptop) and dive into editing the sequel to Firewatcher. Editing is a big job. I’m impressed with the professional editors. Editing is a task of finding nearly-infinite minutea. The text contains over 110,000 words. Let’s keep it simple. That’s over 100,000 opportunities to use the wrong word. The average letters per word is five, so that’s over half of a million letters to check. Don’t expect zero errors. A 1% error rate means 1,000 mistakes. A 0.1% error rate is still 100 errors. A book with 100 errors can be painful for some readers. They’ve probably already reacted to the typo I left in the title of this post. My apologies, but it made a point with me, and I’m trying to understand what that is. Lots of little things, and a mistaken word can turn a character into a villian or a hero or a farce. (I gotta decide on the name of that thing.)

A nailhead was sticking out of a piece of furniture. A bee stung me on my knee. Sunshine reflecting off a car’s rear window momentarily blinded me. A popcorn kernel split a tooth. A nail punctured a tire. We devote ourselves to big things (#MassiveUnderstatement as my friends obsess over football or politics or both), but the little things demand our attention; and we benefit from attending to them.

And then there’s the trite list of cuteness as a child see their first grasshopper, a butterfly flutters by, a piece of chocolate gets popped into a mouth, a song shows up at just the right time, a smile from a stranger truly does look bright. I’m remembering a day when someone said, “It is good to see you!” and they really meant it, including the exclamation point. (I thank for being here, by the way.)

And then came the reminder of little things that I wasn’t even aware of. Someone thanked me for something I said. I don’t even remember saying it. They told me that because I thanked them for something they said. They don’t remember saying it. I then told them a couple of stories where others have unexpectedly thanked me. Someone I barely knew came up to me after some meeting and thanked me for encouraging them to pursue their dream project. Evidently, most of the audience tuned them out, but they were encouraged simply because I paid attention to them, nodded appropriately, and probably did something else. No need for great exhortations. I simply paid attention to them. Another person thanked me because I listened. She was ignored, partly because her idea was unconventional, and possibly because they couldn’t understand why she’d be so passionate about such an unfashionable topic. She did all the work, but she made sure she thanked me for listening. She called me after Hollywood listened, funded, and filmed her documentary.

I see little things making a big difference regularly. Sure, this blog is about personal finance, and in personal finance, small decisions can have major effects, but the practice of paying attention anywhere can be valuable – even indirectly. 

OK. It’s time to polish and post, so I can make dinner, so I can dive back into the “nearly-infinite minutia” of editing my scifi novel. Now’s when I have to edit the aliens’ language, vocabulary, grammar, and cultural references. Ugh. I did this to myself. I know. Ugh. The alien (though only from the human perspective), Erle’, is a nice genderless lifeform, and wouldn’t complain too much if I’ve typed Earl instead, but it would be nice to get it right. It’s the little things, you know? Hmm. Maybe I can blame spellcheck.