Yesterday I finally got around to rolling some of the coins that have been accumulating in my house over the past few months.
Right from the start, I was determined to view my subway tips as income, so I've kept careful track of how much I'm earning. When I finish performing on the subway, I quickly scoop up the change from my guitar case and put it in a deep pocket. (I'm always conscious of not lingering over my cash in a public place.) When I get home, I count it, record the total and put the coins in a Ziplock bag. Then I put the Ziplock bag in the top drawer of our front hall cabinet.
I intend to roll the coins promptly, but it ends up being a chore that I put off.
It takes a long time to roll coins. You have to gather the coins, find a bunch of rolling tubes (which may involve a trip to the Dollar Store), sit down and actually count. Although you might think it's possible to listen to CBC Radio or watch "Oprah" at the same time, it's not so easy. Just when you're congratulating yourself for being such a great multi-tasker, you lose count and have to start all over again.
It's actually more efficient to just count. Every. Single. Penny.
At times, it feels like wasted effort. After all, 50 pennies laboriously counted is still only 50 cents. That's why, being keen on immediate gratification, I tend to count the bigger coins first. Twenty-five toonies rolled into a tight little tube makes fifty dollars--which feels like easy money. However, if you just count the big coins, before long you end up with piles and piles of overflowing Ziplock bags full of uncounted little coins.
When the little coins pile up like that, I'm tempted to use the CoinStar machine at Loblaw's, which turns unsorted change into grocery vouchers in return for a percentage. It's a bad deal. Not only am I losing actual money, I'm missing out on the opportunity to pay attention to what's been given to me.
I now know, even from just a few months' busking experience, that even the smallest exchanges, whether they come in the form of cash or human interaction, are gifts to be treasured. And yet, in the daily act of prioritizing my activities, I remain tempted to ignore the tiny returns and focus on the big ones.
It's interesting to me how those uncounted coins, once they've been zipped into bags and allowed to accumulate, weigh me down and create a nagging sense of guilt, when only a few days before they made me feel alive. They were sparkling coins flying through the air from one human being to another, dancing to music.
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