How did I know you'd be a Rothbardian, you woman after my own heart? And how was I not following you already? Sigh the number of times I go into my following list to click on someone's blog and they aren't there... it's embarrassing really.

We have a definite problem with time preference and opportunity cost. Too many of us have a very high time preference and little real understanding of the opportunity costs involved in chasing these dreams.

Time is finite. Opportunities are finite. Every choice I make to do a contest post costs me the opportunity to write what might be better. Every choice I make to critique a piece with the attention it deserves costs me the opportunity for some curation, new followers, income.

I weigh the opportunity cost of critique or other hours spent in the Workshop carefully, and what I come away with is this: I am becoming a better author while helping build a community of better authors. There is symbiosis there. I am usually able to keep my time preference low and look at the long game. I believe wholeheartedly that what @rhondak started with the Workshop, @SFT, and even the radio show, are good things that can someday be very big and very beneficial to us all. Even if there is never an imprint, even if SFT can never do more than 20 SBD awards and a minor bump in upvotes, even if all we do there is continue to become better writers and maintain that community, it will be reward enough if--and only if--we maintain a balance and grow our individual accounts as well.

When I see the calls for the contests, which are at least weekly now and sometimes daily, I have to look at the opportunity cost. What will I sacrifice to do another contest post that I am almost certain not to win? My own blog which sees a post a week these days if I'm lucky? Curation, which is the best way to gain followers and I haven't been able to do in a month? Or critiquing others' work so they can write at a more polished level and maybe qualify for better rewards?

So far I have been sacrificing my own blog and my own curation. I don't have a spreadsheet or anything but I'd be willing to bet my average payout is under $5 on a post. Of which I can get out one a week these days. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'll sacrifice my blog and my curation in order to be present in the Workshop, review others' submissions, attempt to bear some of @Rhondak's load, walk folks through the process, because I believe deeply in the community.

But I'm not going to sacrifice it to participate in these contests anymore​. I'd rather send a gift of 3 weeks earnings to someone I feel deserves it ​than spend three hours trying to pander to judges. And I can't tell you how much I appreciate you putting it in the terms you did ​because however voluntary everyone says it is, I feel like a total asshole saying "no thanks" when everyone else seems so excited about these things. I feel like you articulated a logical and sound basis for rejecting the model, or at least not spending time on it.

I really hope I'm not seen as some party pooper. I am 100% dedicated to the long term success of the Fiction community. I am 100% dedicated to seeing that @Rhondak's hard and revolutionary work is rewarded. It is for exactly those reasons that I'm going to continue working at the long term plan and that includes finding some time to work on my blog as well. I'd far rather take that time from contests than from the Workshop.