Question of the Day: 68:

How much money would it take for you to give up, forever, something you love to do?

I originally came up with the Question of the Day to pass along questions like this, which pop into my mind from time to time and help me kill the time while I'm cleaning up the water Mr F spilt onto the floor because he (re)discovered the refrigerator water dispenser.

I used to wonder whether it would be worth it to make a ton of money doing something even if it meant that I could never do that thing again, a question I consider the "Donny Osmond" question, since Donny Osmond made a lot of money (I think) but nobody takes him seriously as an artist, so while he's free to make music, he'll never really get to promote that music or be considered the King of Rock & Roll or anything.

Recently, I began wondering today's question, which is kind of the opposite. When I initially thought about it, I considered it in the context of careers: how much would someone have to pay me to never practice law again, or never write again?

But then I decided that was too easy. It's not much of a choice, is it, being given a ton of dough to simply not work.

So I asked myself this: what if what they were paying me to do was something I really, really love, like eating pizza or listening to music?

That question got to me: How much would someone have to pay me to never listen to music again... to give up my iPod and my CDs and not put Pandora on the computer and not listen to videos on Youtube and get rid of my radios, to have to walk away when songs were playing in public, not go to concerts... never listen to music, period, again.

Or read. What if someone offered me (or you, if you love to read), $500,000,000 in exchange for you (or me) never reading another book or magazine or newspaper or website. You (or I) could watch all the TV and movies and videos we wanted, we just couldn't read anything in print.

When you think about it that way, it's quite a question. $500 million's a lot of money. But to never read again?