My friend Bill

They say you can get a great deal of satisfaction from achieving your goals, and it's true, you know. I woke up this morning with a burning desire not to pay the bills, and over the rest of the day I've put in a great deal of effort and strenuous activity into not doing just that. Those bills remain completely unpaid, and I can't tell you how pleased I am about it. Every so often I go back to those bills, and look at how much is owing, and look at how soon they are due, and no sooner do I contemplate the fact that I still haven't paid them than a great warm wave of gladness sweeps over me. It's true that this gladness is accompanied by a certain deal of fidgeting, an increased heart rate, some biting of the nails, a slight churning in the stomach, and so on, but whatever. The fact remains that the bills haven't been paid, and I'm happy about it.

As the seconds and minutes and hours have mounted up, I've put in a great deal of effort into not paying those bills. Here's just some of the things I've done instead:

- Made an origami badger;
- Made a cappucino out of the whizz-bang machine that Mum got me and the Baron for Christmas;
- Made an origami cat, penguin, and spider;
- Tried to con Harriet and Beatrice into paying the bills for me with some kangaroo. (Though the cunning creatures outwitted me, they just ate the kangaroo and stalked off without doing anything about the bills.)
- Made an origami sheep, pig, bear, and hare;
- Had a shave - the first in about a week or so, so there was lots of lovely hair to slice off and fuss over;
- Looked for models of origami dogs on the internet;
- Made an origami German Shepherd to round up those origami sheep;
- Went back to making another origami badger.

And now, hey, look at this, I've started writing a blog post to pass the time as well. As you can see it's certainly productive not paying the bills, and perhaps you ought to try it as well.

Of course, there might be some of you out there who find it difficult not to pay the bills - who in fact get nervous, anxious, dissatisfied, frightened, and even begin to despair if they don't pay their bills. I can't say I understand you people, but I sympathise with your plight. And in order to help you continue to lead rich and satisfying lives, I'd like to make you an offer. I've got three or four bills sitting on the fridge right at the moment, see, and if I could just mail you the details... After all, what could be more richly satisfying than paying other people's bills as well as your own? (Just so long as you do it with your own riches.)

In the meantime, I'll just go back to fiddling around with the espresso machine. Next up: I'm going to make an origami dromedary out of cappucino froth! I'll let you all know how it goes.

UPDATE! - I... I... I don't know what came just came over me. In a moment of weakness - a moment that probably lasted about 20 minutes, though why quibble over details? - I went looking for the bills that I wasn't going to pay in order not to pay them, couldn't find where they were, stomped about looking for them in other places, came back and found that they were all sticking on the fridge, took them down, logged on to various websites, typed in various credit card details, pressed various buttons, and... um... ha.... well, I paid the bills that I wasn't going to pay. My credit card head hurts.

I shall continue enjoying not paying the bills for the rest of the month, but the enjoyment will be soured somewhat by the perverse and immoral acts of bill-paying that I've just indulged in. Like double negatives, taking the bills that you aren't going to pay down from the fridge, and then not paying them, is something that we all shouldn't not do, as often as possible.

I think I'll just go and lie down.