I met up with my army mate yesterday. Naturally, the conversation touched on our plans for the new year. I unabashedly shared with him about my goal to withdraw $150 from Google Adsense through my blog. I was not at all embarrassed to share that some days, I just earn one cent.

Look, I’m not exaggerating. I don’t care if people think that I’m being stupid. I see the blog as a manifestation of my identity, something that is separate from my work and parenting roles. I don’t need this $150 to get by, but I’m of Chinese descent. I’m used to equating currency = legitimacy.

I want to use a soft preamble to lead to something that ruffled our collective feathers: cowboy credits. The reason why people perceive this change vastly differently is that we attribute different values to the zaps in the first place.

I will be first to admit that I value the zaps primarily for their financial value. In fact, as recent as last weekend, I used my sats to buy my supermarket voucher from Bitrefill.

But it isn’t just about the monetary value. Sipping my Asahi beer using my sats just hits differently from buying it with my salary. I know it’s probably some misguided mental accounting trick I play on myself but it is just…different. It is proof that my writing serves an international audience. It is anchoring my confidence. If I were to get laid off tomorrow (due to merging schools and declining student populations), I have already set the process in place to secure some groceries. My identity is enriched as a result of my sats from SN.

To have sats be replaced by cowboy credits must feel like a slap in the face for some of us. If we assign part of our self-worth to sats, cowboy credits are an intrusion heck, even invasion of our identity. And who wants our work to feel devalued?

Change is painful, because it requires us to alter our identity.

How then can we navigate this change? Perhaps we must shake ourselves from the focusing illusion that is so etched in our minds. We tell ourselves that we will only feel gratified if we receive those sweet sats. But that’s because we compare cowboy credits with sats and see their shortcoming.

Don’t get me wrong. I was initially overwhelmed by my deluge of credits and wanted to zap people credits if I had just gotten them for my post. But my cooler self prevailed. That is cheap. If I value someone’s comment enough, then I should reciprocate it with sats. Nothing else.

So, this means that I can use cowboy credits as play money and rethink my posting and commenting habits. Already, I could feel a shift in my attitude.

Posting in ~FiresidePhilosophy never gets easier even though I have been doing it consistently. 400 sats is 4 cents in real life but takes on a disproportionately greater weight here. Sometimes, judging by the activity on the sub, I already know that I can’t recoup the sats, but I still post anyway because I have an urge to voice my thoughts.

But with cowboy credits, I barely hesitated yesterday. I spent my commute writing about the hardest thing I have ever done and posted it on ~FiresidePhilosophy. I think it’s liberating. Since I can’t withdraw credits, I might as well expend them here. My creative process takes centre stage, unobstructed by thoughts of sats. And I’m grateful that I did so, because I got to learn about the hardest thing you all have done and gathered some courage from you.

Today is another instance. I woke up, and this post started to form in my mind. I mean, actual sentences ambled across my headspace, like those captions you see in news broadcasts. Normally, I need to watch Netflix while doing my household chores. But because I was so eager to write, I finished everything in record speed and reached my coffee place at the same time when I would normally step out of my house. This meant 10 extra minutes of writing! As of now, I am continuing to write this on my commute to work. What if just pondering about our use of cowboy credits leads to creative inspiration and consequently, new directions for our writing?

I don’t know about you, but I’m quite happy about the way I didn’t need to rely on Netflix to numb myself through my chores today. Feeling alive and raring to go was a huge reward in itself.

When we dissociate cowboy credits from the standard that sats encapsulate, we may find new possibilities of using them.