The Subscription Nobody Could Name

At the end of the month, Vince noticed a small payment on his bank statement. The company name meant nothing to him. He checked older statements and found the same amount leaving his account regularly. He was annoyed that he had not noticed sooner.

He searched his email and discovered a membership for an online drawing service. He had joined during a wet holiday, used it twice and forgotten about it. His first thought was to cancel immediately. Then he opened the service and saw the unfinished drawing he had started months earlier.

For an hour, he worked on it and enjoyed himself. This made the decision harder, not easier. Was he paying for something he valued or for an imagined version of himself who drew every evening? He decided to cancel the automatic renewal while keeping access until the period he had already paid for ended.

He put two drawing evenings in his calendar. On the first, he made time. On the second, he chose something else. When access ended, he saved his pictures and bought a simple sketchbook. He did not call the membership a disaster. It had helped him discover both an interest and the amount of space that interest really occupied in his week.