LESS THAN 200,000
Thursday, Feb. 13, 2020
There are many clichés about work expanding to fill the time allowed for its completion – and those usually relate to procrastination. I would invite you to see it differently, as an opportunity to dream of great big things and large volumes of tasks to do and experiences to have, and then living a very long time to do them. There is no time to waste, of course, but why dream small?
How much any of us have yet to do is always incalculable unless we also know how much time we’ll have to do it; I realize this is based in large part on faith I’ll thrive that long – but none of that matters unless I thrive every day and work like there is no tomorrow, yet go to bed every night in full faith there will be …
Life is like a road sign, telling us how far to our destination, life is like an odometer – rolling over and over, indicating each increment in mileage on our old chassis …
When I first started writing this column, I began keeping track – of the date, how many columns, and how far I had to go.
The date is easy to understand. The first one was March 21st, 2003.
The most recent, today, is column #6,265.
The other statistic I keep is my countdown, it drops by 24 every day, like on odometer rolling over and over – the number decreasing. I began tracking this a long time ago – from when I projected my life to 95 and then calculated the number of hours remaining, and reduced that number by 24 each day. Yesterday that declining number was 200,008.
Today it fell below 200,000 to 199,984.
Tomorrow will be 199,960.
Since I began recording this declining number, as many readers know, I’ve revised my life-span outlook.
Beyond 115 is where I want to go, but to stop writing this daily column at 95 makes sense to me.
Just like an hour-glass letting sand through at a steady pace, I believe watching my life inexorably slip through that pinch-point at this steady pace continues to be a sound time management.
Some readers might scoff at this math exercise, but frankly, there is more to this than math.
It’s about hope.
About belief.
About not giving up, not quitting, not giving in.
Of course, I can’t know any of this for certain.
Determined to not drop the ball, I’ll keep writing every day.
I’ll keep track of every day, of every 24 hours ticking by.
I’ll always know how far I’ve come.
And how far I have yet to go.
