I Got 22,000 Days Until I’m Dead.

First thought: does that seem like a big number to you?

I don’t know but I’m a little ‘awww :(‘ at that number. 22,000 days seems minuscule to me. For some odd reason in my head, I clocked in a six-figure number of days I will be alive so this was a big drop. I was never stellar with math…

Real math: I will be “statistically” alive for 60 more years as a 27-year-old American woman. There are 365 days in a year and each month has about 30 days so that’s about 22,000 days in life I’ve got left.

You can guess my “pleasant” reaction when I finally lazily plugged in the numbers. That is about the average number of days I have left in this life according to the SSI calculator. It’s a rough guess-e-mate and I’m sure there are better ones out there but the point here isn’t to predict death. I never converted it days before and it’s a little depressing.

Considering half of those days for humans are allocated to sleeping, sitting in traffic, and the mandatory daily poop...I really only get about 11,000 days.

Even Charlie bear is sad! Look at that smooshy, smooshy face.

A Day in the Life

The days always go by so quickly thanks to most of us running on routines. My days have always felt short. There’s nothing particularly wrong with short days, the feeling of time passing is just a side effect of your emotions. I learned that life rule when I was 7 and my parents sent me away to school far away from home.

When I didn’t like my life before, I endured in a passive form of existence to make the time go faster. If I made it through the day, that’s a job well done because it couldn’t be forever.

I really like my kick-ass life now but the joke here is…when you’re happy, time unfairly moves much faster. A mere 22,000 days, until I’m no longer of this Earth, is a very, very scary thought now.

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A very rough draft summary of my day goes like this:

Every morning hubby kisses a half-asleep me goodbye before he leaves for work. It’s our thing. If he doesn’t, I’m pretty sure there would be rain floods and thunder from the sky.

Sometimes I’m half awake for the kiss, sometimes I’m flushed out. I stumbled awake at 10 AM. From that until past 3 PM, I do my rounds of chores and a daily dance regime to keep fit.

Right after my last walk with the dogs, Charlie gets picked up at half past 3 PM and the rest of the day goes towards miscellaneous anything be it outdoor errands, cooking, or writing until 8 PM. Hubby comes home and we goof around and resolve using the rest of the day to sweeten each other’s existence. Then he goes to sleep around 11 PM. The last two hours when hubby is asleep, I lay in bed to finish off my side projects and/or post before passing out for a few hours.

I wake up again anytime between 2 AM to 5 AM randomly, not sure why. But it’s a good chance to catch the east coast blog action because if I don’t do it now, the rest of the day I won’t have the focus or time. Somewhere in there, I will eventually make room for classes for school when I feel like it.

(It’s a pretty chill life.)

Making It Worse

Ignore the amazing magic of compounding, I’m just putting 22,000 the number into my perspective.

*If I earned a $1 every day, I’ll only have $22,000. That’s barely enough for a house downpayment and by then I’ll be dead!

*If I earned $10 every day, it’s $220,000. That’s barely enough to buy a house (average home prices in the US is currently $300,000) with that and by then I’ll be dead!

*If I earned $100 every day (cough, after taxes) that’s $2.2 million dollars. But who cares because that’s barely enough to buy me some immortality and by then I’ll be dead!

You get the picture. Not a lot of time. And yes, this is exactly a side effect to the fact that I just turned 27 and am hating it.

(P.S. If you’re younger than me as of reading this, dude, it’s definitely harder to lose vanity pounds – the old folks weren’t lying – your metabolism bids sayonara after 25. Argh!)

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Solutions, Man!

Solution: Write one sentence line about something defining new I learned, or did, or enjoyed doing for that day. Like a lazy man’s diary mixed with progress. What’s one sentence that defined today and made today worth it?

Easy peasy! In the end, I wouldn’t have a million things to skim through. I know I will definitely have more than 22,000 footnote worthy entries though! It should only take about 30 seconds to jot down and the upside of having these footnote memories would be huge!

I’m unhappy with how little days I have left so to ease my peevishness I needed a practical solution to make every day seem a little cooler than “oh well, there goes another day.”

But we’re all pressed for time. Who has time for long journals anymore?

This quick daily exercise would be good in preventing:

*Feeling like a lack of progress.

*Feeling like the days blend together too much.

*Dealing with mortality and aging.

*Flushing out what brings you joy/matters to you, fairly quickly.

*Like a personal goal tracker but way less demanding and makes you look at the positive every single day.

If I use a standard size 70-page college-ruled notebook that has 33 lines (trust me, I counted and looked it up to make sure) and wrote one sentence about one day on every line, at the end of my life I will have between 6 to 10 notebooks of “highlight reels.” Considering those notebooks come in a pack of 10 for $10 bucks…boy that really makes me nervous how little 22,000 days is. Eeeeek!

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Daily Entries

It could be anything from “I got married today” to “I found a penny in the subway train” as long as it was relevant to your growth, development, and can serve as a single remainder of something terrific you did on one of those remaining 22,000 days on Earth.

Every single day I wake up, I should be thankful for one thing, one action, one occurrence, one occasion, one emotion worth jotting down real quick.

This exercise is good for the big picture too. If at the last setting sun of my 22,000 days, I would be so lucky to have accomplished most big ticket thing I’ve wanted to do but I have no memories of my journey (AKA “the highlight reel”) then I would be pretty sad. The journey matters just as much as the ending so it’s important to keep some track.

*Entry Day #22000

My blog post was featured on Rockstar Finance (awesome) on my 27th birthday! Then I went to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle where I heard for the first time…the pack howl of real wolves AND I saw a little wallaby trying to lick its own crotch (also pretty cool).

*Entry Day #21999

Took my visiting friends out to a seafood buffet because they had a ‘birthday person eats free’ deal as long as we can bring 3 other people along for my friend’s b-day. I learned how to eat a crawfish properly (without help) for the first time in my life. They’re like dense little shrimps!

*Entry Day #21998

Financial Orchid came to visit me again and we went to the mall to buy nothing (because frugality is awesome.) Then we all went out to a small divey Korean restaurant and I had the best Taiyaki (red bean fish shaped pancakes) I’ve ever eaten in my entire life. Top 5 in the best-tasting desserts of my life so far and it’s only $1 for one Taiyaki! Mmmm!

*Entry Day #21997

I got an idea to start tracking one noteworthy memory a day. I feel like my life goals are big and long so I need small little accomplishments to make me feel like “the life in between” isn’t going to waste. I’m totally in love with this idea. I haven’t decided to jot it on the blog publicly or just buy some notebooks privately.

Related: Step by Step Guide on Starting a Blog

Sometimes (most of the time) my ideas are stupid but I’m all “in here” so I can’t tell. But it’s a very low point of entry for something that might be invaluable to have down the road. I would love to be bedridden and sick at 88 with a few holographic notebooks (assuming that will be a thing) to glance through the highlights of my 22,000 days!

**UPDATE**

You can read the official first entry: Day 21,996 to Day 21,992

Concluding Thoughts

If this is a quarter life crisis then a solution of a few sentences per day is not a bad result. At least I haven’t decided on the color of my Ferarri yet 😉

Some people find it’s effortless to look into the past and find a gem of a memory but that’s not how my brain works. I need a little kick here and there to make sure that every day is special. I need something to make me go “oh, that was a ‘worth it’ day because I was able to ________.” It calms the internal voice that’s constantly screaming at me to find meaning within and make life worthy of impact. Maybe it would be helpful for some of you out there like me?

~