527040 Minutes

Once a year we get to pretend that there’s a global do-over. It’s a wonderfully wacky thing that we all just somehow agree to do without ever talking about it. At this moment every year many swell with childlike dreams for a new beginning and ready their hand to wipe clean the previous year. Somehow January first marks a rebirth for all the failed attempts and idle plans of the previous year. Somehow we lose track of all the little moments that brought us forward to a new year.

This year, I remember.

In 2012 there were 527,040 minutes. I pissed away at least half of those on sleep, bowel movements and blogging. But the other 263,520 minutes were the best I’ve ever had. Well, not all of them. I waited in line a few times and sat on-hold waiting for customer service for at least 720 minutes. I also pumped gas, picked up dog shit, and listened to presidential debates for another 240 minutes.

Then there were several days I was either sick, traveling or talking to relatives about politics, so that’s another 7,200 minutes. There were a number of times I accidentally read a Techcrunch story or got caught in an elevator with someone very excited about Pinterest, which chewed into another 180 minutes.

I’m deducting at least 1,080 minutes for the time I spent attempting to reinstall iOS 6 on my iPhone and another 780 minutes for the time my mom deleted her photos from her iPad and iCloud failed to deliver the backups. A minimum of 120 minutes were invested into finding the goddamn AppleTV remote and another 40 minutes waiting for the AppleTV to update followed by 15 minutes of entering my secure WiFi and Apple passcodes with said AppleTV remote.

173,925 minutes enjoying 2012.

But I also lost about 10,080 minutes deleting emails from the Obama campaign and marking conspiracy emails from my relatives as spam. I wasted 7 minutes watching a TED video about paper towels and another 14 minutes on blog posts about the TED video about paper towels. Another 300 minutes went into reading about techniques to not waste time, followed by 600 minutes of making OmniFocus themes.

45 minutes went into reading about the decline and rise of various social networks and another 900 minutes went into using the variously declining and rising social networks. An additional 10 minutes were used reseting passwords on the various social networks and announcing my subsequent status and intention on each.

So let’s say I got 162,509 pretty good minutes out of 2012 — 3.71 months of usable, enjoyable, life enriching time in 2012. I spent 3.71 months cuddling, playing, coloring, dancing, tickling, running, hiding, singing, laughing, pretending and generally loving in 2012. I call that a win. Not a wasted minute whatsoever in my book. Life is what we do in the time between and I had a great few minutes in 2012. The best.