20,000 Days

Today, July 18 2023, is the 20,000th day I’ve been on Earth.

It feels like a big occasion. That big counter only turns over about once every 27 years or so. This 10K chunk — what the ancient Greeks called a myriad — is about as big a segment of life that I can conceive of.

When I had my 10K on 1 Mar 1996, I was working for Microsoft in San Francisco. I lived in a flat in a beautiful Victorian house on McAllister Street in the Inner Richmond, with a redwood tree and a view of the Golden Gate Bridge out my back window. I’d just started working on Web software, and learning Perl. I had not yet written the Perl for Win32 FAQ, which was my first contribution to the Web and Open Source software. I was just barely letting go of my plans to go to graduate school for science writing. I was on the pigdog-l mailing list; it was a really important part of my social life, but we had not yet started meeting regularly for drinks at Zeitgeist. I would not start working on Heat.net for another few months. I had not yet been to Burning Man, nor had I met the huge group of people there who matter to me.

I can barely remember what it was like to be that man. I have pictures, and just the first bits of digital artifacts. I had not yet learned that being honest was a lot easier than avoiding conflict, and that taking care of my belongings and surroundings would let me enjoy them much more. I was really funny, but I was also willing to be really mean on the Internet.

Today, at 20K, I live across the continent in Montreal, with my wife and two teen children. I work as the director of technology at a non-profit making Open Source software to fight climate change. I own a house in the Plateau with a maple tree out the back window, and a cottage in the country where I garden and grow grapes. I’m probably best known for my work in making social networks more connected, and I’m actively working to make them even more so.

I think I’ve put these last 10,000 days to good use. I’ve travelled to a lot of places and seen a lot of things. I’ve taken a lot of risks, and mostly they’ve paid off. I have many friends and colleagues that I care a lot about in cities around the world. I have more joy than pain.

I can’t help wondering about my next myriad, and the next after that. At 30,000 days, in December 2050, we will know how the Transition has gone, and if the people of the world have brought our emissions to net zero. We will have hopefully reserved 50% of the Earth for wildlife to preserve about 80% of Earth’s species from disappearing. It will be hot, stormy, and unstable; there will be a lot of humans out-of-place; we will eat different foods and pursue different values. But we will be on the path to making it better.

My children will be middle-aged, with households of their own, families of their own. My hometown, Montreal, will have passed its 400 year anniversary celebration.

I’d like to get to 35,000 days, in August 2064. My grandfather lived independently to his mid-90s, and I hope I can get that far, too. I’d love to see Halley’s Comet return in 2061. I’d love to meet my great-grandchildren.

40,000 days feels greedy. It will be on 20 April 2078 and I’d be 109-1/2 years old. It’s not out of the question, but I think I can do what I need to get done before then. The fact that it lands on 4/20 does give me pause; it would be a good fact to bring up to people on that day.

I’m trying to be mindful of the big picture today, and also appreciate where I am right now. There’s a lot of worry and a lot of hope in my world right now. I feel a lot of responsibility. I want to put this next 10K to its best use.

Update

To celebrate, I got a tattoo on my wrist of the symbol for 2 myriad from the Aegean numbers system.