I am living in a constant state of counting down. This is nothing new. For at least the past three months I’ve had a count down timer running on my computer for some momentous event or another. And before that, believe me, they were ticking down in my brain. This is just how I think. There is always something out there worth counting down to.

Currently my timer reads 15 days, 18 hours, 1 minute, 31 seconds. This is when IT begins. IT being adventure, freedom, real-life-only-kinda-not-really-sorta, etc. More specifically, this is when Macky and I will board an 11 hour plus American Airlines flight to Santiago, Chile.

Watching the numbers tick down has become an obsession. In precisely 1,359,858 seconds we will be on our way. 1,359,857, 1,359,856, 1,359,855… You can see how this counting down business can get cumbersome.

Knowing exactly how many seconds I have left to get organized does not, as it turns out, promote organization. Instead it results in something a little bit like philosophical introspection and a lot like going-batshit-crazy. How can only 15 days have a million seconds? How many seconds will I be alive? Should I start a countdown timer for that?

You get the idea. It has occurred to me sometime in the past 604,800 seconds (that’s a week, by the way) that maybe this isn’t the healthiest way to live my life. Maybe I should chill out, close the countdown timers, take a deep breath and you know, smell the roses and all that good stuff. Personally I’ve never had a whole lot of success with this, but I hear living in the moment is really just great.

So, that’s the new goal. I’ll start in 15 days, 17 hours, 28 minutes and 57 seconds.