What will we do with our extra 17 years?

Back when people actually commuted to and from work, I decided to punish myself by calculating how much time I had spent in the car, on the train, in the car driving to the train, waiting for the bus from the train…the whole megillah.
It turns out I spent well over two full years on the way to and from the office, more than 20,000 hours between here and there.

That insight didn’t exactly improve my mental state, but it should be heartening to the millions of people working from home these days. Life expectancy has actually declined in this country, thanks to Covid and opioids, but anyone entering the workforce today will have a two-year credit to apply against that loss.  Yay you.

Still, the gift of added hours is not always accompanied by more satisfactory use of those hours. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case as the world intrudes on our joyous moments. If only we could find a way to eliminate the worst of the time sucks that drain our vitality each day.

It’s a big challenge, but the rewards would be huge as well. Our crack research team guarantees that every person reading this (Hi, mom!) can live a much, much longer life of joy if we could avoid…

1. Seven months of listening to waiters tell us their name and how to scan a QR code.
   
2. Six years of writing posts that will change nobody’s opinion. Ever.
   
3. Nine months of waiting for the pizza delivery.
   
4. Four years of waiting for your S/O to be ready after they’ve told you, “I’ll be ready in a minute.”
   
5. Eighteen months of people telling us about the weather outside just after we’ve walked in from…outside.
   
6. Three months of learning that the menu options have changed.
   
7. Three months of assurances that our call is important.
8. Yet another three months of being told that, even though our call is important, we should just hang up and go to the website.
   
9. Two months waiting for the tone, only to learn that, “The mail box is full. Goodbye.”
   
10. Eleven months of downloading apps and signing up for an account, just to order some chicken wings.  
    
11. Three months memorizing whatever new language the woke police have invented.
12. Six months of reading outraged messages about whatever new language the woke police have invented.
    
13. Six more months of listening to boycott demands from easily offended people, plus the people who are easily offended by easily offended people, plus the people who are easily offended by the people who are easily offended by the easily offended people, plus… 
    
    

Add it all up and we could be living the equivalent of 17 more years with less aggravation and more peace of mind, if only... We haven’t quite figured out how to actually accomplish this goal, especially the part about waiting for pizza delivery, but we’re working on it.

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