Remember the name of this long-running experiment, this practice, this dangerous monolog blasting into the ether, CheapZen. Be Careful of what you wish for! Caveat Emptor! Ok, the legal department is now satisfied.
Yet another cool idea learned recently from hanging out with cool friends. I learned about Stoic Calendars,one is shown in the picture for this blog post (hint: you could print it out and use it!) I spent maybe thirty minutes making it because I had to figure it out and screw it up and redo it and compromise on the final product to make it easier and faster to accomplish….somehow there are likely several lessons for me to relearn in that alone. My wife also caught that I had made a mistake somehow in the original one produced, I corrected it, and casually eliminated about 2.5 years worth of “lifetime” from the calendar. You’ll understand that as you keep reading. Poof, two and a half years of life gone!
Each of the dots is a single month, 1080 in all, or 90 years. The red dots are multiples of 12 for easier counting. Notice the symmetry, notice the asymmetry, notice how the calendar is exactly three years wide so that the red dots line up in columns, obviously that was planned because I am so smart (no, just a super cool coincidence). Lessons four and five of the day at least right there. Notice how the image is actually rotated 90 degrees from what I just descibed above! Everything is relative (bonus reminder lesson for today, lesson six already?) The dots are not perfect circles (compromise) they are actually capital O’s because that made it much faster for me to construct this (dangerous, glorious, powerful, cruel, hopeful, irrelevant) calendar.
I’ve already changed my intention of how to use this new tool. It is going to be a two-fold celebration vehicle. I am going to print it out and every day for the next several months I am going to fill in a dozen circles. I will invite my wife to join me as well as to invite every other sentient being capable of filling in dots or knowing someone who could and would be willing to fill in dots for them. Got Parkingson’s? Who cares, do it uniquely and beautifully anyway! Is your dominant hand broken? Do it with your other hand! Missing use of all your limbs, you are likely already so skilled at managing that challenge that I doubt there is anything useful I could offer as advice. You are amazing by the way, really all of us are 🙂
I will fill out dots one through 12 while I imagine back to being a toddler. I will celebrate my first year of life. I will relive it as best I can. Others might choose to take a giant marker and strike through all the lines of dots until they get close to where they are now on this walk. Still others will diligently and nearly perfectly scantron that beast before the sun rises again. Some will stop reading now and mutter something like what a bunch of crap. Others could feel terrified at seeing the final product as of today and decide not to even consider doing this. Some are already nonagenarians or older (new word for me, 90 somethings) and will decide to work on their second calendar and start with month 1081. Congratulations, from my perspective you are playing with house money!
I am going on a big trip in about a month, so I am going to have to drag this piece of paper all around Europe with me for a couple months. What if it gets damaged or lost? Who cares, I’ll figure it out. I may decide to laminate it when I get back, I may decide to recopy it so it is prettier, I may decide to start the whole thing over at that point. Who knows, there are no correct answers (to anything really).
For many out there, including anyone at least in their mid-thirties, the dot they would need to get to in order to catch up to today using the dozen-dots–a-day celebration approach will move before they can get there. For some it will be more than once or even twice! Ten points extra credit, will anyone be able to get to four dot movements?
And all this will simply take us up to what I had originally identified as the likely power in this tool for me. I will be forced at that point to look exactly at where I am on this path (assuming I live to be 90) once I get to about the 600th-plus dot. I hope I find it inspiring. I hope I can use it as energy and focus to live the most meaningful life I can for all my remaining dots. I hope it doesn’t incapacitate me. If it does I can always adjust. That is the beauty of free will (if it really does exist).
And to my dear friends out there that know the likelihood of them reaching ninety is simply unrealistic; I apologize for any pain experienced by even reading the title. You are amazing by the way and are loved and not forgotten.
We will see what this new tool brings me. We will see if I have the graceful accountability to walk this new intended offshoot from the path, this new path. We will see. I’m excited (at least for now!)
