Today I'm celebrating having been alive for 3000 weeks.
3000 weeks is also 21000 days, but somehow the number of weeks feels like more of a milestone.
It also means I've been alive for 3000 Wednesdays, 3000 Fridays and 3000 Saturdays, indeed yesterday was my 3000th Monday. But I can't say the same of Tuesdays because I was born on a Tuesday which makes today my 3001st, and so the cycle continues.
There's something quite alarming about counting down your life in weeks. A week is a fairly short period of time and yet the number of weeks in one's life doesn't feel like a particularly large number. How can my life only have contained 3000 Monday mornings, it feels like they come round far more often, and how can it only have contained 3000 Saturdays, it's hard to believe they're that rare.
For a proper jolt this 3000th Weeksday I've taken a look at the ONS's Life Expectancy Calculator to work out how many weeks I might have left. It reckons my chances of reaching 3500 weeks are greater than 90%, my chances of reaching 4000 weeks are more like 80% and my chances of reaching 5000 weeks are only about 1 in 8. The average life expectancy of a 57½ year-old male is 84 years, it reckons, or in other words I have (on average) 1400 weeks left.
Don't try this yourself if you're feeling fragile, maudlin or mortal, you may not like the result. But remember that average life expectancies increase as you get older, so for example my ALE might be 84 but the ALE of an 84 year old man is 91.
It's mildly depressing to realise that my life will contain fewer than 5000 weekends, particularly when I look back at how many weekend opportunities I've wasted. Knowing that I should only expect 1400 more, and that I might not be as healthy as I am now for all of those, properly focuses the brain. Carpe diem.
Anyway to take my mind off that, and hopefully yours too, why not make plans to celebrate special numbers of weeks, months, hours, minutes or even seconds in your life. To save you the hassle of excess mathematics this webpage will calculate all those special dates for you. For example I was half a million hours old on Wednesday 23rd March 2022, and I'm going to be two billion seconds old on Monday 24th July 2028. Any excuse for a party.
As a helpful overview I've compiled this summary list to show which special anniversaries crop up at which age. I've emboldened the dozen I think are the most significant. Maybe you've got one of your own coming up soon.
19:ten million minutes, one thousand weeks 22: two hundred thousand hours 27:ten thousand days 31:one billion seconds 34: three hundred thousand hours 38: twenty million minutes, two thousand weeks 41: fifteen thousand days 45: four hundred thousand hours 47: one and a half billion seconds 54:twenty thousand days 57: thirty million minutes, half a million hours, three thousand weeks 63:two billion seconds 68: six hundred thousand hours, twenty five thousand days 76: forty million minutes, four thousand weeks 79: two and a half billion seconds, seven hundred thousand hours 82:thirty thousand days 83:one thousand months 91: eight hundred thousand hours 95:three billion seconds, fifty million minutes, five thousand weeks
And if you have spotted when your next milestone birthday is, do stick an alarm in your online calendar so that when it finally comes round you won't forget. That's what I did, and that's how I know I'm celebrating 3000 weeks today. Cheers!
