“Days Left in Year.”
There’s a ticking clock that I face every day I’m working. It’s not that it’s necessarily counting down to anything important, but it’s right there, everytime I check in on the status of the day’s publishing schedule. We have this shared document that we all use to track where we are in terms of publishing, what stories need editing, and so on, you see, and at the top of that document is this traffic tracker that doesn’t just tell us how well we’re doing at that particular point, but projects out how well we’re performing versus the month’s goal, and offers up other little bits of information — including, for reasons too complicated to explain here, how many days into the calendar year we are at any given point, and how many days are left in the year.
I cannot explain why this “Days Left in Year” counter in particular catches my attention each and every time I’m on the page. It’s not as if I’m looking for that information at… well, almost any point of the day, really. For that matter, it’s not as if I even hold any special meaning in the end of the year beyond “I get some time off” and whatever level of superstition and sentimentality kicks in at that time each and every twelve months; nothing really changes, beyond we think about the new calendars that we should probably pick up. And yet, each and every time my eyes glance across that particular counter, I involuntarily pause. How many days are left in the year? my brain asks itself. Should I be more aware of this?
Even as I’m typing this, I’m aware that I do impart some odd meaning to the whole thing, and that I have been, subconsciously, counting down to something: the middle of the year. I don’t know why — literally nothing will happen when we hit day 183! — but somewhere in my brain, I have assigned it some kind of meaning, as if it’s a milestone that I can feel, even if I don’t actually understand it.
As I’m typing this, there’s still a few weeks left before we hit the halfway mark. Maybe I’m unintentionally imagining there’s going to be a point where it’ll be downhill from that point on, and the momentum will carry us all through. Check with me again when there’s only one day left in the year, perhaps.