This year, I turned 10,000 days old.
Ages ago, I learned that 10,000 days is about 27.38 years. I marked the date I would hit 10k on my calendar app and promptly forgot about it. In January, I got a notification for my 10k day, and double-checked my math. I was off by a day or two because of leap years, but 10,000 days is still worth celebrating.
I spent most of a day wracking my brain as to what to do. How do I celebrate hitting 10,000? No one but me knew it was happening. I didn’t know anyone else who had done this. Do I go on vacation?
I came up with the idea of a Reverse Birthday Party — one where I surprise everyone with gifts and treats. I woke up super early, baked brownies and biscuits, and grabbed toys and candles from the store. I took it all to work and surprised my office.
IT WAS A SUCCESS! I even brought a card for people to sign (because no one else knew I was turning 10,000 days old). The idea of passing a card around for myself was pretty humorous. I would not do that again — one of my coworkers made me think it was self-centered.
I also hit 1,000 Wordles played the same week! That made the math easy to calculate. 10% of my total days lived included a game of Wordle.
I don’t directly know of anyone else who’s celebrated their 10,000th day of being alive. I’m grateful I’m still around, and I thought giving to others (even in a small way like sweets and toy cars) would be a nice way to show the world I’m happy to be experiencing life.
I’ll hit 20,000 days when I’m 54, and 30,000 when I’m 82. Those are big milestones, for sure, but I’ll worry about those when I get there.
If you’re interested in learning how old you are, you can use this lovely calculator by Daniel Durrans. I found this after my celebration — my calculations were off by 1 day.