Life in weeks

Gina Trapani made a week-by-week map of her life, and I think it’s fantastic.

I wish I had records or memory of what I was doing every week of my life—it’s such a fantastic way to visualize a life well lived and a pretty amazing legacy to leave for future generations too.

There’s a book I’ve been meaning to read by Oliver Burkeman called Four Thousand Weeks that outlines the incredible brevity of human life when we look at it through the lens of weeks lived. I hear it’s more of a time-management, self-help-like book, but the idea of it is interesting to me; it’s so easy for a week to fly by without really feeling like we’ve fully lived it. If we only have four thousand of them, there’s an important impetus to live each one with intention.

Gina links to the Your Life in Weeks post on Wait But Why which essentially says the same thing:

It kind of feels like our lives are made up of a countless number of weeks. But there they are–fully countable–staring you in the face.

There’s a concept in blogging called weeknotes that is actually a really great way to think about taking stock of the week that just went by. (My friend Lucas does something similar—though he doesn’t call it weeknotes—with his excellent weekly Hit & Miss newsletters.) It’s a habit that I might take up (not on my blog, but in my personal journal) to help me remember that each week is precious and should be accounted for.

The past week has been a hectic one: returning from vacation, catching up on work, and taking care of our daughter when she was home from school for two days because of snow and sickness. It has felt like it has flown by, but I’m also reminded that we’ve done a ton of fun things—hung out at the Children’s Museum, decorated cookies, celebrated Valentine’s Day, gone swimming, played in the snow, and so much more—that have been invigorating and joyful. A week well lived; here’s to many more.

→ life → reflection