Let's find you a hobby - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

Every once in a while, for a different reason each time, I take the five minutes to do the math and find out which column in the lineage of my columns you’re about to read. This is the 741st column that I’ve written for The Citizen over the course of my career, which now exceeds 18 years.

 

Very early on in my career here, when I was not yet the editor and Bonnie Gropp was, I wrote a pair of columns that were stand-alone installments from me, meant to work alongside certain stories that I wrote - kind of a story and column package deal. Then, when I became the acting editor, I began writing weekly in this space, which continued when the “acting” in acting editor was dropped and I simply became your editor, dear readers. 

 

My column tends to be about 600 words per week, according to the space. Coming into this column, if you’ve been with me since the beginning, you will have now read 444,000 of the words I’ve written in this space (that, of course, doesn’t include the stories I’ve written on a weekly basis over the course of those 18 years and change). 

 

The quick math breaks down like this. You have 740 columns, each with 600 words, which comes to a total of 444,000 words. You then bring that number into a words-into-time converter and you will know that it would take the average person (reading at a rate of 130 words per minute) 3,415.4 minutes to have read all of those words. Simply divide 3,145.4 by 60 to break it down into hours and you’ll be appalled and disappointed to learn that a person who has read all of those columns has spent just a hair under 57 hours of their life doing just that. In fact, if you factor in this column’s 600 words, it’s even cleaner. It gets us to 3,420 words, which is an even 57 hours - right on the nose.

 

(Now is the time for the quick disclaimer that I always have to include when I write a column like this, which brings us back to the great column mix-up of 2016. On May 19, 2016 - my birthday, randomly - I wrote a column. Big news, right? Well, on May 26, 2016, we ran that column again by mistake. So, all of this 740 columns business is a bit of a fraud in which a mere 739 of those columns contained original material. Shameful.)

 

Fifty-seven hours is much more than your average work week. It’s more than two full days. And, apparently, it’s the name of a successful adventure tour company. The name alludes to the stretch of time from 3 p.m. on a Friday to midnight on a Sunday - ostensibly the time you have to enjoy yourself on an average weekend before pulling things together, getting some sleep and returning to work, ready to go, on Monday morning.

 

Think of the possibilities and the potential for greatness in a stretch of time like that. And yet, meanwhile, you dedicated readers have chosen to spend that time, sectioned out over the course of 18 years, with me - reading the ideas, opinions and tales that I have come up with in this space - all while you could have been hiking in Patagonia (one of 57 Hours’ signature adventure experiences).

 

When I put it like that - especially when I use Patagonia, one of the most beautiful places on earth, as an example - it feels like I have nothing left to do but to thank you. Thank you for welcoming me into this community and reading what I have to write and engaging with what I’ve had to say - from frivolous nonsense to regrettable hot takes to my journey now as a family man. I’ll resist the urge to scold you and implore you to do something more productive with your time.