I leave for my eighteen month mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in six days. It's all I've been thinking about lately, and until quite recently, most of my thoughts went a little something like this:
Wow. 18 months is a long time.
I couldn't stop thinking about how in 18 months, everyone I know from high school will have graduated and most of my friends in college will have completed their degrees. I couldn't stop thinking about how in 18 months, Paige is going to be 11 and in middle school, Parker will be a sophomore, and Cameron will be a senior. I couldn't stop thinking about how in 18 months, my family's assignment in Brazil would be almost over. And most importantly, I couldn't stop thinking about the TV shows I will miss and all the new Taylor Swift songs that were going to be released. Just kidding about the "most importantly" part on that last one....well, kinda....
But today I realized that in the grand scheme of things, 18 months is actually nothing. My mission is going to fly by in the blink of an eye (snaps to me for rhyming), and here are a few fun facts to illustrate my new-found perspective about my upcoming 18 months:
- I'm currently 19 years old, which is 228 months. 18 out of 228 months represents only 7.895% of the time that I've been alive.
- The current life expectancy for women in the United States is 79 years. Assuming I live to be that old, my mission will have only taken up 1.9 % of my life.
- The fifth Harry Potter movie was released on July 11, 2007. The sixth Harry Potter movie was released two years later on July 15, 2009. So there was more than 18 months between the release dates of those two Harry Potter movies.
- Assuming I've slept an average of 8 hours a night for my entire life, I've spent 55,480 hours of my life sleeping. There are 8,765.81 hours in a year. And after doing some simple division (yay math majors), I calculated that I've spent over six years of my life doing nothing but sleeping. So I think I can spare 18 months of productivity and hard work.
- According to the Huffington Post, about 69% of couples have an engagement lasting close to or over 18 months. So most people could get engaged before I leave, and I could be back in time for their weddings!
- I'm only going to have one birthday while I'm on my mission.
- My family has lived in Brazil for almost 18 months even though it seems like we moved here yesterday.
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