four thousand weeks is the average human lifespan

don't wait for a birthday to revisit that Mary Oliver one wild and precious life poem

yes there will be chocolate cake.

Four thousand weeks. The average human lifespan. There’s no use pretending I’m bad at math.

The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief.

~~Oliver Burkeman

If that number startles you, I’m with you. I’m not making it up, I learned about it through this book. According to the average life expectancy, when I hit my birthday this coming Friday I’ll be down to 618.8 weeks.

Yikes. On second thought I might not be sharing my cake.

About that post I wrote for Spoon & Pod last week: it took two days of writing, revising, and formatting with the photos. Not a lot of time as far as writing projects go—I have others over at my two main Substack publications (wild rivers and The Next Batch Bean to Bar), that have taken much more time.

Still. It was time. From my life, and yes, I’m the one who had the idea that writing about baking and chocolate as a chocolate maker might be interesting or informative, or inspiring. Also, throw in my quirky love for when chocolate shows up where we least expect it, like this post:

The long and short of it is that it sucks to write and then get crickets in return. I am confident enough in my writing to plop it down here in all its naked glory, assuming if folks subscribe they’ve had a hint of my voice/style/topics enough to want to read more.

Anyway, even if I could afford to write for free, the question I ask myself is can I afford to write for crickets? If my accountant were a subscriber she’d read the free part and keel over, then send me an email about how living at the poverty line is going to rear it’s scary The Last of Us head more frequently as the remaining weeks of my “one wild and precious life” land in the rearview mirror.

So, no, it’s not fiscally wise for me to put effort into something I just give away. Which makes the sting of crickets even worse. Yet, here I am.

It’s my choice to pursue my version of a meaningful life, beelining off the beaten path to become a river guide instead of showing up for that grad degree I’d been aiming for (21 years = 1092 weeks). To strap my oars onto my car and head to law school at 35 (19 years as a guide = 988 weeks). To start a farm in Idaho for refugees on a few acres of sage brush with free seeds that were past their prime, plus two dumptruck loads of composted horse manure, and me with a wheelbarrow (if you think Idaho is an odd pick for welcoming people of color you would not be wrong); that was age 49 (short stint, 52 weeks). Teach myself bean to bar at age 54 because I needed a job and fell in love with cocoa beans, which made no sense: who starts a business with no money? Build that into a school, so make that 2 businesses built from scratch; 11 years = 572 weeks.

I’ve used 3380 of my 4000 weeks.

I took those leaps in pursuit of what I believed in, was drawn to, couldn’t get out of my mind. This is, not coincidentally, exactly why I write and why I’ve been a writer my whole life. Age 6: wrote, illustrated, and self-published (on my Dad’s work Xerox machine; you young folks can google what that is) my first book: Mac and His Dog, (How did I intuit that female protagonists are a harder sell?) about a boy in search of a lost horse. I wrote my way into scholarships to a university my family could not afford. Wrote a thing that won a big thing. Graduated (see: river career) and wrote for myself. Rowed my last river trip at 40 (launched my 99th Grand Canyon trip on my birthday while 6 months pregnant), and then wrote like my life depended on it after the baby arrived because I had never even held a baby, much less imagined I’d have one.

I stuffed that writing into a file that my sister snuck out and sent to an agent. Got a bunch of high-praise rejections. My fav: too ahead of her time, which = won’t sell. If you know me from chocolate go ahead, laugh. I’ve been laughing about this until I cry, a long, long time.

Being a bird out on the limb alone, singing and wondering if anyone is listening, is part of forging our own unique creative path. That is, when we’re trying, not just to add to the more heap of what’s piling up all around us, but to offer something unexpected.

last week’s post goes into the serious ouch file.

The point isn’t the 54 but that 54 people let me know my writing mattered. When Ina Garten was recently asked what her life’s purpose was, she didn’t say “to have a million followers” or “to get thousands of likes,” “to write a bunch of cookbooks and be on TV,” or even, “to be rich and influential.” She said, “My life’s purpose is to have mattered. To matter.”

There was also this which is my Just keep doing what you’re doing, Mackenzie because it matters reminder when my confidence gets a wobble. Writing isn’t easy. Falling off the lonely branch is easy AF. Good writers make writing seem effortless, but even they know it’s like poking a sharp stick in our eye. Those of us finding our voice and footing need all the encouragement we can get, which is where that ❤️ comes in.

Even if I’m not spending all (any, some?) of my 618.8 weeks left writing Spoon & Pod. Heck, who’s to say it’s even 618 weeks? None of us knows when our time here to do what truly matters is up. If I have thoughts that fit here, I’ll share them.

I’m thinking of it like pruning: cutting off a branch that’s going nowhere can lead to new growth (and in my case, time for my other writing). I have a lot of writing I want to do. I hope you understand, if I only drop these posts from time to time. Mostly, I hope you found something here you liked.

Thank you for reading to the end,

Mackenzie