outside
Saw a post on Twitter in which someone logged how many times they went outside (among other activities) in 2022, and it made me think, how many times do I go outside in a year?
- On a typical day, I go outside exactly once for my daily walk to the train station and back. On rare occasions due to inclement weather, I might not walk as far as the station, but I always go outside. So that’s 365 right there.
- On office days, I typically go outside six times: (1) walking from home to the train station; (2) walking from the train station to work; (3) getting lunch; (4) getting an afternoon coffee/tea/smoothie; (5) walking from work to the train station; (6) walking from the train station home.
- Gonna estimate this covers 45 days a year, taking into account vacations and my boss occasionally letting us fully work from home due to weather or holiday season.
- Common household situations:
- I debated whether to count taking out the trash. It’s technically outside, but not that outside (less than half a block away). It’s also hard to tabulate because I don’t take out trash on a regular schedule (just when one or more trash cans are full) and I sometimes, but not always, bundle it with my daily walk. For simplicity’s sake I’m just not going to count it.
- I’m also not counting going out to the curb to pick up grocery deliveries. Too trivial.
- Uncommon situations:
- If I’m accompanying roommate to an appointment, it goes home > uber > train station > uber > doctor > uber > train station > uber > home. Takes up several hours for a 15-minute visit. Pain in the ass. I’m going to arbitrarily tabulate this as going outside twice (once when going to the appointment, and once when going home).
- I visit my parents every few months (maybe around five times a year?) and those days tend to be filled with a lot of small errands: shopping, haircuts, etc. A whole bunch of parking lot hops. I’m going to condense all this and say I go outside an average of once a day (i.e., same as normal).
Taking all that into account, I go outside approximately 594 times a year, provided we maintain our current hybrid schedule. The tally would be a lot higher if I counted literally every time I stepped outside.