How I Accidentally Became Obsessed With Counting Days
Okay, so here’s the dumbest thing: last Tuesday night, I was trying to figure out how many days it was until my friend’s wedding. Like, a real date, circled on my crappy freebie calendar from the car mechanic. My brain just short-circuited trying to count the weeks and leftover days. Felt stupid. Kept losing track. Was this really hard for just me?
Obviously annoyed, I started poking around online the next morning. Saw this question pop up everywhere – “Where will you be [X] days from today?” People talking about vacations, project deadlines, visa applications. But nobody seemed to have a simple, physical way to just see it. Apps require opening your phone and clicking, calendars are monthly chunks. I wanted instant, dumb-guy visual.
Then it hit me. Dirt simple. Stupid simple. What if I just built a sliding scale? Like a ruler, but for days? Decided to try making one after lunch. Grabbed stuff lying around:
- A thick piece of cardboard from an Amazon box
- A plain white printer paper scrap
- Scissors
- Sharpie marker
- Ruler (borrowed it from my kid’s pencil case)
- Single hole punch
- Old shoelace
First, I measured the cardboard. Cut it to about the length of my forearm. That felt manageable. Then, the boring part: using the ruler and the Sharpie to draw tiny little marks down the very edge of the cardboard piece. Every. Single. Mark. For one hundred days. One mark = one day. Labeled the start with “TODAY” in big, dumb letters. Labeled the 50th mark “50”. Labeled the very end “100”.
Next, took the white paper scrap. Cut a narrow strip, same length as the cardboard. Then the real trick: cut a small rectangle out of the middle of that paper strip. Big enough to see one single mark on the cardboard underneath, plus maybe the marks just before and after it. Kinda like a viewing window. Felt janky.
Laid the white paper strip precisely over the marked cardboard strip. Poked holes through both strips right at the center of each end, using the hole punch. Threaded the shoelace through both holes and tied knots on the ends. Kinda loose, so the paper could slide smoothly over the cardboard underneath. Took a couple tries to get the tension right – too tight didn’t slide, too loose wobbled.
Okay, assembly done. Time for the test drive. Today is June 24th. My actual problem: friend’s wedding is September 15th. Needed to count days to that. Slide the stupid white paper window. Slide… slide… slide… BAM. The 83-day mark lines up perfectly inside my little viewing rectangle. Marked that spot on the paper slider with a tiny dot and wrote “Wedding Day! (Sep 15)”.
It worked! And it took like 25 minutes total, most of that spent drawing tiny ticks. The beauty? Instant answers. Wondered about vacation? Slide: boom, 42 days away. Doctor’s appointment? Slide: 17 days. Didn’t need my phone charging or internet. Didn’t need to flip calendar pages. Just shove the paper along the shoelace tracks until the number lines up.
Left it on my desk. Every morning now, after coffee, I slide it one notch to the left. Marks off yesterday. Boom. Window shows today’s new date automatically. And I can instantly see any future date just by finding its day count and lining it up. Stupid. Simple. Ugly cardboard, probably won’t last forever. But for seeing where I’ll be 83 days from today? Honestly works better than squinting at my phone.
Why 83 days? Why not 100? Dunno. Felt right. Probably will doodle some doodles on it later.
