A new year starts, and although arbitrary, because every day, every second, every instant a new year starts, it is only on rare occasions we get to celebrate alltogether.

“New Year” is a reminder of the ephemeral nature of our selves. We get to transit this existence for a short and, crucially, an unkown amount of time. I’ve been fortunate to have outlived a lot of my ancestors. I am also fortunate I have lived at a time with resources and means to live a relatively peaceful and good existance. In summary, I am gratefulk for the life I lived, and I appreciate every instant of it.

This thinking has brought to me an increased awareness of my mortality. And, as a geek, I thought a progress bar is a good representation of our life journey. We have progress bars in lots of things: coffee machines, innumerable applications…why not life?

So I built a “Life Progress Bar”. It simply shows how much we have lived out of our expected life expectancy. In the US, it is about 82 years. For me, it looks like this:

2/3’s of my (relatively optimistic) life is gone…forever. If things go well, I’ve got 1/3 more to go. I’ve been running this for a couple weeks, and it’s been a great reminder to make the most of every day, every hour.