When I tell you we just hit the 100-day mark of 2026 (April 10th), what thought comes to mind?

A) Where is the manager? Who can I talk to about a refund for Q1?
B) I guess I earned an “I stayed alive” ribbon.
C) I’ve been intoxicated with aliveness for 100 days, baby!
D) When did it get to be 2026?

If you answered A or B, while I’m sorry it apparently hasn’t been a banner year thus far, it’s all okay. We’re not here to interrogate what went down (unless you do need to interrogate that your first 100 days were total trash because you were on a bender, for example. Maybe there’s a lesson worth learning in there?). But for the most part, let’s not cry over spilled margaritas milk. Let’s focus instead on the next 265 days of the year.

You have an impressive chunk of the year left to make it worth your while (unless you die) (which is statistically unlikely to happen) (unless you’re over 80, in which case, keep living like you mean it out there until your last breath, Sparky!).

All we have are an indeterminate number of tomorrows. Yesterday—mildly worthy of reflection, sure—is dead and gone. Today is where the action is! And tomorrow is where the “TBD” excitement lives. It’s potent, the potential it holds, isn’t it?

I count how many Mondays we have left (you can use the mortality math calculator here), not how many we’ve lived. Birthdays do a decent job of confirming how long we’ve been alive (*snore*). I want us to tap into what’s left! What’s in store!

These were my dead (used) Mondays a while ago. I now have even more dead Mondays behind me.

I once counted how many Mondays I had lived and then said, “yeah so what?” Let’s calculate the Mondays till the morgue, people!

So if days 1 – 100 of 2026 were a bust… or a bore… or a bother… or a blast… who cares? Days 101 – 365 can be astonishingly alive if we design them to be that way. We have agency to live them on purpose, with passion and enthusiasm and aliveness and so many truffle fries.

No pressure but also: a little bit of pressure? Not an anxious, breathe-into-a-paper-bag pressure, just a gentle, here-hold-this-against-the-gaping-wound-of-your-mortality pressure.

Is it a full-time job, this becoming an alive person thing, this “living like you mean it” thing? I don’t know. Maybe. For most of us, probably not—because we already have jobs and we’re busy and sometimes tired. But it does need to be a part time job, this conscious tending to life. Here’s what we do know: it sure as shit can’t be a volunteer gig. If we show up uncommitted, life will be bland and we will die listless deaths, wondering why we didn’t go to the trouble of trying to wring more out of it before we were tossed into the crematorium.

So. What lies ahead for you, my Very Much Alive (For Now) Friend?

Let’s gooooooo! (Meant to be said like “go,” not “goo.”)

Don’t be dead out there. The rest of 2026 is just begging to be lived.