My wife and I got married one year ago today, on 11/27/2019. In honor of this very special day, I wanted to write a special short post showing that, in some sense, we’ve actually been married longer than one year.
There are 365 days in a year (not including leap years). Of those 365, roughly 260 are weekdays. If not for the pandemic, we probably would have spent 3-4 waking hours together per weekday (0 in the morning and 3-4 after we got home from work/school). Of the remaining 105 non-weekdays, we might have spent 9-10 waking hours together. For one year of marriage, without considering small exceptions here and there, we’d thus expect roughly 10 * 105 + 4 * 260 = 2090 waking hours, or 87 waking days, spent together.
Because of COVID-19, we’ve spent roughly 3/4 of our marriage quarantined in lockdown. Instead of 3-4 waking hours together on weekdays, we’ve been spending roughly 12-14 waking hours together per weekday during these unprecedented times. Assuming that we also spent a bit more time together on weekends, say 4 additional hours per day (totaling 13-14 hours), one year of marriage has produced approximately 1/4 * 2090 + 3/4 * (365 * 14) = 4355 waking hours (181 waking days) spent together. While the math is admittedly not entirely rigorous, this past year seems to have actually equated to over 2 years of waking marriage!
This calculation obviously does not take everything into account, but when I think about it, I realize how grateful I am for having spent all this time with my wife over the past year and look forward to many more happy, healthy years ahead. To Alexandra, happy 1 (2?) year anniversary; to everyone else, happy Thanksgiving!