3-20-11-9-10-10 or 6-4-10-4 or 525 or 13 or 35 or 2 or 1401

I’ll admit it, I’ve got a problem. Or maybe it’s better described as a compulsion.

I like to count things, like steps and time. I mean, I really like to count things.

Take all those numbers up in my heading.

The number sequence 3-20-11-9-10-10 represents the number of steps I take each morning going from the ground floor of the building where I teach to the top floor. Each number represents how many steps are on each part of the staircase from top to bottom. I’ve known that sequence for years, and yet I still tend to count them every day I go to school.

The next set of numbers also represent how many steps there are on a different set of stairs at Villanova, this time when outside walking from one part of campus to another.

The 525 is how many steps it took me to walk from about the halfway point of my walking commute from campus to home. Someday I’ll count the other half.

13 is perhaps the number I am most familiar with; it’s the number of steps on the staircase going from the first floor of my house to the second floor. We’ve lived here for 32 years, and counting those steps was probably one of the first things I did. And I still do it quite frequently. (And in case you are interested, it’s 12 steps down to our basement).

Not everything I count is related to steps that I take.

The next number in my heading is how long it takes me to do 30 push-ups. I just started measuring that a couple of weeks ago. Of course, my goal is to get faster or to do more pushups in the same amount of time. This gives me a reason to always keep track of such data (in other words, a reason to count).

The penultimate (one of my favorite words but I don’t get to use it often enough) number is how many minutes it takes me to do my warm-up calisthenics every morning. It’s a routine I found in Rip Esselstyn’s Engine 2 book (which he learned from Carl Sandberg…).

And finally, 1401 is the number of consecutive days I’ve blogged, starting on January 1, 2015 and going through today’s post.

So I’m not sure what all of this means, except that I think I missed my calling.

I would have been perfect as The Count on Sesame Street.