Some mark time by a watch on their wrist or a calendar on the wall.

Me I just look out my bedroom window once a month if the sky is clear or visit one of my favorite places in town and look up. I measure my days by a light in the evening sky…another full moon.

At 74, you don’t count time the way you used to.

When you’re young, time is measured in loud, important units: promotions, birthdays with candles that require a fire permit, anniversaries, new cars, new mistakes. Time is a thing you spend like you’ve got a limitless supply and a generous return policy.

Then one day you wake up and realize time has quietly switched from being a budget to being an inventory.

And I, being the sensible and emotionally well-adjusted man that I am, have chosen to count mine by full moons.

Yes. Full moons.

Not “years.” Too broad. Not “months.” Too ordinary. Not “doctor’s appointments,” although that would be extremely accurate and frankly depressing.

No, I’ve decided to mark the passing of my remaining life by asking the only reasonable question a 74-year-old man can ask at 2:17 a.m. when sleep has wandered off and left him with his thoughts:

It’s natures free calendar. The Moon….. and as you know, it is dependable…unlike knees…unlike memory…unlike a jump shot that left me years ago.

A full moon shows up roughly once a month, steady as a metronome, silently judging us all from above. It doesn’t care if you’re having a good year. It doesn’t care if your back hurts. It doesn’t care if you’ve shoveled 24 inches of snow.

It just does its moon thing.

And I watch it.

I watch it the way a person watches a train schedule when they know they won’t be taking many more trips.

How many Full Moons do I have left?

Let’s be tasteful but honest. At 74, I’m not exactly shopping for a “long-term unlimited plan.” Statistically speaking, I’m somewhere in the part of life where the warranty has expired and everyone is pretending not to notice.

So, say—purely for argument’s sake—I make it to 84. That’s ten years.

Ten years is about 120 full moons….I doubt that could ever see them all…I maybe asleep or it’s cloudy.

If I make it to 94? That’s about 240 full moons.

If I make it to 104, then congratulations to me, and also: who is keeping me alive and why?

But you see what happens when you start thinking in full moons? The future stops feeling infinite and starts feeling… countable.

Not in a dramatic “oh no” way.

More like: Oh. So that’s what we’re working with.

It’s not morbid. It’s… efficient.

People hear this and assume it’s gloomy. Like I’m sitting by the window wearing a cardigan made of regret, waiting for the moon to come collect me.

Not quite.

I’m not counting full moons because I’m obsessed with death. I’m counting full moons because I’m honest about time.

Time is no longer an abstract idea. It’s a sequence. A finite series of events we try to remember.

And for some reason, that makes me pay attention.

It makes me remember the things that still matter:

a good conversation that doesn’t feel like “catching up” but like being known
morning coffee that isn’t rushed
music that sends me backward in time and makes me feel, briefly, invincible
A Guinness on St Patrick’s Day. … or any day..beer is still good
A day Last Thursday Night with friends that I love
Watching a Notre Dame football game with my dad who can’t enjoy a 28 to 3 win because they gave up a field goal…sigh!
the taste of something I used to eat as a kid
the particular hush that falls over the world when the moon is full and the day has finally stopped talking

There’s also something wonderfully freeing about the moon.

It doesn’t demand goals.

It doesn’t send motivational quotes.

The moon isn’t interested in my productivity. It just appears—huge, calm, unapologetically itself—like it’s reminding me that existing is enough.

At 74, that’s a message I can use.

Because I have spent decades thinking I needed to earn my life through accomplishment and usefulness and being the guy who fixes things and solves problems and carries the groceries without being asked.

Now I’m learning to be someone who can simply sit outside and watch the sky.

What do I do with the Full Moons I’ve got left?

I don’t have a bucket list. Bucket lists are for people who want to turn their remaining time into a chore chart.

But I do have a simple intention:

See the moon when it’s full.
Laugh whenever possible.
Forgive more quickly.
Go outside more than I think I need to.
Stop saving good things “for later”

And when the next full moon arrives—and it will, whether I’m ready or not—I’ll look up and think:

Well. …there’s one more….If I am lucky I will get another one.

My Full Moon