Expiration Dates

Everything in life has an expiration date – not just fruits and veggies and milk. And the expiration date varies from one thing to another. With foods, milk and eggs may be good for only a week or two, cheese may last 3 weeks in the fridge, juice a month or two, meat a few days in the fridge, while other things like peanut butter, jelly, and other condiments might last a year or more. And if you put something in the freezer, it will stay good for much longer, frozen meat might last 6 months or more in the freezer and still be good to eat later. Notice how lots of these things have a very short life span or a rather long one.

Now, this isn’t meant to be an article on food and when you should throw out stuff. I’m certainly no expert on that. I mean, I generally like to cook and think I’m pretty good at it, but it has been over 2 months since I’ve cooked anything that didn’t involve a microwave, and that doesn’t count as cooking.

So, what does an expiration date have to do with travel or relationships, the themes of this blog? Well, the various things that consume our lives, from our acquaintance to our TV interests, sports interests, travel interests, romantic interests, even sometimes work interests, all eventually reach a point where we’re no longer interested. Or at least, it reaches a point where the interest hits a plateau. We may not know when the interest actually fades away, for it may be in old age when we start to lose some of our critical thinking abilities.

Anyway, in life, not unlike food, if something is good enough to us or interesting enough to us to last a couple of months, it’s much more likely to last a lot longer. For personal interests, 3 months seems to me to be the cutoff between just getting caught up in the hype of something and genuinely wanting something/someone to be part of your life. I can’t think of many things that I’ve wanted to do for more than 3 months and not be stuck on it (or want to be stuck on it) for much longer. These passing interests and mild crushes tend to fade away within a couple of months.

Let’s take, for example, my various little computer/internet interests over the past few years. I’ve had a couple of blogs before that didn’t last. I once tried to write my own newspaper/newsletter to send out to friends and acquaintances, which lasted about 5 issues. I tried being an online math tutor, which lasted about 3 months. I got interested in online poker, which lasted about 2 months. I got interested in Scrabble Cubes on World Winner. For a couple of months, that took all my free time at home. I got interested in bejeweled for awhile, too. I got interested in scrabble online. That interest has come and gone for years. Interest in bridge online has come and gone a lot as well, but has basically been the only online thing that has been in my life for good for a long time. And this blog as well as my bridge blogs are getting to be close to a year old with very regular updates.

I could extend this with examples of personal relationships, friendships, food interests, travel fascinations, places I want to live. Basically, wait until 3 months have passed of trying something or thinking about making a big change before passing judgment. It is a fine line but I think 3 months is a good guideline for when you can tell the difference in a whim and a serious interest.