The Time I Spend Peeing

I drink a lot of water, so I spend a lot of time peeing. Stay with me, I promise this is going somewhere. Let’s say I pee 5 times a day and I spend an average of 4 minutes in the bathroom every time. That means I spend 20 minutes a day, 140 minutes a week, 600 minutes a month, 7,300 minutes a year. Based on this estimate, if I live to 80 years old, I will spend 405 days peeing. That is so many days.

However, you rarely see people on TV or in movies peeing. Watching someone pee would be uncomfortable and boring and awkward, so you don’t see it. However, these characters are “real people”, or at least that’s what we’re made to pretend. So, you can assume that these people pee and stub their toes and have idle conversations and take the bus and get stuck in traffic. Sometimes you see these things happen, but often you don’t. You only see what’s relative to the plot. You see the big moments, because what we watch is more often than not about big moments. You watch weddings and divorces and fights and couples getting together and breaking up. You see details about natural disasters and wars and adventures. The moments full of passion and desperation. You don’t watch people pee.

In Hitch, Will Smith says, “Life is not the amount of breaths you take, it's the moments that take your breath away”. Which is a wonderful sentiment. I would love for that to be true, but I don’t believe it is. You could sit around your whole life waiting for big moments and forget how much life there is outside of those moments. Some of it seems mundane and yawn-worthy, but you need yawn-worthy moments. You need to pee.

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Why do you need yawn-worthy moments? Sometimes they’re essential stepping-stones. They’re the crappy job you work so you can get work experience for better jobs. They’re the long drive to a campsite where you have an amazing weekend. They’re the time spent shopping for the perfect present to give to someone. If you didn’t get work experience, if you didn’t drive, if you didn’t look for the present, you wouldn’t get the big moments that you crave.
Sometimes, you just need to get something done. You need to do the laundry and make dinner and do dishes and clean the bathroom. You need to run errands and go grocery shopping and fill the car with gas. Do you know how exhausting life would be if all of these mundane tasks were exciting? If every time you ran the dishwasher a marching band walked by? I would throw out my dishwasher.

I watch a lot of TV shows and movies, it’s a bit upsetting if I think of how much time I have committed to screens. And growing up I craved these big moments. For arguments in the rain and grand romantic gestures. I longed for drama and excitement because I thought that would make my life enjoyable. But it doesn’t.

I’ve had movie moments. I’ve had the big arguments and heartbreak and trauma and life-changing moments. I have fallen in love and had big romantic gestures and gone through life’s milestones. For nearly 22 years, I have sought out the moments I’m supposed to want, and I’m going to let you know they’re really fucking overrated.

​And maybe I’m just not a “big moments” kind of person. Maybe I wasn’t meant to fall in love in a house swap (The Holiday) or give someone a flash mob (Friends with Benefits) or fight a t-rex (Jurassic Park)…okay, that last one was a bit out of left field but you get my point. Maybe those big moments are for someone else. But I’m equally as content sitting alone at home in pajamas, eating microwave nachos and writing this post. Microwave nachos are fucking awesome and this is the first time in weeks I’ve had time alone to myself in the house.
Life shouldn’t feel like a movie because it’s not. You’re allowed to have movie moments, a beautiful wedding and crazy parties and that upside-down kiss from the Tobey Maguire Spiderman movie. But remember to revel in the smaller moments. And I think I like it better that way. I don’t mind commuting, I enjoy taking naps, and sometimes I just need to pee.
 
From me, with love, to you,
-Victoria