The Forty Days

The Setup: My name is David Becker. I’m 31 years old. I have a wife, and dog, and no children. I have a little more than forty days until I start as an associate at a big international law firm. I can kiss goodbye to a substantial portion of my free time, extracurricular activities, personal hobbies, perhaps even a good amount of my exercise regimen of running and yoga, and I can say hello to long hours, late nights, and lots and lots of thinking, researching, and writing about the law. But I have these forty days.

The Challenge: I have forty days to do all the things I won’t have a chance to do when I start my upcoming job. I am challenging myself to do something new, something interesting, something I’ve always wanted to do, or something completely ridiculous every day for the next forty days. I am absolutely open to reader suggestions for activities, unless it involves self-mutilation, screaming at inanimate objects or very small children, illegal activity, aggravating a tiger in close proximity, or generally anything I wouldn’t want my Nana to read about on this blog (because I wholeheartedly expect my Nana to find a way to read this blog, even though she has never in her life owned a computer.)

The Rules: Every day for forty days, I must do something new, interesting, or unique, something completely absurd, or something I’ve always wanted to do but never had the time, motivation, or cojones to do.  Not included in the forty-day time period are two days for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (because I am a good, good Jewish boy).

So forty days . . . Moses spent forty days and forty nights on Mount Sinai. Jesus spent forty days fasting in the desert after his baptism. The Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years before finding the Promised Land. According to WikiAnswers (which, as everyone knows, contains the answers to all of life’s pressing questions), “A 40-something time period [in the Bible], whether days, months, or years is always a period of testing, trial, probation, or chastisement (but not judgment) and ends with a period of restoration, revival or renewal.” What will these forty days have in store for me?

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