Does anyone ever find the idea of counting to be somewhat ominous?

No, really. Think about it.

At no point in counting do you ever get where you’re going. You count up, you count down. Up is to the vagueness of infinity, down is to the false floor of zero.

I once watched someone count up the steps down a ladder.

A medic counts compressions of CPR.

On TV we pretend we can quantify life by a finite system of breaths and heartbeats. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, breath…

Some people count calories; some people count steps. The real multi-taskers somehow do both at the same time. Ten thousand and one, ten thousand and two…

Physicists can count themselves into conundrums, then right back out. They may be better off counting the times they wipe the dust from the chalkboards to start back at that beautifully simple “zero” all over again.

Schrodinger counted cats. Or deaths. We’re still not entirely sure which. Let’s not open that bag today. One, zero, one, zero…

We spent a lot of time this year talking about counting votes. Counting votes is all fine and dandy, but I still like to believe votes count, themselves.

269, 270, 271…

This isn’t some dark retrospective, it’s an ode. I honor those who choose to count the stars - even knowing they’ll never finish their task.

That’s hope.

That’s fearless.

One, two, three…