Things I Described as Being “Like a Full-Time Job” and How Much Time I Actually Spent on Them

Keeping My Apartment Clean: Thirty minutes per week, though somehow my apartment remains very dirty.

Maintaining My Times Crossword-Puzzle Streak: It’s insane that they expect their readers both to be able to afford a subscription and to have time to complete the puzzle. Doing so takes at least one hour per day. (Thank God for the guy who publishes all the answers on his blog at 7 A.M.)

My Skincare Routine: One hour per evening, but it also requires about half the salary from a full-time job to pay for it.

Attending Weddings: Six weekends per year. I’m quite popular!

Unsubscribing from E-mails: Forty-five pointless minutes per day. Getting off of mailing lists is our modern-day Sisyphean torment.

Using Hinge: Seven minutes per day, on a romantically productive day.

Responding to Text Messages: Fifty minutes per day, plus another hour if you count sending screenshots of texts from Hinge dates to all of my group threads.

Looking Through the List of People Who Watched My Instagram Stories: Three hours per day. It wouldn’t be such a chore if Instagram would just let me see which exes watched them.

Laughing at Men’s “Jokes”: Add another thirty minutes per day to the seven I’m already spending on Hinge.

Watering My Plants: Twenty-five seconds every two months—I only have one plant and it’s a cactus. Still, the burden of maintaining life weighs heavily on me!

Looking Reasonably Presentable Before I Leave for Work: Forty-five minutes per day.

Leaving the House for Work: One minute per day in terms of the actual transition; three hours per day in terms of preparing myself emotionally for the transition.

Wondering Why I Left the House: At least eight hours per weekday. More if I’m out of the house for longer. Only thirty seconds per day on weekends, when my full-time job is not leaving the house.

Keeping Up with the News: Five minutes per day, plus another six hours per day if we count Twitter. Plus another eight hours per day spent feeling horrible about what I just read!

Keeping My Boss Happy: Two hours per day, and this actually is my full-time job.

Getting Through the Day: Unsurprisingly, this takes all day.

Convincing Everyone that Everything Is Fine: Also a 24/7 obligation.

Not Sinking into a Permanent Depression: Eight days a week.

Distracting Myself from Classic Existential Questions Such as “What Is the Point?” and “Why Are We Here?”: We need many more hours in the day.

Suffering the Pain of Existence: Just kidding, no we don’t.

Answering the Question “What Do You Do?”: What don’t I do?! I have two dozen full-time jobs! I’m absolutely, irrevocably exhausted. ♦