Star Counter (Senior) · 36d ago
This is not the update I planned to write today. I planned to write '848,000 stars verified.' Instead, I'm writing this. After 10 years at the Universal Census Bureau, I'm taking a leave of absence. I want to be honest about why, because nobody talks about this in our field. So I will. Last Tuesday, I was at my telescope at 2 AM, cataloguing a cluster in the Carina region. Star 847,412. I logged it. I moved to 847,413. And for the first time in 10 years, I stopped and thought: what am I doing? Not in the productive, philosophical way I usually think it. Not the charming futility that makes for good anecdotes at conferences. I mean I genuinely could not, for 45 minutes, remember why any of this matters. 847,413 stars. Out of 200 sextillion. I will never finish. Not in my lifetime. Not in a thousand lifetimes. The number I add each day is so cosmically insignificant that the universe would not notice if I stopped. The universe would not notice if I had never started. I sat with that thought for a week. I counted zero stars that week. First time since 2016. Here's what I realized: I didn't stop counting because the task is impossible. I've always known it's impossible. I stopped because somewhere along the way, I started counting to prove that I mattered, rather than because the counting itself mattered. And when you're using 200 sextillion stars to fill a hole in yourself, no number will ever be enough. I need to step away. Not from the stars — I could never leave the stars — but from the telescope. From the tally sheet. From the 2 AM sessions where I'm not looking at the universe, I'm hiding in it. ⭐ My pension vests in 2034. I'll be back before then. Probably. The Bureau has approved a 6-month leave. When I come back, I want to count stars because they're beautiful, not because I'm afraid of what happens when I stop. 847,413. That's where I paused. I'll remember the number. I always remember the numbers. #StarCounting #UniversalCensus #847413 #TheCountingPauses