I recently stumbled across an article entitled, The average American will spend 43 days of his life on hold. 43 days!!! This number is derived from the idea that Average Joe spends between 10-20 minutes per week on hold, adding up to approximately 43 days over an average lifetime.

**Warning: Shameless business plug ensues! Please Hold. . .

Obviously, here at FluentStream Technologies we have an average hold time of only 7 seconds, so we are marginally contributing to this startling number. FluentStream provides a variety of failover tools including geographically dispersed infrastructure and built-in disaster recovery, promising 99.99% service uptime 24x7x365. Additionally, we offer features that increase productivity and reduce wait times. For example, Queue Call Backs allow callers to leave the queue and receive a call when the next agent becomes available. Escape From Queue allows callers to be removed from the queue and get re-routed to another option in the system.  So if anything, we are acing our civic duty of ensuring 43 days doesn’t become 44 days.

**Now back to your featured content.

The MarketWatch article sparked a curious thought: Theoretically, if we were gifted 43 free, no-strings-attached days back from the call queue universe, we’d have to use them wisely. It would be nothing shy of disrespectful to the telephony gods to spend this gift by continuing to grocery shop, pay bills, and shave legs. Think of what you could conquer in 61,920 minutes!

Assuming these days are, in fact, theoretical, they do not bear consequence to your livelihood or well being. Therefore, we are thinking BIG. Here’s how some of us from the FluentStream team would recommend spending 43 ‘free’ days:

1. Participate in the biggest food fight in the entire world. Details here.
2. Get into a yellow taxi and yell “Follow that car!” See what happens and where you wind up.
3. Pending appropriate levels of inebriation, get married to a complete stranger in Vegas. Prefacing this activity with prenup/annulment research is highly recommended.
4. Imagine a place where the culture is so starkly different than your own, it makes your heart race and your palms sweat just thinking about it. Don’t visit this place. Travel to this place; talk to strangers, try new food, challenge your idea of normativity and what it means to be human. Pro tip: If there is any signage that requires you to keep you hands and feet in the vehicle at all times, you’re doing it wrong.
5. Ride a horse on the beach. Maybe at sunset. Maybe with an attractive person. Maybe it will be as majestic as I imagine. Maybe it will just be a fetid and inefficient way to travel the beach. Only one way to find out.
6. Eat like the kings and queens that you are.
7. Fly first class on Korean Air, like this guy did, and eat, drink, and take ALL THE THINGS.
8. Become pen pals with someone. Relearn how to write sans spell check. Dare I ask: How’s your cursive looking lately?
9. If you are in a conversation that you really don’t want to be in, just say “unsubscribe” and walk away.
10. Purchase a VIP table with bottle service at a popular club. I want to do this strictly for sociological purposes. How does it feel to be that guy? What goes on behind the impressively restrictive velvet rope? Most importantly, what is it like to spend thousands of dollars on one evening of Vodka, dubstep, and jealous onlookers?
11. Spend a day experiencing how it feels like to float in space with these cool dudes. Or get really extreme and go to actual space with these other cool dudes.
12. Spend a day volunteering on a farm. Harvest, prepare, and cook all the food you eat for the day. Learn how time- and labor-intensive it is to create what we eat off our dinner plates. Let this experience bleed into your life and color how you view and value a warm meal.
13. Attend a service at a place of worship that is different than your own.
14. Spend the morning in New York City and the evening in Chicago, eating as much pizza as you can stomach along the way, and PUT THIS DEBATE TO REST ONCE AND FOR ALL.
15. Rent out an event space and fill it with puppies and kittens.  Then just kick it.
16. Walk into your favorite store and buy ANYTHING you want. Cashmere socks? You need them. A $42.00 bar of grass-fed, organic, ethically-raised soap made out of Tahitian goat milk and sea salt from the Lost World of Atlantis. Yeah, you need that too.
17. Crash a wedding with a friend or date. Make up a backstory. Dress in black tie. Give a toast if you are feeling especially daring. Really commit.
18. Start a successful slow clap. Honestly, how good would that feel?
19. Finally, there’s zorbing. Full disclosure, I have actually done this here and rivals the top spot for the most weird and wonderful experience ever. Imagine hopping into a giant bouncy ball with another human and rolling yourselves down a mountain. DOWN A MOUNTAIN. WHO DOES THAT? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!? It means you are guaranteed 15 minutes of completely uninhibited child-like laughter, the alarming ambiguity of not knowing whose limbs are whose as arms and legs seemingly fly all around you, and the strange sensation of being reborn as you exit head-first out a small opening from arguably the safest and coziest place on earth. I TOLD YOU IT WAS WEIRD. It is also great and I fully recommend it.

How would you spend your 43 days? Share your thoughts below!