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via Words, Words, Words by teresa on 1/7/10
Is it rude to return to one's blog without doing the requisite New Year post, when such posts are undoubtedly all over the place and we're already at the 6th day of January? Hope not. Moving on…My good friend gave me a calendar in August of last year. It was one of those spiral notebook style desk calendars with only the date printed and not the year. I keep this calendar on my makeshift nightstand, and on New Year's Day I flipped all the pages back and started anew. It was a physical epiphany.
Flipping those calendar pages symbolized for me that any new beginning only puts the past behind us; it doesn't make it disappear. Of course, I know logically that the past does not disappear, but sometimes that's what we'd prefer. How much better would it be if our sadness, mistakes and embarrassments had never happened at all? So, we count down the best of it and say goodbye to the rest of it. So long, 2009, you ain't gotta go home, but you gotta get the hell out of here!
The calendar uses both sides of each page, so the reverse of each day is another day. This sparked another lesson for me, one that I'd heard many times before. My father says that wherever you are in life, at some moment in time you made an appointment to be there. As I look at both sides of each calendar page, I wonder how my days will be connected – how my determination in January will pay off in May or if my indiscretions in December will hurt me come April.
I am a huge fan of fresh starts, and whenever I wanted to make a change in my life I waited for the next beginning to, well, begin. I needed a new year or my birthday day (one's personal new year) or the first of the month or the start of a week. I told myself it was a cleaner start; I would have more resolve. However, until that start date I indulged in whatever behavior I was preparing to alter or relinquish. The cycle usually went like this: 1) make intention to change 2) set date to implement change 3) change for a short time 4) relapse and bemoan 5) repeat [eventually].
That didn't really work for me, so as of late whenever I've want to do something differently – I do it as soon as possible. This can range from immediately to tomorrow to the next opportunity to do so. So far, that's working out much better. I don't need a new year or a Monday or a whatever to change. We like to use the phrase "start from scratch" as if that is the very beginning – our "day 1" our new year – but it's not. By the time we're scratching, we've already been motivated to do so; something has already happened. So why not start from itch and get a head start on your fresh start?
Well, how do you like that? This turned into a New Year's post after all.
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