Why isn’t Leap Year a bigger holiday?
If you think about it, Leap Year is the most unique of our standard holiday line up. Every other major holiday: Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s day, and Halloween, are annual events. They come around with great fan-fare every year. Leap Year only occurs every 4 years, and yet it comes and goes with little notice. Shouldn’t we embrace the rarity of this holiday?
It’s the perfect opportunity to celebrate!
It takes the Earth 365.25 days to rotate around the sun. Instead of creating some convoluted calendar to account for partial days, we have decided to combine all those extra hours into one extra day every 4 years. Let me repeat that: WE HAVE AN EXTRA DAY! How cool is that? Think about how many times you found yourself wishing that you had more hours in the day, or more days in the week? Time is a valuable commodity, and once every four years we gather together all those extra hours to create one extra day.
Let’s make our extra day count.
Let’s turn Leap Year into a celebration of time. Think about all those “would do’s” and “could dos” that you have lamented not having time for. All the times you wished you had an extra day to visit family, or an extra hour to read a book. Over the course of 4 years you have been saving roughly 7 minutes a day to give you that extra time you longed for. Do you really want to waste it? Why not make that time count?
I’m creating a New Year’s Resolution.
I know my time is valuable, so I won’t be treating an extra day like a penny found in the gutter. Instead, I’m spending Leap Year like the amazing gift it is. I’m taking this time to set goals for myself to reach by my next Leap Year, and I’m using the day to work towards that goal. Where do I see myself in 4 years? I see myself living in a comfortable home, surrounded by family and friends, working a job I love, with a novel out on the shelves. My resolution is to live my life in a way that promotes healthy relationships with myself and my loved ones, and in a manner that brings me closer to my publishing goals. That may be a tall order, but unlike New Year’s resolutions I have more time to figure out the best strategy to make this happen. Instead of failing by February and completely abandoning my goal by March, I have wiggle room to make slow and steady progress.
How Am I making it happen?
I’m starting small. I’ve spent the last few days thinking about where I want to be in 4 years, and how to get there. A big part of my path is in having a supportive community around me. As Leap Year is a rare occurrence, and good friends area also precious and rare- a party was in order to celebrate both. I invited over a handful of my closest friends for a dinner and movie night (We are watching Leap Year, the 2010 RomCom obviously). I’m hoping that as we relax over pizza and wine we can talk about our dreams, ambitions, and goals, and come up with some ways to make them come true.
Bringing Mae Flowers 