It’s a new year, and not just any year, either. We get an extra day!
This is way more intense than that extra hour you get at the end of Daylight Saving – this is an extra 24 hours.
Something about that feels like pressure. I mean, you have an entire extra day to not live up to the unrealistic expectations you set for yourself on December 31, 2019.
Statistically, with or without the extra day, the majority of people will give up on all of those wonderful New Year’s resolutions by April – at the latest.
I don’t want to be a downer at the start of the New Year. I should wait until at least … say … March to be a Negative Nancy.
There is something so captivating about a fresh, new anything, especially a year, even more especially, a year plus one extra day.
Why does Leap Year even exist?
According to Wikipedia, Leap Year is here to keep the calendar synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year. Simply put, every four years, due to some complicated math that I neither understand nor want to get into, we tack an extra day on to the shortest month, February, to keep the seasons from getting out of whack.
It’s also known as an intercalary year or bissextile year, but the whole “leap” thing sounds like so much more fun, doesn’t it?
What I think this really means is that, going back to the stats on keeping New Year’s resolutions, you are more likely to give up on your pledge to be healthier, richer, smarter, in better shape, etc. in March, rather than April, on account of things being offset by a day and all.
This gets me back to the original topic, not counting the New Year, which is about how miserably most of us stick to pledges (with or without solemn oaths) to do things that are (technically) productive and good for us.
Rather than getting all depressed about this universal truth, why not rejoice in the fact that if you can’t keep your resolution, that means you are a normal, healthy human being. Far be it from this gal to dissuade you from getting more exercise or eating more vegetables. In fact, I say, go for it.
The problem is, just getting better at something doesn’t seem to be enough for most people. We want to be best.
“Best” can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Whose best are you trying to live up to?
Captain Keto, or whichever diet guru you may follow’s “best” may be way more than you should be biting off.
Chew on this: how about doing your best.
If you can honestly look in the mirror at the end of the day and know you did your personal best, that’s really all that anyone, especially you, should ask of yourself.
Now, what are you going to do with that extra 24 hours in 2020? How about making the best of it – your best.
