The Vanishing 29th
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There was a day last week that shouldn’t have happened.
Not because of an unexpected chain of events, although those certainly do come around. Rather, a blip on the celestial calendar. It only comes every four years because that’s how long it takes to accumulate enough hours, minutes, and seconds to warrant the addition of a day.
“That day, with the vaguely optimistic but also childlike name of “leap” day, has an awful lot on its shoulders.”
That day, with the vaguely optimistic but also youthful moniker of “leap” day, has a lot on its shoulders. There’s a quite a bit of pressure on those twenty-four-hours that only exist every now and then. It’s also younger than the rest of the days of the year - it only exists every 1 in 4. Where the other dates plod along, waiting their turn, and then along comes this interloper. This youngster. This hero that says “I’ll make things right,” then does, and then disappears.
Those twenty-four hours bring everything back into balance at least for our human perception – I don’t think the field mice scurrying under the snow or the moose laying on top of it give a hoot about February 29th. It’s a day that does exist consistently but intermittently; it comes along only to go into hiding afterwards. Maybe that’s why it’s fresh enough to perform the re-alignment. To do Atlassian work but with a four-year breather.
As with any bonus day, there’s a need to make it special. This is a pressure I feel alongside everyone else who has experienced a holiday, birthday, unexpected time off work. It’s like the actions on that bonus day will reflect what kind of person I am and I’m scared it’s not the kind of person I want to be. So I need to do the person-I-want-to-be kinds of things in order to have a better chance at actually being that person. So, no pressure at all to jam all those worries, activities, and insecurities into a single day that has greater import than the one that came before it.
“But instead, what if it was the kind of day where nothing “counted”? What if it was a gift from the Earth’s slightly wobbly rotation? ”
But instead, what if it was the kind of day where nothing “counted”? What if it was a gift from the Earth’s slightly wobbly rotation? What if it was a day to be anyone, not just the kind of person I think I should be?
So, who to be on the bonus day? Outdoor adventurer, dancer in an empty room, starer-at-the-wall, obsessive house cleaner, reader, breather of cold air? I did each of those things, but I still don’t know if they were worthwhile or whether I spent my bonus day as well I could have.
It came and went and in many ways was an ordinary day. Fights over breakfast, rushing out the door for the bus, meetings and calls, allowing someone else’s priorities to rise over mine, deciding what to make for dinner, trying to squeeze my way through self-constructed creative blocks, etc. etc.
But in the end, maybe an ordinary day is the best gift of them all, and that everything else worked smoothly enough to allow an extra day to fit in seamlessly. Maybe the surprise is that a single day was all it took to bring things back into balance.
It's a lot of work for that twenty-four hours to do, but it did it well. Thank you, my day friend, and see you again in a few years.