Filling In The Blanks

I have a gal pal and January first is her favorite day of the year. It’s the day that she gets to hang up a new fresh calendar. She and I are still kinda old school when it comes to how we organize ourselves; we both still operate on a paper calendar for the house. It’s really a bit poetic, taking the last year down, and penciling in events in squares that will happen in the upcoming year... birthdays, anniversaries, days we don’t want to forget. The two calendars spend a tiny bit of time lying side by side on the kitchen table, transferring information that has been passed from year to year to year on new pages. We add a few dates as our family and friend circle grows, we drop a few off as dates no longer need celebrated.

Flipping through those twelve months of clean pages gives me a tiny thrill. I look back at last year and remember all the experiences that happened, trips that were planned and taken, dinners and fun stuff shared with friends that were jotted in at the last moment, meetings and commitments that repeat their occurrence to remind us where we invest our time. The plain pages of the New Year remind me of all the choices I will be blessed to make this year. Even the doctor’s appointments recall the healthy choices I did or did not make. 

I also have a paper planner that I fill in for my purse. My techie husband gets irritated with me for not using my computer and phone calendar like the rest of the modern world. I get that, and I’m trying harder to do that, but I know I will always be a paper girl. I have a couple of reasons. Number 1: When asked about a date, I can drag my little planner out and have the answer while phone people hunt and peck and click and scroll. Number 2: I like to SEE how much time I have, the same reason I don’t like digital clocks, I like to see the space, like the distance of the hands to the deadline, I like to see the squares around the date in question to SEE where in the world I am, and the time I have.

I look back at the past 356 days and note the number of blank days.

They can mean a couple of things. Either it was a day that didn’t have a memory made, or it was a day that I chose to live by laying low. I can’t be the only one that loves a good PJ pants, cup of hot tea, and movie or book day. The kind of day we recharge and rest and recover and fight the guilt of being lazy even though it’s pretty darn important to our mental health to take those time outs. Blank squares can mean either one of those sceniros. But I don’t want my empty days to be wasted, to be survived without intention.

I love inspirational quotes, and I came across this one. I’m not even positive of the source, but give it some thought:

“Never allow waiting to become a habit.
Live your dreams and take risks.
Life is happening now.” ~ Paulo Coelho 

I don’t want to float through my life like a leaf on the wind, making decisions by not making a decision. I don’t want to wait on my life to happen. I need to make each calendar square reflect the life I make and choose, not the one I wait for.

A new blank calendar is just the beginning.