I won't be duped like the rest of you. No matter how many years pass, for me, the real New Year continues to begin the first week in September instead of the customary January 1st. My 20+ years of schooling have embedded an unconscious, temporal cycle deep within my psyche. September, not January, is the time when I think about what I'd like to accomplish in the year ahead. The autumn isn't about the falling leaves but instead the budding ideas, relationships, and projects that will determine the successes and failures of the 12 months to come.
Those who have children are probably in touch with my unofficial New Year to some degree. Lives which revolve around clothes, school supplies and extracurriculars never really got a chance to be swayed by the folly of the Julian calendar. No, you know the score. January 1st is but another day.
Those who don't have children haven't escaped either - being careful to take holidays outside of school breaks, welcoming the August slowdown as a chance to catch a professional breath without necessarily taking time off.
Calendars (genders/sexualities/races) are but arbitrary entities based on popular notions. There's nothing sacred about January 1st. It's a week or so after the shortest day of the year and a week shy of 6 months to the longest. (Of course, few of us live at the equator so even this is inaccurate for the vast majority yet swallowed whole without much conscious thought by all.)
As with the calendar, many of our assumptions about life are arbitrary and unconscious.
It makes me wonder. If years of schooling can reprogram my temporal perspective so unwittingly and successfully, what else has slipped through the cracks into my psyche, shaping my view of the world?
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