New Year x 3
September 1 + January 1 + May 1
In my brain and body, the new year comes not once, not twice, but three times each 365 days. For this I feel lucky that I have the chance to pause and reflect on multiple occasions each year that feel natural to me.
September 1: New Year #1
The first new year happens as the calendar rolls from August to September, marking the end of the summer holidays and the start of the new school year.
Like many, I’ve experienced the cyclical nature of school for decades. This is one of my very favourite things about still operating in a school enviornment; the finite and partitioned nature of the work. There is a clear beginning, middle and end, something my world sorely lacked in a traditional 9-5 existence.
September always feels like a new beginning, where we can choose any new path that lies ahead, feeling a renewed sense of vigor for the inevitable challenges, both positive and more challenging.
I liken this September new year to that of a caterpillar, crawling along with a sense of hope and purpose. I can focus on consuming and applying knowledge to new scenarios and relationships along the journey. There is a hungry energy to this new year; an insatiable desire to move forward with speed and tenacity, knowing that there is a time limit on this phase before moving to the next.
January 1: New Year #2
This time of year is punctuated by neatly tucked away Christmas decorations and freshly-vacuumed floors, as well as bare walls and surfaces that feel luxiourous in the sparseness. The week between Christmas and the new calendar year always feels like a bridge; a liminal space from one big annual milestone to another, squeezed into a tiny timeframe representing barely 2% of the year.
Yet, it’s this timelessness — both stretched and hurried, short and long — that makes the arrival of the new calendar year a perfect moment to reflect and reset. The lead up to the new year feels ripe with possibility and hopefullness for what’s to come.
My very favourite annual ritual is to create a visual/mood board to capture my hopes and ideas for the next several hundred days. Each year this becomes a visual representation of my forward-oriented ideas, as well as the opportunity to look back on past years’ visuals that give me a glimpse at growth and frame of mind year-over-year.
I liken this January new year to that of a crysalis. January and the following winter months naturally feel like a time to ebb more than flow, taking a nod from the bears and frogs and trees that hunker down during the colder, darker winter months. This is not so much a stopping, as it is a slowing down; it’s a time to be extra intentional about choies today that will make the biggest difference tomorrow.
May 1: New Year #3
In my part of the world, this is the time when nature is slowly awakening from its months-long slumber, opening its eyes slowly and a deep remembering sinking into its roots. And then, all of a sudden, it remembers. Nature gets its bearings and leaps enthusiastically out of bed in an array of colours and blooms in a transformation unlike any other.
It feels as though Mother Nature has been holding her breath, ready for the right time to exhale. It’s a spectactularly hopeful time with a sensory overload of sights, sounds and smells. The cherry blossom tree above my mailbox delivers the most beautifully powerful, intoxicating scent I’ve ever experienced. The hostas grow so quickly, I could sit and watch them transform in real time. And the people (the people!) triumphantly walk through their front doors to soak up the warm spring air and glorious sunshine we’e all forgotten feels so good.
I liken this May new year to that of a butterfly. This new year — more than any other — feels like the most fully-realized emergence that is wholly different from the others. It’s an awakening to the magic of the Earth and a reminder of the absolute living miracle of life on this planet. It’s a reminder that human-centred ways of living — including the myriad of destructive systems humans have errected — are merely immature, toddler-like, broken understadings of our world that pale in comparission to the mature reality that all living beings can exist in alignment on this planet, as modelled everywhere in the world around us.
Each of the three new years brings hopeful energy relative to its time and stage; exactly what it needs to be when it needs to be it.
Happy new years, from my chrysalis to yours.
Diana
