15: I 86'd it
“What do you need to close up so something else can open?”
Daniel Pink, in his book “When” writes that there are 86 days each year which provide a good moment to start over. Now, granted, you can start, stop, or resume whenever you want, but he thinks there are 86 days each year that make a fresh start easier. He calls these dates “temporal landmarks” that cue us to open a fresh ledger for our lives. I did actually read his book (OK, I listened to it), but I cribbed the list from his Pinkcast video here.
Here are 86 dates that are especially effective for making a fresh start:
The first day of the month (twelve)
Mondays (fifty-two)
The first day of spring, summer, fall, and winter (four)
Your country’s Independence Day or the equivalent (one)
The day of an important religious holiday—for example, Easter, Rosh Hashanah, Eid al-Fitr (one)
Your birthday (one)
A loved one’s birthday (one)
The first day of school or the first day of a semester (two)
The first day of a new job (one)
The day after graduation (one)
The first day back from vacation (two)
The anniversary of your wedding, first date, or divorce (three)
The anniversary of the day you started your job, the day you
became a citizen, the day you adopted your dog or cat, the day
you graduated from school or university (four)The day you watch this Pinkcast (one)
OR of course, the day you read this blog.
2022 has been rife with resets, restarts, and just plain I’m-done-with-this-es. January started on a weekend (who starts anything on a Saturday?) and ended on the Lunar New Year—wait, what? Tuesday, February 1st was followed, as per usual, by February 2nd, but 2/2 is also Groundhog Day, the day when everything restarts and restarts and restarts. And then, of course, we couldn’t get out of the second month of 22 without 2/22/22.
Who asked for one more go, a let’s try again, a do-over? Apparently everyone.
Sunday marked the start of Daylight Savings time (which, strangely, is not on Pink’s list). I missed the Ides—that was yesterday, and tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day.
Today, it is an insignificant Wednesday in March, and I’m restarting this blog. Perhaps I should have waited until Sunday, March 20–the first day of Spring and the last day of the astrological year.
Am I perpetually restarting or am I perpetually ending?
Is it strange that Pink identifies 86 days each year to clear the ledger and start clean and to 86 something is to cross something off the list and to end it? Is it strange that starts and stops don’t know when to start and stop?
Is it strange that endings are also beginnings and everything we begin must end?
