Happy New Year's Eve

This sunny August day, I'm quietly observing New Year's Eve. I, like many people currently or recently participating in the standard school-year-summer-break system, have never actually felt that January 1st marked the beginning of a new year, far from it.

Winter break, which has encompassed Christmas and New Year's since the beginning of elementary school, was just that, a break. We returned to the same classroom, same desks, same teacher, same classmates, same after school routines, more or less. But the first day of the school-year was the real new beginning, a different chapter or season, a clear new compartment of our lives. I refer to both last October and last January as "last year". The three months of summer are a vague, timeless, no-man's land, claiming "this year" or "last year" depending on how long ago they were at the time I'm speaking, and without any concrete beginning or ending day. My last day of class might occur several days before returning to Tennessee, so the "end of the year" might occur when I walk out of the last exam, or close my old apartment door for the last time, when I say " 'til next year" to the last college friend, or maybe when the plane takes off or when it lands or when I de-board.

But the first day of class is the clearest moment of annual transition I, and surely many of my peers, have actually been able to experience. The one place where we could confidently expect our producers to distinguish a new season. Across the globe, on different dates in different months, and in every grade, the day before the first day of the school-year kids and adults go to sleep privately and universally knowing they'll wake up in what could for all we know be a new dimension.

I have a lot to say about what this particular New Year's feels like, halfway (hopefully) through college, but I'll save that for the next post. If you go to Chapman University, then we're observing the holiday together, if not, from my NYE today to yours when/where-ever it falls, Happy New Year's Eve.