EMILY SAIDEL: I’ve been thinking about calendars and how we think of the cycles in our lives. Or less abstractly, I went to the post office today to mail some things for application season. And as a student, I tended (and continue) to think of the start of the year in September. That was also true for working in theater. But do other people have different mental calendars?
HOWARD MEGDAL: On calendar, absolutely. My calendar starts in February, when pitchers and catchers report, and ends in October, or sadly in recent seasons, September. The months November-January don’t really happen.
MATTHEW DAVID BROZIK: I tend to start my year several times each year: In January, then in March (on my birthday), then once more in September, usually with Rosh Hashana (but more likely with September first, the start of my favorite third of the calendar (official) year).
CHRIS PUMMER: My new year starts every day I wake up again.
MATTHEW DAVID BROZIK: Happy New Year, Chris.
CHRIS PUMMER: Thanks. This new year is awesome.
AKIE BERMISS: I’ve always had trouble with calendars. i never know where to start. i would be a really big fan of making the Winter Solstice the new year again. make more sense to me than… New Years. Overall, I orient seasonally and that probably has a lot to do with the music scene. i like to read nonfiction and compose during the winter months of Jan and Feb (and sometimes March)… when there are usually not too many gigs going on.
in the spring, i like to watch a LOT of television — i’ll store up episodes of shows i like for April and May (and sometimes March). And I hate spring cleaning! i never do it! nice, messy, disorganized Spring for me. also my birthday is the 11th of April and I usually hide from people by watching a sciFi marathon of some sort then.
summer — i work. at long last. i make money and store it up for the winter. and that is when i absolutely POUND crappy scifi/fantasy novels. either a couple of books a week or i get those thousand pagers and i go hogwild. i used to love going to movies in the summer… but now movies suck alot during the summer. i’ve gotten over it.
and in fall/early winter i make my biggest change. i slow up the fantasy, usually re-read a book or two of my favorites (Baldwin gets a lot of love in the autumn), and sometimes i whip out the poetry (when no one is looking). also, BIG change, i go from cigars to pipes around December. not as a premeditated decision (cause i smoke cigars throughout), but i usually get the urge to clean my pipes and find a couple of good tobaccos. Oh! and *this* is when i like to clean. winter cleaning is simply the best.
i feel like i’ve either written a Junior High School essay contest entry or notes for a trite musical song. but there you have it.
otherwise, i am slave to my calendar. day-by-day. i do what it tells me. and i recently started to-do lists? wow!
MOLLY SCHOEMANN: I think my calendar still feels like the year begins in September because of school, even though I have been out of school for years now. And I still somehow see Summer as a time when I should not have to work, because of Summer vacation from school. Damn you school, for setting up my expectations that way!