When a new year dawns as it did recently to bring in 2025, the world collectively thinks of new beginnings, fresh starts, and resolutions to do this and that differently or for the first time. Such things have been going on for millennia—I just checked and it turns out the Babylonians did this some 4,000 years ago—and will continue for millennia more. It’s all good and perfectly normal. And quite artificial because when you think about it, nothing stopped anyone from doing all of that the day before on December 31 or three days before on December 28 or 113 days before on September 10.
However, being human, we tend toward round numbers. We celebrate when someone attains five years of service at a company and then ten and so on by fives. Wedding anniversaries, while there are lists from 1 to 100 (by the way, 100?), reserve the really big ones for 25 and 50. Birthdays have a bunch of early notables like 1 and 5 and 16 and 18 and 21, but then settle into marking decades except for, at least in the United States, when someone turns 65 and becomes an official senior citizen.
We do the same when it comes to days of the week with our attention focused on Sunday as the start of a new week in which we will do things differently than the weeks before. Most likely, though, we cannot do a lot of the things we want to do differently on Sunday itself except think about it. Still, it’s Sunday that commands our attention. We spend the waning days of the week before looking to get that mini fresh start just as soon as the nice round day of Sunday gets here.
The world, though, is not about round numbers which makes sense because it’s not quite round itself. In the sciences, the big numbers that we all know are not round at all. Pi (π), the first of the big numbers we learn, is anything but round even though its value comes from the roundest of all things, a circle, because Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.
We’re taught first that Pi = 22/7 because we learn fractions first and then we learn that Pi is 3.14 when we learn decimals. Sometime later we learn that Pi is a special number called an irrational number meaning, simply, that it goes forever. So not just not round, but really not round at all in the way that we think of round numbers.
The second big number we learn in the sciences is e, the base of the natural logarithm and exponential function. It is also an irrational number that like Pi is shortened to three digits 2.71 and six digits 2.71828. There is a lot to e and I cannot do any justice to it except to list what I’ve already listed.
What I can do justice to is the idea that significant things in the universe are not in neat packages that we commonly refer to as being round. I can further do justice to this idea by tying it to dates. Eventually. First I have to acknowledge the date elephant in the room. I began by discussing January 1 and, of course, that is a nice round day because it starts the year. However, for some people, the significance of January 1 is not that it begins the year, but that it is one of the twelve days of the year in which the month and day match just like February 2, August 8, and especially November 11. People do plan things specifically for these days such as a manager I once had who was born on November 11 and set her wedding date for December 12.
The rest of the calendar, though, is a collection of days that derive their meaning from what happened on those days, good and bad, throughout history. And the thing about days that become significant in history is that they happen when they happen. Sometimes even on a round day, but typically not if you go through the days that stand out in history.
July 4 is the most significant day for the United States because it is Independence Day. In France, their most significant day is the same month, but ten days later on July 14 which those outside France call Bastille Day but the French call either la fête nationale (national day) or le quatorze juillet. Both days stand out so very clearly now in their respective countries, but they’re just two days in July elsewhere.
That notwithstanding, they are significant days and bear a closer look by way of their years—July 4 1776 and July 14 1790. That makes the first Independence Day a Thursday and the first la fête nationale a Wednesday. Hmm. Seems like the people involved in those significant days didn’t wait for a round day of the month or the week. They just went and did what they were to going to do at that time in history. That does not mean, they did not plan it for those days due to local conditions, but in the larger sense of a round day as I have been using it, the date or the day wasn’t the key.
Why is all this important? Because we put ourselves in a box more often than not looking to do things on round or significant days. There’s also nothing wrong with starting on a Sunday or the first of a month or when the day matches the month, but nothing all that right that you should wait, either. I suspect when you look back on the days of your life that are significant, you’ll probably find most were not tied to anything in particular. They took on significance by what happened on them just like historically significant days. That is how you can find yourself pressed by the realities of life and it’s a random Thursday with you saying, “I have to do this today. I cannot wait any longer.”
The issue is starting and doing because it’s so easy to find reasons not to do things and focusing on significant days is one of those reasons. By all means, use a significant day to focus, but don’t let that day be the only day it can occur. How many by this point, almost halfway through the month of January as I publish this, have concluded they missed starting on January 1 and can no longer do what they said they were going to do for 2025. Well, if it’s to do something every day of 2025, that is inescapably true, but nothing prevents you from doing that same thing every day from today into the same day in 2026. It will not be the round “I did it every day of 2025” you may have planned, but it will still be 365 consecutive days of doing it and that is the same as doing it every day of 2025. If it is not to do something every day of 2025, then getting to the middle of January shouldn’t matter at all.
That’s the secret. That’s the magic. Let our personal history come when it comes instead of waiting for the magical round. I was writing this on a Monday and it seemed like a good way to start the work week by publishing it, but I made myself wait until Tuesday to give myself time to proofread rather than rush it so I could say that I hit Monday. The artificial roundness of starting the work week with publishing gave way to the very real and not very round feeling of knowing I would have errors I could have avoided.
And who knows, maybe Tuesday, January 14, 2025 will be the launch of my truly independent writing career because someone read this and didn’t find the errors that would have been there the day before. A random Tuesday in January that was part of no plan. At least of mine.
A New Year: What’s in a Date?
When a new year dawns as it did recently to bring in 2025, the world collectively thinks of new beginnings, fresh starts, and resolutions to do this and that differently or for the first time. Such things have been going on for millennia—I just checked and it turns out the Babylonians did this some 4,000 years ago—and will continue for millennia more. It’s all good and perfectly normal. And quite artificial because when you think about it, nothing stopped anyone from doing all of that the day before on December 31 or three days before on December 28 or 113 days before on September 10.
However, being human, we tend toward round numbers. We celebrate when someone attains five years of service at a company and then ten and so on by fives. Wedding anniversaries, while there are lists from 1 to 100 (by the way, 100?), reserve the really big ones for 25 and 50. Birthdays have a bunch of early notables like 1 and 5 and 16 and 18 and 21, but then settle into marking decades except for, at least in the United States, when someone turns 65 and becomes an official senior citizen.
We do the same when it comes to days of the week with our attention focused on Sunday as the start of a new week in which we will do things differently than the weeks before. Most likely, though, we cannot do a lot of the things we want to do differently on Sunday itself except think about it. Still, it’s Sunday that commands our attention. We spend the waning days of the week before looking to get that mini fresh start just as soon as the nice round day of Sunday gets here.
The world, though, is not about round numbers which makes sense because it’s not quite round itself. In the sciences, the big numbers that we all know are not round at all. Pi (π), the first of the big numbers we learn, is anything but round even though its value comes from the roundest of all things, a circle, because Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.
We’re taught first that Pi = 22/7 because we learn fractions first and then we learn that Pi is 3.14 when we learn decimals. Sometime later we learn that Pi is a special number called an irrational number meaning, simply, that it goes forever. So not just not round, but really not round at all in the way that we think of round numbers.
The second big number we learn in the sciences is e, the base of the natural logarithm and exponential function. It is also an irrational number that like Pi is shortened to three digits 2.71 and six digits 2.71828. There is a lot to e and I cannot do any justice to it except to list what I’ve already listed.
What I can do justice to is the idea that significant things in the universe are not in neat packages that we commonly refer to as being round. I can further do justice to this idea by tying it to dates. Eventually. First I have to acknowledge the date elephant in the room. I began by discussing January 1 and, of course, that is a nice round day because it starts the year. However, for some people, the significance of January 1 is not that it begins the year, but that it is one of the twelve days of the year in which the month and day match just like February 2, August 8, and especially November 11. People do plan things specifically for these days such as a manager I once had who was born on November 11 and set her wedding date for December 12.
The rest of the calendar, though, is a collection of days that derive their meaning from what happened on those days, good and bad, throughout history. And the thing about days that become significant in history is that they happen when they happen. Sometimes even on a round day, but typically not if you go through the days that stand out in history.
July 4 is the most significant day for the United States because it is Independence Day. In France, their most significant day is the same month, but ten days later on July 14 which those outside France call Bastille Day but the French call either la fête nationale (national day) or le quatorze juillet. Both days stand out so very clearly now in their respective countries, but they’re just two days in July elsewhere.
That notwithstanding, they are significant days and bear a closer look by way of their years—July 4 1776 and July 14 1790. That makes the first Independence Day a Thursday and the first la fête nationale a Wednesday. Hmm. Seems like the people involved in those significant days didn’t wait for a round day of the month or the week. They just went and did what they were to going to do at that time in history. That does not mean, they did not plan it for those days due to local conditions, but in the larger sense of a round day as I have been using it, the date or the day wasn’t the key.
Why is all this important? Because we put ourselves in a box more often than not looking to do things on round or significant days. There’s also nothing wrong with starting on a Sunday or the first of a month or when the day matches the month, but nothing all that right that you should wait, either. I suspect when you look back on the days of your life that are significant, you’ll probably find most were not tied to anything in particular. They took on significance by what happened on them just like historically significant days. That is how you can find yourself pressed by the realities of life and it’s a random Thursday with you saying, “I have to do this today. I cannot wait any longer.”
The issue is starting and doing because it’s so easy to find reasons not to do things and focusing on significant days is one of those reasons. By all means, use a significant day to focus, but don’t let that day be the only day it can occur. How many by this point, almost halfway through the month of January as I publish this, have concluded they missed starting on January 1 and can no longer do what they said they were going to do for 2025. Well, if it’s to do something every day of 2025, that is inescapably true, but nothing prevents you from doing that same thing every day from today into the same day in 2026. It will not be the round “I did it every day of 2025” you may have planned, but it will still be 365 consecutive days of doing it and that is the same as doing it every day of 2025. If it is not to do something every day of 2025, then getting to the middle of January shouldn’t matter at all.
That’s the secret. That’s the magic. Let our personal history come when it comes instead of waiting for the magical round. I was writing this on a Monday and it seemed like a good way to start the work week by publishing it, but I made myself wait until Tuesday to give myself time to proofread rather than rush it so I could say that I hit Monday. The artificial roundness of starting the work week with publishing gave way to the very real and not very round feeling of knowing I would have errors I could have avoided.
And who knows, maybe Tuesday, January 14, 2025 will be the launch of my truly independent writing career because someone read this and didn’t find the errors that would have been there the day before. A random Tuesday in January that was part of no plan. At least of mine.
Mark Ricci
January 14, 2025
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