Page a day

Like many people I keep a “Page a Day” style calendar on my desk at work.

This particular one features clever cartoons along with a bit of trivia on the back of each day. While most of the jokes are the kind that make you groan more than chuckle, tearing off the calendar page to see what is next is a bright spot in the morning. Any day at work that you can start with a smile has a much better chance of being a good one.

Last week while working on laying out the newspaper, I happened to look over at my calendar and realized that it still read Thursday, July 8.

It is not uncommon for me to get busy and not take the time to tear off that day’s page, especially when I am on a deadline for a story or project. Usually I am able to catch up after the paper is put to bed and while I am waiting for files to transfer down to the press.

With the leaves well on their way to the autumn explosion of colors, trying to think back to the first week of July seems like digging into ancient history. What was going on then that I was so busy and where exactly did August go that we are more than three-fourths of the way through September now.

The Medford Curling Club will be starting to make ice in under two weeks and Christmas is 93 days away as of today’s paper. I just got used to writing 2021 and 2022 will be here before we know it and yet my calendar still thinks it is July 8.

Thinking back there are logical reasons why I lost track of pruning my page a day calendar. Most of the summer passed in the blur of a dead run covering news and events. When I do have downtime I am more likely to go home where I can be overwhelmed by delayed projects there rather than be at my desk.

In full disclosure a couple weeks in there were from when I was on vacation, I considered it a positive step that I only came into the office on three days on my vacation this year and not more.

Following that, there was the bustle of getting set for the start of the new school year, traveling around and getting pictures of all the new teachers and seeing what has happened at the schools over the summer.

This brings me to finally getting around to do some overdue calendar maintenance. I face a choice. Do I simply tear off the half-inch chunk of pages between July and now and recycle them without looking at them, pretending I was caught up all along? Should I try to desperately maintain the facade of being on top of things at all times or should I take the time to at least glance at them before sending them to the recycling bin. Each page of the calendar represented work on behalf of a whole army of individuals from the person who drew the cartoon to the proofreader making sure that July 8 was actually a Thursday to the people who printed the pages and glued on the binding. Simply chucking it into the recycling seems like something of an insult to the time and effort they put into it.

I am probably over thinking this whole thing. I am sure that normal people would have pulled off the pages all along and not been in this situation of being dragged into the future while clinging to moments in the past. In my case, Thursday, July 8.

I could always tear off the past few months and put them in my desk drawer with the intention of going back and looking at them when I have time. They would join the file of other things I meant to get back to. The reason my desk calendar is three months behind is probably the same as why the pictures of my kids on my desk date from when they were toddlers. Maybe it is just my way of wanting time to slow down so that I can appreciate each moment more.

Time doesn’t work that way though. Each day sees a new page taking the place of the old one. Once gone, there is no way to reattach them, only the memory of what was in their place.