Understanding The Construct

I've always heard something along the lines of time being a "social construct".  Like... something we human type folks came up with rather than something that exists concretely.

But I feel like this New Year's was the first time I really had a felt sense of that thought.

I've always felt New Year's Eve was rather special and the stroke of midnight bringing in a brand new year always meant something to me.

I don't remember much about it when I was a kid, but I can guess that my parents probably let us stay up.  I feel like there may have been a party here or there.  When I was older, I'd go to events, and I enjoyed the lively parties and drinking for a while, and then I distinctly remember being at a house party with a bunch of friends and when midnight struck everyone turned to their partners and gave that first kiss and I was solo and single and I had never before felt so very alone... and so incredibly, obviously single.  

I stopped going to New Year's Eve parties not long after that.  I created my own rituals at home.  They've varied somewhat over the years but generally included a day or week of heavy cleaning to "get rid" of the "dirt" of the last year and then staying up in the quiet thinking and contemplating... lighting candles and opening all my windows wide to let in the new air of the new year, and thinking about who would first foot me (a Scottish tradition.)  I liked not waking up with a hangover - waking up fresh and clear, and knowing my apartment was clean and the new year was welcome and all the old was gone.

A few years ago I was really really tired on the 31st and let myself go to bed before midnight.  I ended up being woken anyway by the celebrations and bells and even fireworks, so I have yet to miss an adult midnight, even when I half tried to!

This year was different for me.  Sure, I tidied my apartment, but I didn't go mad with the cleaning.  I did clean, but by the time the 31st rolled around I was like "good enough."

And I realized for the first time ever that there really is no such ACTUAL thing as a new year.  It's just a calendar.  It's just numbers we use to mark time and keep track of things together.  (Or close to together, time zones being what they are.)

And so for the first time in my life I didn't have a special feeling as midnight came.  I knew the calendar was flipping over.  I lay awake in bed hearing the bells and the celebration and some fireworks and then when things quieted I fell asleep.

And even now, that feeling of "calendars are meaningless" is carrying on.

I truly think it has a lot to do with the absolute life shift Covid-19 brought to us and the time weirdness that most everyone has felt since 2020.  I think this was just a culmination of two years of time weirdness.  But also a realization that humans create things and outside of that, dates don't exist.

Birds don't wake up on January 1st going "well, time to hit the gym it's a new year!" they just take account of the weather and sources of food and go about their day to day just like they did the day before.  Animals don't carry that same sense of time in the same way we do.  Certainly wild animals don't.  Domestic animals though... they "understand" schedules and expected times.  I'm getting out of my depth here I just mean to say that Dec 31 - Jan 1st was different for me this year and I'm still in that space, this month, partly due to Spring like weather messing with my sense of Winter, of.... huh... this is all... not... meaningful?

I don't know.  Just that was a first.  (On the first... ha.)