May Day

It’s the first of May as I write this. I get excited about the first day of any month. It’s a time to start over, to let go of the last month, which has been feeling old for a while. On the first of the month I start new lists, set new goals. That’s not quite accurate — I set new goals at any time — but on the first of the month I renew my commitment to goals that got trashed or ignored last month.

April was my first full month working on MyAdventureChallenge, which I discovered a month into the Spring Fling Challenge, to hike 75 miles. I set what seemed to be a doable number of miles per week that would make up for my starting a month late, but I have not hiked all those miles – not in any week. Turns out that, while the mileage is doable, the scheduling is the bigger challenge.

The problem is that I don’t have time to add any goals without letting something else go.

All morning I’ve been stressing about how to maintain my new schedule of writing and music practice (try, try again) and fit in all the things I’ve been neglecting (reading and meditating come to mind), and get enough rest and sleep, and enjoy the days. When am I going to cook dinner? Can I put off a haircut till next week? Doing the laundry takes time, though I pretend it doesn’t.

Once upon a time I was working (for pay) around 20 hours per week, involved in my kids’ activities for another 20 or so hours, and maintaining the house in decent order. I struggled to fit in all the things, but they were different things and I had fewer choices about them. After the kids grew up and moved out, I still had to fit my things around my work schedule, which tended to limit my things.

Then I “retired” and the time management that had been difficult become impossible. That was three years ago, and it’s taken until now for me to approach a level of comfort with determining my own time and life.

There are a few women who have five or more kids at home, work 40-plus hours per week, exercise daily, enjoy leisure time, sleep seven hours per night, and “carve out time” to write blogs, books, and poetry.

Last year I read Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman, a book for the rest of us. Subtitled Time Management for Mortals, this book reassures me that time is in fact finite and fluid, and what is most important to do, during any particular hour or day, changes. Rarely do my priorities at 8am remain priorities at 4pm.

A year ago, my big May challenge was the Bingo game at my Pure Barre studio, though I didn’t know at the start that this game would dominate the month and push me to meet challenges I had no idea I even wanted to achieve. For instance, I started taking five or six barre classes per week, up from two just a few months earlier. I doubled and even tripled classes (two or three in a day). I even brought a friend to her first barre class, which proved to be my most challenging square on the Bingo card.

The May Bingo game is on again, but now my daily classes have become routine and my barre challenges are more about building strength in certain areas – such as abs. Meanwhile, my overall fitness goals have shifted to hiking, partly because of MyAdventureChallenge, which is not an end in itself but rather an accountability partner in training for some big hikes I’m planning for the summer.

Who knows what this month will bring? Is there some adventure I have no idea about that will show up to push me

forward? The start of May feels different from the last several months, lighter somehow, and more hopeful.

Maypole dances, flower garlands, and other European May Day traditions originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Beltane, marking the start of summer. The Celtic calendar focused on the cycle of agricultural seasons, with eight festivals dividing the wheel of the year into approximately equal parts. Four of them are the Winter and Summer solstices and the Spring and Autumn equinoxes. In between are the "fire" festivals: Samhain (1 Nov.), Beltane (1 May), Imbolc (1 Feb.), and Lughnasadh (1 Aug.)

Samhain, from which came all the Day of the Dead and Halloween traditions, was the start of the dark half of the year. With Beltane, the cycle turned again toward the light.