I’m trying to work hard today, I really am, but the thing is, I keep getting distracted. You see, I got this new desk calendar, and it’s gorgeous—robin’s egg blue, with gilt edges and a silver ribbon. It’s got thick, creamy pages with plenty of space to write in activities for each day, and tucked into the front, it’s got all kinds of useful information: maps from around the world, telephone prefixes from every country, charts of weather patterns in different continents. It has a place to record phone numbers and a place to record my expenses. It’s got a listing of the locations of foreign embassies, good hotels in different countries, and a table of weights and measurement conversions.
Okay, most of those features are not actually all that useful to me, if I’m honest. I’m not planning any trips abroad this year, and it’s incredibly unlikely I’m going to need to know where the embassy to Yemen is in the next twelve months. Even if I did need to know, I would most likely turn to my computer to look it up. If I needed to convert grams to ounces, I would no doubt use the internet. I store phone numbers in my cell phone and track expenses on my bank’s website. Actually, if I wanted to check my schedule for the day, I would have to check my work calendar, which is linked to my email, and my online calendar, which is linked to my husband’s online calendar too.
So in reality, my new desk calendar isn’t incredibly useful, because there’s nothing in it that I can’t find faster and more easily on the computer, but this is precisely why I love it. There’s something so soothing about having all the information I need—and much of what I don’t need—in one physical place. With everything in my life being online these days, it’s really comforting to have a tangible reminder that there is more to the world than virtual reality.
And then there’s the joy of simply flipping though the blank calendar pages, dreaming about the different activities that will fill my time this year. By December, this calendar will be filled with notes and appointments and records of my days, but for now, the pages and pages of blank space represent endless possibilities. It’s nice to start off the year with the reminder that every day I make choices about how I spend the time God has given me. I can only hope I spend it well. And that I can put my calendar down long enough to get back to work!
Beth Adams is the creator and editor of GUIDEPOSTS’ Home to Heather Creek fiction series.
