My best friend, Wendy, tells me that every spring, I go through a process of being really dissatisfied with something and then wanting to change whatever I'm not happy with. I never noticed that about myself, frankly; I thought I only did that sort of thing at the end of the summer, what with Back-to-School-itis and the coming of fall. But she's known me for over 20 years and I suppose I have to accept that maybe she's noticed a thing or two about me during that two decades of friendship.
Maybe it's coming out of winter and into that "spring cleaning mode". Maybe it's that I'm a "May Baby" and with a birthday coming up, I've got that feeling of wanting to accomplish something big before too much time passes (especially as I've gotten older, there's more incentive to want to live boldly, with no regrets). Maybe it's because Spring is the season of rebirth, both in nature and in certain religious frameworks. But at this time of year, it just seems like a "fresh start" is the most natural thing in the world... so yes, I'm sure I do get antsy and fidgety and eager for something to change.
So here it is, the first of May. Time to enjoy the changing seasons and the opportunity to change whatever we don't like in our lives... time for a fresh start!
In days gone by, people celebrated May Day and the rites of passage into the final month of spring by dancing around a May Pole. The photo shown above was taken in 1915 on the Sheep Meadow in Central Park, New York City. (See all the little children in their pre-WWI-era clothing? Can you picture kids today wearing that and doing this dance?) I looked it up and the Maypole tradition dates back to German paganism and has centuries-old roots in some countries like Sweden, Austria, the Czech republic, Hungary and others. The original maypoles didn't have ribbons at all... those were added in the U.K. in the 19th century.
In the U.S., maypole dances were never commonplace among the general population but were usually found more in the upper and upper-middle classes where schools often held them for their students. And of course we modeled our maypole traditions after that our British forefathers. For the most part, it seems the intent of the Maypole dance was simply to celebrate the new season with joy and merrymaking.
Well, now that we no longer practice this tradition (if you know of a town that actually had a Maypole dance today, write in and tell us), maybe the way we observe the change of seasons in our modern society is with a flurry of activity in our lives. Rather than dancing around a pole with a bunch of ribbons, we try to do something more productive with our time. We clean out our garages (check out the increase in garage and yard sales this month, but if you're trying to declutter your own life, don't go to other people's sales and bring THEIR crap home to YOUR house!). We start planning our summer vacations and planning everything else that we have to do BEFORE we can go on those vacations. In many businesses, projects are deadline driven before the summer months kick in and everyone wants to bail out of work to go to the beach. And we have more energy because there's something about the weather in May that makes it easy to be energetic -- not too hot and not too cold.
For me, I kicked off May by going to a writer's conference on Saturday. It was my first writer's conference and I thought it would be a good way to learn some things, get some tips, get some motivation, and meet some other writers. Overall the event was pretty good, but I had very little sleep the night before, having had to get up at 5:15am to make it into the city by 8am, so by 3pm I was completely wiped out and decided to leave early (I ordered a set of conference programs on CD so I won't really miss anything).
However what I really came away with was a renewed sense of possibility for what I might be able to do in my career as a writer. When you meet commerical copywriters who are making $250K - $700K annually, when you meet successful published authors and freelance journalists, all of whom are making a VERY good living doing what they love as writers -- then you know that if THEY can do it, so can YOU. It's just a matter of figuring out what kind of writing you love doing most, having a plan in place, and taking consistent action bit by bit while you build and evolve your writing career.
So for me, as May kicks off with a beautiful sunny, cloudless day here in New Jersey, I am eager to sit down and devise a strategy for how I am going to move forward with my writing plans now that I am in my second year as a full-time freelance writer. I had a pretty good start-up year last year, and this year I want to do even better.
And where writing success leads for me, my plans to move to Paris will follow closely behind.
