THINGS I MISS

I Miss Putting Things on the Calendar

When we don’t have the big plans to look forward to, it’s time to focus on the small pleasures

Illustrations courtesy of the author.

This reminds me of ending a relationship. There’s always that moment after a split when you look over your calendar and realize how many plans aren’t actually going to happen. There’s the concert we won’t be attending together at the end of the month. There’s the weekend trip we can’t refund. There’s the movie coming out that we’d been looking forward to before we stopped being a “we.”

In the harsh moment when you realize that the year will look very different than you imagined, the calendar looks sad and empty. The year suddenly seems endless, hazy, and full of possibility in the worst way: the possibility that you’ll have to brave that August wedding alone; the possibility that you’ll have a string of terrible dates; the possibility that a beautiful fall day will break your heart with its loneliness.

I had a similar experience over the past weekend when I checked off the very last event on my 2020 calendar. From my iCal, I’ve deleted three trips, one wedding, two birthday parties, a couple tickets to the theater, a concert, and a loose idea I had for a scavenger hunt celebrating a 10-year friendship anniversary. It didn’t…