Blank Pages. Fresh starts. New Beginnings. Bliss...

How can it be November already?  Seriously!  But here we are.

I can feel it in my bones.  Not merely in the itch of summer's nearness.  Or the final school concerts and plays and shows filling up my calendar.

It's that funny time of the year where I find myself wanting to put on the breaks as the final onslaught of family birthdays drag us all too quickly towards Christmas and the End of yet Another Year.

But I also start to get tingly about the Brand Spanking New Year ahead.

For isn't the thought of a New Year something truly special?

I know a lot of people don't like Mondays. So much so hating Mondays has its own anthem. 

But I adore Mondays. So much so I have a dedicated I Heart Mondays Pinterest Page ;). For me every single Monday feels like a fresh start. A new beginning. A clean slate.  Anything can happen!

The same way my very favourite part of writing is the very beginning. A blank page with nothing but Chapter One written atop. For at that moment the story sparkling so brightly at the edges of my mind is perfect. Unblemished by my effort to translate it from magical fairy dust into words tapped into a keyboard.

I feel the same way about reading too.  A brand new book - spine-uncracked, pages a little stuck together from the splicing of the paper at the printers - bliss! At the point at which you open the book you are hovering on the verge of so much possibility - this might be the best book you have ever read.

So while I begin in earnest to choose the perfect calendar for 2019, to decide which colour next year's Bullet Journal will be, I must make sure to savour every moment of the one that is barreling towards its final breaths.

What's your favourite time of year?  Day of the week? Do you love starting a new book or burning your way to the end?

It's New Year's Day!

Or is it?

Some New Year trivia for you, just for fun... 

On our calendar, (the Gregorian calendar - devised by Pope Gregory XIII when he refined the calculation of Leap Years back in 1582), New Year's Day is the 1st of January.

But before the Gregorian calendar, our ancestors used the Julian calendar which celebrated New Year on 25 March or Lady Day.  There are still traces of this in our calendar in the names of the last four months of the year...

• September - from the Latin, Septem for seven
• October - Octo for eight
• November - Novem for nine &
• December - Decem for ten.

Anyway, back to New Year itself... there are other calendars around the world which celebrate the start of the year on different dates!

Here are a few examples... New Year is -

: in late January to late February in the Chinese and Vietnamese calendars

: in mid-April in the Cambodian, Sri Lankan, Thai and Hindu calendars

: around the spring Equinox in March for the Iranian calendar.

: and then there's the "Old New Year" which is celebrated on 13 January in the Russian calendar. 

Wherever you are and, whenever or however you celebrate, I hope the your New Year brings you health and happiness!