Happy New Year!!

Um, what?


Now, now – New year could literally be any moment in the calendar. We’ve just arbitrarily chosen as a society that midnight on January 1 marks a “New Year”. It could just as easily be 3:17 am on April 17, but I digress.

For me, I tend not to think of January as “new”. It’s usually a miserable time of year where I live. Sunsets at 4:30 in the afternoon. Low, cold, sunlight during the daytime, what little we get of it. Cold, grey, rainy, sometimes snow. Ah, life in New England Winter.

I gravitate towards the school year and the fall as my time of renewal every year. I’ve been connected to the school calendar my entire life. Of course as a youth, school was everything, with those few weeks off in the summer. I graduated from my last school in 1988…promptly getting a job in the healthcare industry, where I remained until 2017.

But in that same year, September of 1988, I took on an adult leadership role in the then Boy Scouts of America. I still bear that same title; I remain a Unit Commissioner, currently the longest-serving one in Spirit of Adventure/Boston Minuteman/Yankee Clipper/North Bay Council. I’ve been around so long that I have been through three different mergers. In any case, the start of the school year always represents that time for renewal to me.

It’s time to stop being silly and laid-back after an ever-shortening summer. Fall means it’s time to get serious again; get back to work; start new things; make plans for the year. (Remembering that my “year” is September-June. As always, your mileage may vary.)

Even more so is now my latest line of work. I’m still driving, but at the nearby Bentley College, which I can famously see out my bathroom window. My route passes within sight of where I live no less than three times. And being the resident here – in two days I’ve already become a Waltham Tour Guide and Ambassador from this city to the new students moving in.

Fall used to bring me dread, as it’s peak tourist season in Boston. Fall foliage and cruise ships, dontcha know? But not this year. I am rather joyously looking forward to a full, exciting New Year with my Scouts, my Brother Masons, and now a new crop of students at the major college in town – that will likely become “my kids” like the rest of them.