Wednesday, December 12, 2012

December 12, 2012


12/12/12.

No, it’s not the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar. (Are you sick of hearing about that?) But it’s the last time, ever, we can have a date, written as above, that has all three numbers the same. The end of an era. Unless--we redo the calendar and add a 13th month. That’s not impossible.

(Although I have found some people who think 12/12/12 IS the Mayan predicted date. If you’re reading this, that date is wrong.)

(12/12/1212 was the last time 4 numbers repeated. I wonder if they noticed.)

In fact, there’s more than one movement to institute a 13-month calendar. It would be more logical. Spock would love it. Each month, with that scheme, has 28 days (no more counting on your knuckles, or reciting “Thirty days hath September.” Every month would start of the same day of the week. There sure would be less to keep track of! Provisions would still have to be made to even the calendar up with the actual annual orbit around the sun, except for the purists who want a strict calendar. Eventually, the seasons wouldn’t match up, but that wouldn’t bother them, I guess. So, it’s slightly possible to have a date that’s 13/13/13.

I don’t know of any movements to create a 14-month calendar.

This all illustrates how artificial it is to give values to time. Hours, minutes, weeks, they’re all modern inventions that have nothing to do with how the earth rotates and orbits. Just our ways of measuring the progression.

How do we, as writers, measure our progression? Do we figure how long it takes to write a book? How many years it took to publication? How long our submissions have been out? Of course we do. Do we measure our growth as a writer, also? It’s good to look back on early writings, if we’ve been doing this for awhile, to see if we’ve gotten any better over the artificial time periods that we’ve been at it. How many years of writing does it take to make a good writer? Good question, but I don’t have an answer.

2 comments:

  1. How many years of writing does it take to make a good writer?

    As many years as you've got. (Just a guess.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good answer! A good writer can always keep getting better, too.

    ReplyDelete