leap year

Tess Vigeland on Her Remarkable Leap Year

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Something which I haven’t previously blogged about but which has profoundly, deeply influenced how I think about the world around me is Tess Vigeland. You see, her speech at the World Domination Summit had a theme that would make most people uncomfortable: leaving a cushion-y position at a major radio station to do…well, she didn’t know what she was going to do. But if you read the text of her speech, you’ll see that Tess explains that it felt okay. That for anyone out there who is still searching for what they want out of life, it shouldn’t be this massive burden. It may be difficult to perform this release, but what we need to remember is that it will be okay, and perhaps even turn into the remarkable:

Why do I care what other people think? I KNOW I’m not supposed to care – but I do.

How do I get back to remarkable?

The ONLY way… is by redefining it.

And I think this is an exercise that’s going to take some time. We all know we’re not supposed to define ourselves, and our success, by money, by page views, by Twitter followers, by fan mail, by audience size. But if you have a job, it does define you in many ways. You spend a good chunk of your day at that job – whether that’s at home or in an office or out in the field. Your lifestyle is sometimes determined by how much that job compensates you. I’m on track right now to make one third of what I made last year. One third. I know that doesn’t define me… but it does contribute to how I see my own value. I like what money allows me to do in my life.

So I need to redefine what success means to me. I don’t know how to define that without an audience. I don’t know how to define that without strangers recognizing my voice in an elevator. If that sounds egotistical – well you don’t go into broadcasting without some amount of ego – it’s a performance, after all. And if I end up doing something that can’t or won’t feed it… how do I know if I’m succeeding? How do I know if I’m remarkable?

…

But I guess what I would tell you – wherever you are on your career timeline – wherever you are in your relationship with this thing you do for a living – is that you have to give yourself permission to grieve the end of something. And sometimes you have to work really, really hard to find what’s next. 

At the end of the year, in her most recent post titled “My Leap Year”, Tess elaborates how that fateful July 7 morning in Portland went when she gave this talk to a crowd of 3,000 people at World Domination Summit:

And here I was about to tell a bunch of strangers about my failure, about my self-doubt and recriminations, about my discomfort with uncertainty, about my sad lack of a life dream, about how I no longer knew who I was because I could no longer describe what I do.

Do not throw up. Do not throw up. Do not throw up.

I walked on stage and told the oldest joke in the radio book: “Hey! You all don’t look a thing like I thought you would!” When people find out you’re a radio person they know, it’s what they say. Guaranteed. So I told the joke. I know… it’s lame. A few people laughed. And I started to tell my story.

And I started to feel something in the room – in that huge performance hall. To this day, I can’t describe it. They were listening. Really listening. They laughed in places I didn’t expect them to laugh. They shouted out from the audience, answering my rhetorical questions with actual answers.

“Will anyone want to listen to me now that I’m not some famous national correspondent anymore?”

“YES!!! Woooooo!!!”

At one point in the speech I talked about the rollercoaster I’d been experiencing, the ups and downs of leaving a career to strike out alone, feeling successful one day and like a complete fraud and unmoored the next. They hopped right on that ride and joined me from one moment to the next. I was no longer afraid of throwing up. What I was afraid of was that I’d burst into tears right there on stage, because of this overwhelming sense of support, this indescribable empathy that I felt from the audience.

Thank you Tess for bringing such vulnerability to your life and sharing it with others. I, among with thousands of others, cannot wait to see how 2014 unfolds for you.

Leap Year Trivia

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Today is a leap day, so here are things you may or may not know about leap years:

1. Every fourth year is a leap year, as a rule of thumb. But that’s not the end of the story. A year that is divisible by 100, but not by 400, is not. So 2000 was a leap year, as was 1600. But 1700, 1800 and 1900 are not leap years. “It seems a bit arbitrary,” says Ian Stewart, emeritus professor of mathematics at Warwick University. But there’s a good reason behind it.

The year is 365 days and a quarter long – but not exactly. If it was exactly, then you could say it was every four years. But it is very slightly less. The answer arrived at by Pope Gregory XIII and his astronomers when they introduced the Gregorian calendar in 1582, was to lose three leap days every 400 years. The maths has hung together ever since. It will need to be rethought in about 10,000 years’ time, Stewart warns. But by then mankind might have come up with a new system.

2. Why is February 29, not February 31, a leap year day? All the other months have 30 or 31 days, but February suffered from the ego of Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus, says Stewart. Under Julius Caesar, February had 30 days, but when Caesar Augustus was emperor he was peeved that his month – August – had only 29 days, whereas the month named after his predecessor Julius – July – had 31. “He pinched a couple of days for August to make it the same as July. And it was poor old February that lost out,” says Prof Stewart.

3. The tradition of a woman proposing on a leap year has been attributed to various historical figures. One, although much disputed, was St Bridget in the 5th Century. She is said to have complained to St Patrick that women had to wait too long for their suitors to propose. St Patrick then supposedly gave women a single day in a leap year to pop the question – the last day of the shortest month. Another popular story is that Queen Margaret of Scotland brought in a law setting fines for men who turned down marriage proposals put by women on a leap year. Sceptics have pointed out that Margaret was five years old at the time and living far away in Norway. The tradition is not thought to have become commonplace until the 19th Century.

It is believed that the right of every woman to propose on this day goes back to the times when the leap year day was not recognised by English law. It was believed that if the day had no legal status, it was acceptable to break with tradition.

4. A prayer has been written by a female cleric for people planning a leap year day marriage proposal. The prayer, for 29 February, asks for blessings on the engaged couple. It reminds them that wedding plans should not overtake preparations for a lifetime together. The prayer has been taken from Pocket Prayers of Blessing by the Venerable Jan McFarlane, Archdeacon of Norwich:

“God of love, please bless N and N as they prepare for the commitment of marriage. May the plans for the wedding not overtake the more important preparation for their lifetime together. Please bless their family and friends as they prepare for this special day and may your blessing be upon them now and always. Amen.”

5. The practice of women proposing in a leap year is different around the world. In Denmark, it is not supposed to be 29 but 24 February, which hails back to the time of Julius Caesar. A refusal to marry by Danish men means they must give the woman 12 pairs of gloves. In Finland, it is not gloves but fabric for a skirt and in Greece, marriage in a leap year is considered unlucky, leading many couples to avoid it…

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(via BBC)