A Little Stitious
Everywhere I went on Saturday I kept seeing dark gray Ford Explorers. This, obviously, made me start thinking about leap years.
One of the things to know about my weird brain is that it sees patterns everywhere. That part is pretty normal, but the weird thing that my brain does is assign meaning to the patterns even when they are clearly coincidental or simply patterns without meaning.
I kept seeing dark gray Ford Explorers because they kept being in front of me in traffic. Stopping at a light, driving down the highway, navigating a parking lot, whatever I was doing there in front of me was a dark gray Ford Explorer. It wasn’t the same vehicle over and over again; I know this because I noticed that the license plates were different. (Another weird thing my brain does is look at license plates and decide on the name of the car based on the plate. I.E. a plate with the letter combo GRC becomes “Gretchen” or “Grace”. So I notice license plates.) They were all different cars but they looked to be about the same model year and were, of course, the same color.
After observing such a pattern, the next step is for me to wonder, “what does this pattern mean?” I do this all the time with all kinds of patterns, large and small. I think it is connected to OCD to be honest, because it happens with the tiniest of things. I could have a Diet Coke with lunch and then have a meeting go really well in the afternoon. Therefore, says my brain, I should have a Diet Coke before any meeting that needs to go well. That’s not even observing a pattern, that’s just trying to control things through compulsive behavior, BUT if the next post-Diet Coke meeting goes well, I latch on to that behavior and then I’m drinking Diet Cokes before every meeting.
For the record I don’t actually do the Diet Coke thing; that is just an example of the kind of antics that go on while my brain sloshes around in my skull all day.
But as I said all the Ford Explorer sightings had me thinking about leap years and how 2024 is a leap year.
I recently realized that leap years have historically been, for me, years in which big things happen. They are sometimes bad things, they are sometimes scary things, but these big, watershed moments of my life seem to happen during leap years. And I have to say that I see a pattern which is making me wonder what it all means for 2024.
As evidence of this pattern, I give you the following breakdown of the leap years of my lifetime:
1988: I turned two in September, and I hear that two can be terrible, so maybe it was a rough year? I don’t know, ask my parents.
1992: I don’t remember too much of this year either, but I know I started first grade at the same time that my mom started teaching music at my school. This was not bad or scary, but it did mean that I didn’t get any of the fun parts in music class because she was worried about being accused of nepotism. Obviously very traumatic.
1996: Mini-mental breakdown. Actually it was not mini at all, it was quite large and impacted my whole family. I say mini because I was mini, only nine years old and experiencing big feelings that I didn’t know how to handle, so I didn’t. I shut down and stopped eating instead. That lasted from about March until I think August-ish. Not sure, but it definitely sucked, 0/10 stars.
This was also the year that my parents split up. That was not a bad thing; it was in fact the best thing for everybody, but it was a massive change.
2000: Graduated middle school and started high school. I’m sure there was drama involved in all of that but I have it pretty well blocked from my mind. But middle school sucked big time, so while starting high school was scary, getting out of middle school was a good thing for sure.
During the summer in between middle and high school my mom and stepdad got married. Again, not a bad thing, but rough to deal with when you’re thirteen. And again, big changes are scary.
2004: Graduated from high school and started college at American University. I hated going away to college because my boyfriend had another year of high school and I pathetically thought that our relationship mattered more than my own growth, independence, and education.
I also hated American University; it was not for me. Thankfully my dad was extremely cool about me wanting to transfer schools because he too transferred after his first year of college. Sticking it out for the full semester was difficult and I was not happy or enjoying college at all.
2008: My last year of college, which I finished at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania. Spring semester was my student teaching which was major and terrifying and actually went pretty well. But it did start me on the path of thinking that maybe I didn’t want to be a teacher after all, which is a scary thing to realize when you’ve spent four years getting a degree and a teaching certificate.
That spring my boyfriend, the same one from 2004, was studying abroad in Europe. He was gone from January to July. He got back and one week later, after 4.5 years of dating, we broke up. I cried a lot and ate a lot of pizza and rented a lot of movies from Blockbuster that summer.
I graduated in December of 2008, entering into the job market in the midst of the financial crisis.
2012: Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey and shut down pretty much everything for a good two weeks or more in some places. While we were lucky enough to get power back after a couple of days, the store where I worked was out of commission for 10 days.
That December my grandmother went into the hospital for what we thought was a bad case of the flu or a respiratory infection that she just couldn’t shake. It wasn’t. She would pass away early the next year. The last time I talked to her was in December, over the phone from the parking lot of where I worked. She told me she was fine and not to worry.
2016: Do I even need to explain how election night of 2016 lives in my mind as the stuff of horrors? Even worse were the days that followed as it slowly sunk in that the ridiculous joke candidate had actually won the presidency.
On top of that, I was unemployed or underemployed for months of 2016. Even with my new fancy Masters degree, I couldn’t seem to convince anyone to hire me. I took part time work where I could and collected unemployment when I couldn’t.
And to wrap up the year, I was in a gnarly car accident in December of 2016. My car was totaled, I went on a ride in an ambulance, and wound up scared of driving on the Parkway for several months.
2020: Big mental breakdown. Hospital. Medicine. Therapy. See the many several previous posts about all of that.
Covid pandemic began in the US. Need I say more?
With the exception of the first two leap years of my life, I think most people would agree that a lot of big, scary stuff seems to happen during leap years. It feels like a pattern to me, one that seems to indicate that 2024 will also feature some big scary stuff or some monumental change. So far we’ve had the following:
It’s only April and I’ve already had the cat at various vets five times.
It’s an election year and yet again Mr. Self-Tan-Combover-Misogynist-Liar-Idiot-Unbelievable-Gaping-Asshole is dangerously close to a whole lot of power.
My building sold to a new landlord. I currently am paying rent to an LLC. For that and many other reasons I’m fairly certain that I need to find a new place to live and will be moving by the end of the year.
Leadership at work is going to change in September. This could be a really good thing, but it also increases anxiety over whether certain jobs will still exist under new leadership. (It raises anxiety about many things, but that’s the one I’m worries about.)
Dating has really sucked so far this year.
There is a lot going on already, and there is still a lot of leap year left. Based on the pattern of previous leap years, I’m worried about what the rest of 2024 will bring.
Of course big and scary things have happened in the off years too. I know I’m creating meaning for a pattern that is likely not significant. But as Michael Scott of The Office says, “I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.” I’m a little stitious about the rest of 2024; actually I’m straight up scared for what it could bring.
Yesterday when I kept seeing the Ford Explorers it seemed like a pattern that needed attention. The only thing I could think the pattern meant was that I should reach out to my friend who drives the same model and color and make sure they were okay. But in the end I didn’t do that, because every time I have followed through on actions inspired by these observed patterns, I end up embarrassed at least a little bit. It’s a made up pattern produced by my squishy and creative brain, it doesn’t actually mean anything. In all likelihood, my friend is perfectly fine. And likewise in all likelihood the rest of 2024 will also be fine, even if some big scaries do come along.
Not all patterns are significant or worthy of our time and energy. But it is something I think about and I am bracing myself for any possible impacts for the rest of this year. I recognize that it’s a little crazy but what can I say? I’m a little stitious.
