Volume XLVI: New Years Edition

I. Clean slate 🧼

Before classrooms had smart boards and TVs, the trusty slate board did the job. There was no rewinding or looking back. Once the teacher erased it, the information was gone for good.

A clean slate means starting over with no past mistakes held against you. Simply put: no baggage, tally marks or history.

It’s the appeal of the New Year in one phrase. You’re the same person with the same flaws, but the score resets anyway.

II. Turn over a new leaf 🍃

Turn over a new leaf isn’t about botany. Dating back to the early 1500s, a leaf referred to a page in a book—because early manuscripts were made from parchment or papyrus that basically looked like oversized leaves.

To turn a new leaf meant starting a fresh page, leaving the past behind.

Today, it can be starting a new job, committing to inbox zero, nixing Uber Eats or actually hitting legs. Out with the old, in with the new.

III. Ring in the New Year 🔔

Before champagne flutes and countdowns, this one was literal.

In medieval Europe, church bells marked danger, death, victory, and time itself. If something mattered, you rang ‘em loudly enough for the whole town to hear.

So the New Year didn’t quietly arrive, it was boasted over blocks to let the people know.

It’s the same ritual today. Just fewer bell towers, more Ryan Seacrest, and a lot more confetti.

Keep on sending on. Forward to a friend.