This was going to be a big month for me.

I finally got Tuesday nights off of work, and that free time was going to be huge. I was going to clean out my freezer. I was going to learn how to make homemade popsicles now that I had room in my freezer. I was going to start an LLC without a concrete business plan and just see where that went. But then I opened my calendar app to the last week of February and had the rug pulled out from under my ambitious little feet.

I am not entirely sure why I was so confident that this February would have an extra day. I guess I just thought that 2026 sounded like a real supple, elongated type of year. My friends were quick to inform me that leap years are “obviously multiples of four” and 26 “is not a multiple of four.” I didn’t realize you had to have a Math degree to have dreams.

Tragically, I may have to cancel my gym subscription given this news. It was already a bit of a stretch (no pun intended. I hate my yoga class) to pay the monthly subscription price for a 29-day month. But for only 28?! It’s just not economical. I may as well drop my new diet along with it, since all those whole grains and protein would just be going to waste. With all the money I save, I can invest in buying a previously unthinkable amount of DoorDash.

I believe that you should spend January mostly just chilling and mentally preparing to get started on your New Year’s resolutions, so admittedly I am not far along in my plans to learn electric guitar. I really was going to start practicing, of course, probably right around that blessed Day of Leaping, when time stands still and anything is possible. But now my February is so concatenated that it’s more of a Feb! It’s probably best for me to give the guitar back to my niece, who I “borrowed” it from over the holidays (she’s hardly using it; her band isn’t even touring right now).

I still remember last Leap Day. In fact, I remember it suspiciously well, because now that I think about it, it was only two years ago. That probably should’ve been a hint for me. In any case, it was an explosion of productivity. I woke up at a crisp 10 A.M., slammed some protein pancakes, took a brief nap, journaled about my ex for two hours, called in sick to work, and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to go on a bike ride (I’m still working on the whole balancing thing). I might have peaked that day.

The Leap Day before that I was a bit preoccupied being studied in a quarantine ward as one of the first American cases of Covid-19. But hey, life happens.

Could we maybe just scooch the 2028 Leap Day up to this year? It really can’t be that big of an operation to swap them out. We’ll all be absolutely itching for the Summer Olympics that year, so everyone will probably be thrilled that they are one day closer to seeing those nerds go ham at the ping pong table.