A day that comes only once every four years ought to be celebrated! At least noticed and remembered. Here’s the best and most succinctly written technical reason for Leap Year that I’ve seen:

The Earth takes exactly 365.24219 days to rotate around the sun. Adding an extra day every four years makes the average length of a year 365.25 days, slightly too much. The Gregorian calendar eliminated leap days in years ending in 00 and that made the average year 365.24 days, a bit too short. The solution: add a leap day in years divisible by 400 which makes the average year 365.2425. – Elliot Eisenberg, February 29, 2024

In our lifetime, we didn’t miss a leap year. 1900, however, was not a leap year as Elliot explains.

Seth Godin is one of my inspirations for the daily blog, and he wrote a nice piece for today pointing out the value of “leap:”

In action movies, there’s a lot of leaping. Brave shifts in which the hero gets from here to there, all at once.

It’s easy to imagine that sudden leaps are how we make our impact.

This is blog post #9000 (give or take).

When did the leap happen?

It wasn’t an external leap. The first hundred blog posts were read by fewer than a dozen people. It was an internal one. The decision to be a blogger. And then redeciding, each day, not to stop. [I can relate to that!]

Every four years, we have a worldwide holiday to celebrate this sort of leap. The leap of choice. Not to suddenly get from here to there, but to choose to go on the journey.

It’s only once every 1,460 days, you can do it.

Leap today.

Perhaps we begin by visualizing it. In the most concrete terms you can find, write it down. If you took a leap today, what would it look like? Who would benefit? And then, share it with just one other person.

Often, the act of physically writing it down is the most difficult part. – Seth Godin, February 29, 2024

A good challenge. I decided to write a daily blog beginning January 6, 2019. By Seth’s definition, a “leap.” Now perhaps it’s time for another one. The leap is “Not to suddenly get from here to there, but to choose to go on the journey.”

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. (Genesis 12.1 – 4, ESV, emphasis mine)