Oh dear, I always think when January comes around. Or bluer words to that effect. If I’ve been stupid enough to go to a party the night before, I’m suffering from too much booze, too much grub and definitely too many people. Because after the furore of Christmas I’m peopled out. I can’t do another conversation. In fact I’m sorely tempted to chuck my phone in the bin and go off grid for good.
Added to that it’s grey outside. It’s cold, and I have absolutely no desire to work out, go on a diet or, the gods forbid, indulge in Dry January! In fact January is the time I might dedicate myself to drinking in earnest. What a grinch, what a misery guts. Bah humbug!
But what about fresh beginnings, good resolutions, out with the old, in with the new? I usually shuffle into the kitchen on the morning January 1st and find myself munching on a stale Yule log. I have a severe case of brain fog I’m hoping all that sugar will dislodge. Even the plink, plink fizz of a favoured hangover cure sounds like a hand grenade ready to disrupt the space-time continuum. Back to bed then to settle in with extra pillows and a forgotten season of my favourite show on the old iPad.
Ahh that’s better. There are still a few days’ grace before the year starts up in earnest. No need to rush about like a well-meaning lunatic. Because the truth is that my best intentions fall quickly flat in January, and pretty much everybody else goes about half-cocked and knackered with a couple of broken springs.
Then, one of those days comes along – one of those sparkly, sunlit winter days, and I realise the days are definitely getting longer, and I spot snowdrops flowering away in someone’s hedgerow and a sense of hope and newness grows in me with the strengthening sun.
I might start on that book I want to write. Pick up the guitar again. Call an old friend I didn’t see during the festive lunacy of the month before. Think about a career shift, a life refocus. Find time for a bit of gratitude.
I might begin to see January as less of an endurance test and more of a leveller. There is no glitz or pretence about it. It is what it is. And if I just get my motor running, I may very well recover my sense of humour, my joie de vivre and my humanity again to finally take the new year in hand.