Out with the old…

Can you hear me cheering? After what seems like an interminable number of weeks, finally dreary January is over and we’re into the much more brisk and cheery month of February. I can’t tell you how relieved and chipper I am to see the back of the first month of the year. What it is about January that makes it so awful?

Perhaps it’s a culmination of things – feeling poor after spending so much money on Christmas, the short grey days and long dark nights, the cold weather which keeps me indoors, and the fact that January has 31 days in it and therefore counts as a five week month – a long wait until payday.  But then of the 12 months in the year, more than half of them – seven to be precise – are 31 day months and I never hear myself complaining about how May, July or August seem to draaaaggggg on. I wish they did!

In past years I’d try to book a holiday to add some spice to the month. I’ve even been on skiing trips all on my own, like Lizzie-no-mates, to make the weeks go quicker – although anyone who’s ever been skiing in January will know how atrocious the weather is then with either thick fog or driving snow making getting down the slopes tricky, never particularly stylish, but definitely an achievement! 

This year of course has been a bit different as it’s the first time since school that I’ve encountered a January without having a job to go to.  I will confess that I did allow myself a chuckle as everyone went back to work on January 4 while I lounged around the house in my jammies feeling smug. I filled in my new diary (my absolute favourite way to start the new year),  adding in birthdays, annual plans, regular tennis and pilates classes and even allowed myself a New Year resolution (which I thought I’d noted near the front of the book, but I now can’t find!). The next day I went to tennis and played all morning under a sunny sky, and thought how lucky I was. And then the sky greyed over and my spirit drooped and I’ve been lacklustre, without energy and a real slug-a-bed ever since. I’ve done several lateral flow tests, so it wasn’t covid – but what is it?

Trying to analyse my feelings, I’m aware that I do have a sense of waiting – for the days to be lighter, the weather to be better, the buds to appear as that all signals the start of Spring, perhaps? Waiting for the end of January payday? Or just waiting for life to start again and the return of my mojo?  One thing I do know is that life is way too valuable to spend one 12th of it hanging around for better times. 

A wise friend suggested that I start planning now how I’m going to make next January more positive. So I’m creating a new section in my diary – the January Survival Guide – to which I’ll add thoughts and ideas, some sane others outrageous, over the course of the year so that by the end of 2022 I should have some fun, positive things all set up for the first month of 2023. Exciting times? I’ll keep you posted!