I’ve been
procrastinating writing for a few weeks now, for the same reason I’ve been
procrastinating scanning photographs, doing dishes and tidying the house. It’s January,
and I’ve got post-Christmas comedown, A.K.A. New Year Blues A.K.A. Not Another
Fucking Year Already A.K.A. Blearrrghghh.
If I could get away with not washing or brushing my teeth, I probably
would. If I could get away with not
getting out bed, I undoubtedly would. January sucks.
T.S. Eliot
famously wrote that April is the cruelest month, but that’s clearly bollocks because
for wretched evil misery nothing beats the gateway to the year. Christmas is over, and all the build up and
festive sleigh ride rapidly turns into a festive train wreck and then, abruptly,
into a post-festive lemming-dive off the cliff of New Year’s Eve into the grey
wet plains of Back to Work You Shitty Little Peasants, Fun’s Over.
Not all
Januaries have been dismal, admittedly. The crash has sometimes been softened
by the cushion of Christmas presents, whether the Millennium Falcon of
childhood, or the Walkman and booze of late teens, to the lovely acoustic guitar
I got two years ago. Quite often the
social imbibing in January ups itself a notch as people wrestle with the
impact, which is an aspect I’ve also previously appreciated. Sometimes, a Christmas Romance blossoms into
a Winter Girlfriend. It might not last, but it takes the edge off the
cold. At worst, there’s usually a bit of
snow to re-ignite the smouldering Yuletide embers.
This year,
no such. While I appreciate all the
presents I received from my nearest and dearest, a throttle box for my Micra
isn’t a game-changer. I love my new Adidas Star Wars Rebel Force trainers, but
a particularly expensive December has left me in a financial quagmire, and I
can’t go out and about looking fly in them.
I did, however, plan for this month of doom,
and asked for two X-Box games, which is pretty much my January, between getting
home from work and slinking off to bed.
And while these digital distractions are fun (with a slice of WTF? everytime
I get beat 6-0 on FIFA 12), the fact that I not only planned for a month
indoors, but did so by sacrificing the option of a new guitar pedal for
something that deep down I think I probably should’ve given up many, many, many
years ago, leaves me with a feeling of bemused depression. Although, it being January, I could’ve been
given games, pedals, the Palaces of Shangri-La and the moon on a
diamond-encrusted stick, and I’d still find something to complain about.
The
fundamental problem isn’t that I’m a neurotic whinger, but that if humans were
meant to do January, we’d be made of Gore-Tex and Fur, with torches for eyes. There are few feelings more groan-inducing
than the realisation of existence when an alarm goes off at seven a.m. on a
January morning and you realise you’ve got to get up from the warm oblivion of
sleep and go out into the frosty darkness to spend the day with a bunch of
people who feel equally resentful about work, life and the existence of other people.
January is
the cruelest month, not April. April isn’t frosty, in April nighttime doesn’t
masquerade as the morning, and in April Christmas is a fond distant memory, just
as you can look fondly on a past relationship years later, even though in the
immediate aftermath you were a drunken wreck of despair and failure.
January is the
raw break up from our relationship with Christmas. Either full of a profound
sense of loss, or the needling regret that it never quite lived up to the
promise it, well, promised.
So I’m
starting it now. We have a year to do it.
I’m suggesting a radical rethinking of the calendar. Next year, I want
two Decembers, then February. It’ll be
my Christmas gift to the world.
Death to
January.
