January is a rough month
.
And this year feels harder for reasons that most everyone else knows about (and are also experiencing). And to pile on top of pandemic woes, everyone has a list of bespoke bonus stressors….so most likely, humans are all out of bandwidth when it comes to processing anything more than what we absolutely must. These days, when I come across leisure time, I deliberately seek avenues for levity. Temporary escapism. Maybe watch a stand-up comedy routine or listen to a podcast about a ridiculous fad diet shilled by the misogynist designer Karl Lagerfeld (really, I could not stop cracking up at this podcast). On the other hand, the book I started to read on January 1st takes place in the aftermath of the Japan tsunami of 2011; it is a beautifully written book but I find myself staying away because the added sadness just isn’t needed right now. Of course reading in Italian is good study– but for the love of God, at least give me something like Catch-22 or A Light in the Attic or Wacky Wednesday. I chose poorly.
This morning the sun rose at 7:31. I can tell you this because every year, it becomes a great topic of great wintertime interest. Right now I am almost always up before sunrise and spend over an hour slinking around a dark house, wondering why I’ve got zero motivation to do anything at all. My only way out is to get rolling with some sort of physical training regimen because I know that as soon as I am finished, the sun will be rising and the world will feel more cooperative. Or at least I will feel more cooperative.
It really is amazing, the difference that a brightening sky can make in one’s outlook. I love the moment in the morning when I open the blinds and see a sky that matches the colors of a Quality Street box. I can’t tell you why exactly, but every single morning these lava lamp colors give me the boot in the ass needed to move with purpose. Only then can I get dressed in Going Outside clothes, and I easily find the gumption to actually walk out my front door. I know that this sounds dramatic– and maybe even depressing. And it is for this reason I haven’t even wanted to post everything at all in January. All of the topics running through my mind seem to have a colorless appeal. I don’t exactly want to write when I don’t feel as though I’ve got anything genuinely uplifting to say. I’d rather just focus on my daily trek. One task at a time until I’ve lost track of the fact that it’s a grumpy January day.
We’ve still got a good few months of winter to go here in the northern hemisphere. And judging by the sunrise and sunset times that I of course have looked up,I realize that there are many mornings to get through before I find myself cursing the birds who wake me up at 5AM. I mean, the birds are already doing that now– but there will come a point when they’re cackling and then I look out the window to see that it is wicked bright outside. This will be the unshakeable truth that my particular patch of the earth is indeed emerging from winter. But we’re not there yet.
And so from now until then, patience. Patience and pandemic…and maybe a few ridiculous Reddit links that my sister will send to make me laugh. I recognize that nothing about this approach is helpful for anyone else out there …and indeed, maybe there are people who think that the dead of January is an absolutely fantastic period. And of course things could always be more challenging– so I find it tough to complain. A friend of mine living across town currently has her entire family quarantined as one of the kids is positive with the plague…and it’s looking like the rest are not far behind. “This is fine” she says, referencing the dog-in-flames meme as she recounts the mountain of conflicting guidance and proposed ways out of their current situation. She’s got her bandwidth capacities, as I have mine. And you have yours.
My only real objective in writing about my current headstate is to hopefully cultivate some solidarity. While I spend all of my out-of-house hours wearing a face mask, it can be hard to know how folks are really doing in year whatever of the pandemic. Sharing our struggles– or maybe just a snapshot of what we’ve got going on in our own backyards…I still find these low-contact interactions helpful. Maybe I won’t have the available brainpower to help someone feel better, but at a minimum I can let them know that I totally get it. The life experience is all around us, and together we’re all moving from one point to the next.