January makes me want to eat, sleep and drink bourbon.
Driving my son to school this week, it was raining sideways and the sky kept getting darker and darker along the way. I felt like I was about to enter the epicenter of doom. I tried to cheer myself by looking for inspiring music. Of course, that's when every song on the radio sounds like Bob Dylan or Alanis Morissette singing about drinking binges, losing lovers or dying. Did I say Happy New Year yet?
If January's nasty weather doesn't drive you crazy, there's always the comfort of some ridiculous New Year's resolution that will never happen. Yes that and the fact there are no good holidays to look forward to other than Valentine's Day, which just adds more guilt and pressure to your life.
This morning, I was again looking for any sort of encouragement. I found myself raiding my secret good stash of chocolate by 9 a.m. There's something a bit Stepford-ish about eating chocolate bon bons in the AM. But I was merely looking for coping strategies. It didn't really work anyways and left me sick and disgusted at myself for having to eat a bon bon to get through the morning.
In December I long for the quiet simplicity of January. In January, I long for anything fun and joyful. In my sane, non-chocolate ridden brain, I know that January is sort of cool. You can use that indoors time to get more organized, read great books, do nothing. It's that month of introspection, thinking, getting acts together. There's a lot of good football and something wonderful to be made in a crock pot. I do love the easy days with free schedules, weather keeping you in and a chance to get your brain back from the holidays.
A friend of mine likes to call this "hunkering down." When she's in the mood to only be with her family and say no to the outside world, she says "well, we're just hunkering down today." January is sort of like that. One long month of hunkering. And that makes January a pretty loveable month after all.
