As we head towards Blue Monday, supposedly the worst day of the year, where are we all, emotionally? For my part, I have just discovered I completely miscalculated my tax bill based on pure wishful thinking; I’m incapable of getting out of bed before 8am (which my body and soul consider the dead of night, behaving accordingly), and at the supermarket there is an “enjoy seasonal specials” display that is just a pile of swedes. Even so, I’m basically, unusually, cheerful. Because isn’t January sort of … great?
Listen, hear me out. Imagine me putting a finger to your chapped lips (sorry, don’t do that – what a horrible image). I’m not minimising anyone’s very real suffering from seasonal affective disorder; I get a summer version, spending July and August convulsed with dread. Plus the cold – and this week looks bad – brings a whole set of extremely real problems. But could I gently suggest some upsides that may reframe your perspective, ever so slightly?
January is the perfect excuse
It works for absolutely everything: cancelling plans at the last minute, missing deadlines, declining an invitation to your six-year-old nephew’s soft play birthday party, retiring to bed at 5pm with a giant Toblerone, being caught kicking your bin in a rage at a missed collection. The phrase “January, right?” is a magical get-out-of-jail free card, allowing you to be as flaky, antisocial and erratic as you wish.
No one expects you to look good or be cheerful
The widely accepted expectation that everything will be awful is extremely freeing. I am a 49-year-old bald woman who is allergic to most makeup; I look like a naked mole-rat mated with a potato and have the worldview to match. In January, it doesn’t matter: I can move through the world like sentient porridge with a bad attitude and be treated with understanding and compassion. This is much harder in June.
It is aesthetically pleasing
This month offers our best chance of snow, the most “fire emoji” of all weathers. Even without it, there is frost, the filigree skeletons of silver birches shivering in the wind, the stark outlines of forgotten nests in leafless hedges … The world becomes one Ted Hughes playground, basically. Plus on my morning trudge today, I spotted a hot pink suspicion of rhubarb peeping through the mud. Cor.
Especially the light
Yes, there’s almost none of it; Vitamin D is no longer existent. But what little there is can be beautiful. Fiery sunrises (9am) that fill your heart with gladness; and awe-inducing marmalade and Campari sunsets (3pm)! The less said about the bit in between, the better.
There’s nothing to do
With no sociable or other distractions, you can quietly get on with things. A friend tells me she’s “exercised, read, got shit done”; well, each to their own. I’ve picked the skin around one thumb raw and conducted a tetchy, prolonged and thus far fruitless email battle over reimbursement for a candle.
Other people exercise for you
I have sincerely tried several times to book pilates classes this month but they’re all booked up. Scientifically speaking, this means I have “done” pilates: that’s January maths.
You can become a Beatrix Potter creature
Hunker down at home like a dormouse in a dress, teach yourself wholesome crafts, cook up nourishing soups and find delicious, creative uses for the preserves you created with the fruit and vegetable glut of warmer months. Have I done any of this? Of course not. Yesterday’s dinner was chips with more chips for dessert as I scrolled. January, right?
It contains the slumbering seed of promise
I planted narcissi on my dog’s grave after he died in the autumn. Trudging past with a bag of chicken shit for the compost yesterday, I spotted their first shoots, pointy, pale green and tantalising. You, too, could be like those bulbs, biding your time as something beautiful forms within you. Or you could be bingeing The Traitors as you bedrot. No one can tell the difference!
It really can’t get any worse
There’s something intrinsically cheering about hitting seasonal rock bottom: it couldn’t be any darker, colder, or more miserable. Surely at least we can agree on that?
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
