The Waiting Game

January, for me, is the month of waiting. Despite its resolutions and virgin diaries, too much of the old year carries into the new for it to really feel different. The weather is still hostile and the daylight hours too short to feel like winter has turned a corner. In fact, with most of the coldest months still to come (with their associated eye-watering energy bills), January can feel like the first stop in a descent into further darkness.

I’ve now stopped bullying myself into relentless optimism at the thought of a new year. In the past, my ‘fake it til you make it’ attitude has ground against the heaviness of this first month and I have found the incongruence difficult to deal with. My body urges me to shun the dark, to stay in bed where it is warm and the reading lamp glows golden, but my mind chastises me for not going out for a run in the 4C cold.

“Our lives aren’t always in spring and I find the imposition of the seasons a useful reminder of that.”

This year, I scrapped the self-flagellation. So what if the resolution to exercise three times a week is broken straight away? There’s always the following week to try again.

It’s one thing to be forgiving to oneself, but society seems less understanding. Instead of a gentle return, post-Christmas, it feels as though there is an assumption that people are rested and revitalised after their ‘holidays.’ Forgetting, that for many, Christmas is a dismal time of anti-climax, familial tensions and heightened SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). The return to work can be jarring for those who don’t feel ready to go, go, go as their companies start the first quarter.

So, how do you manage it? How do you ease back in, when it feels like you’re expected to dive head-first? Insight is probably the first step. Acknowledging that there is a difference between what is felt and what is expected will at least identify that there is an issue. Adjustments can then be made accordingly. For me, that means early bedtimes, nourishing meals and staying away from my phone. Making sure that all other variables are optimised sometimes compensates for the midwinter lethargy.

But sometimes, there’s nothing for it but to wait it out. This may be difficult to accept when so much of our lives now are geared towards instant gratification. Having to wait for warmer weather and the associated uptick in mood? But I want to feel better now! And of course, the impatient child in me will hate the next thing I’m about to write but yes, there is beauty and enjoyment to be found in every season. Just like convenience, gratitude journalling has become the vogue, so why not use that to find the joy in interminable rain and wet socks?

I’m being facetious. January is a hard, trying month and I speak that as a January enthusiast (it is, after all, my birth month). I’ve learned to live with its slow, heavy days by adapting my behaviour to suit it, rather than pretending I can be as lively and spirited in the bleak midwinter as I am in the summer months. Our lives aren’t always in spring and I find the imposition of the seasons a useful reminder of that.

And yet even as I write this, a mild frost thawing off the soil outside, I see precious green spears pointing up through amidst the ice. They promise daffodils and crocuses and tulips in mere weeks. It may take a little time, but even in the heaviest winter, time ticks on and soon it will be light again.