I find January to be a difficult month. The excitement of the holidays is over. I'm tired. It's cold. It's dark. We're told that it's the beginning of a new year and we're supposed to start new things and have new energy and it doesn't feel at all like that could be true. It's the middle of Winter, for goodness' sake! Some years are easier than others, but this January hit me with all of its frosty and desolate force. It sucked my energy from me and made me want to curl up with a book and stay there until Spring. And, in large part, that's what I did.
Maybe it's a form of Seasonal Affective Disorder - although there is a part of me that welcomes the early coming of the darkness in the Fall. Specifically because it means I can draw inward as the light fades away. But that's a discussion for another day.
Anyway, I prefer not to think of myself as having a disorder. I prefer to listen to my body. This year it told me that what I needed was rest and replenishment. The voice of my Midwestern upbringing tends to argue with me when my body requests some downtime. It flies in the face of the Work Ethic that was instilled in me as a child. Never put off for tomorrow what can be done today and all that jazz. And so I feel guilty and greedy and, well, bad, for lying around reading instead of doing something "constructive." But here's the thing. I've learned over the past several years that it's my body that's usually right. And that it has its own rhythms. And so if I can trust it enough to give it what it asks for (all of which is constructive in its own way), eventually I will come out the other side, and begin to want to do more things again. It's a huge lesson for me.
Maybe next year I can welcome January for what it has to teach me, instead of seeing it as a Siberian plain to cross. Anyway, I'm glad it's finally February.
