What Got You Through January?

 

January, the longest month of the year, is behind us.

Okay, so there are other months with 31 days. (Thirty days hath September etc.) But, think about it – all the other long months have something going for them: March is the harbinger of Spring. July and August? They’re summer months and very few object to long summer months. October has vibrant fall. December has the good will and cheer of Christmas gatherings and other celebrations. But January, poor bleak January, has nothing going for it.

And this past January especially was filled with long stretches of cold, grey days. Sure, there were a couple of days of sunshine and beautiful snowfalls. But those days were scattered, just an elusive, meager smattering.

So, what got you through January?

These were some of the things that did it for me:

- My usual activities of tennis and pickleball and lunchtime swimming in a deserted pool. There’s something luxurious about floating on your back, alone, in a pool of water, where all the ripples are of your own making.

 - The Aussie Open on TV. Also luxurious: hours spent on the couch, watching how tennis SHOULD be played, instead of the amateur hacking at the club

 - Books of course and walks. I’ve waxed on about these before. Enough said.

 - Writing groups. I had a double-header in January, with one lunchtime in-person meeting and another zoom that evening. Apart from critiquing our writing pieces, there were conversations that rambled and dove into other topics that ranged from the movie Women Talking, to Harry & Meghan and the vile British press, to how we can find ourselves in a muddle if we allow the prevailing opinion of the day to become our own, without any thought evaluation on our part. It’s a modern-day scourge and we’re all susceptible to it. But if we’re not careful we can jump on a bandwagon, aligning ourselves with it in haste, only to realize that we’ve lost the ability to think and assess for ourselves.

 - Writing.  Venturing into writing fiction with messy, discovery drafts. What will emerge? Who knows.

 - A delightful and somewhat rumbunctious family gathering, meeting visiting relatives from Britain who I had not seen in many, many years. Plentiful and delicious food. Really good wine. Uber.

- Favorite foods and snacks. I don’t divide food into ‘treats’ and ‘cheats’.  Food is delightful and pleasurable and as long as one has a general healthy approach to life, nothing is off the table (pun intended).

- Planning a trip. With no specific destination or time-frame in mind, it is the research and anticipation that delights. Never underestimate the power of anticipation, almost as enjoyable as the event itself. Almost.

 - Painting. Small canvases, not walls.

 - Netflix and a free trial of Prime/Paramount (Yellowstone!! Three Pines!!) and Podcasts

 - Regular long, in-depth chats with a close friend. In one such recent conversation we pondered why one of us (not me, I’m not given to such noble acts) extends herself for others to the point of exhaustion. Which led to: Do we, women in particular, give to others for their happiness or for our own? If it’s the latter, is it for the pleasure of seeing others enjoy the bounty of our labour? At what point do we recognize the peak of our exhaustion? At what point do we ask ourselves: What am I trying to fulfill within myself? Is it the admiration and approval of others? Or is it the expectation I’ve placed on myself to be ‘this kind of person’ that I want to portray to the world?  

 Sometimes, when we take a long, hard look in the mirror, what do we see? (Apart from a woman staring back who we don’t recognize, because who is she, that face that doesn’t match the younger spirit inside.)  Aging demands some hard truths of oneself, and some much easier ones, like knowing how and when to discard the trivial that you once thought so precious and important.

 No, we don’t solve the world’s problems in any of our conversations, nor do we solve our own, but we always come away with food for thought.  Nothing is off the table.