Jonesing for January

It’s time we find another reason for savoring a new season

Photo by Derek Owens via Unsplash.

We are so predictable.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve seen the same cycle repeat itself year after year. After a bit of a break during the summer, we crank up the intensity in our lives: kids go back to school, work projects resume or increase, and commitments, both personal and professional, surge. We are invigorated with renewed initiative, throwing ourselves into life with gusto. Then, as the holidays start to appear on the distant horizon, we pick up the pace and add even more to our plates in a mad dash to “wrap it all up” before the pre-holiday clock runs out. We know a break will come, but first, there is oh so much to do.

By sometime in November, the year begins to feel like it has asked too much of us and every hardship endured during the past 10+ months makes the year feel that much longer and tougher. And by December, every unfortunate event that has or will happen is the waning year’s fault. The year’s once bright, shiny stock plummets. It’s no longer the favorite, deserving of our passion and initiative. We start to think about how we can’t wait for this year to be over, and look forward to the bright shiny year that awaits us. A year with no baggage. A year that won’t wear us out completely or possibly be so cheeky as to cause us as much grief as the last one.

Ah, January. We adulate, adore and celebrate it like it will save us all. It cannot come soon enough. Meanwhile, the poor year we’re still living gets treated like it has worn out its welcome.

As we near the annual countdown, why do we, like clockwork, so easily give the year we are living a bad rap?

Less than twelve months ago, that very same year was our golden child. Our fresh start. Our balm for soothing the rough edges of the year before. And now we toss it aside impatiently, like one-year olds do with the rest of their food, when they decide they are finished eating.

Done!

At least that’s how it goes here in the northern hemisphere. I don’t know if the arc of September to January is any different in the southern hemisphere where the weather gets cold, or in places that don’t end the year with a epically-sized holiday season, but somehow, I think our tendency for casting off the old for the new might cross a lot of cultural and geographical borders.

Maybe the tendency to denigrate in order to more comfortably discard is human, but I think Years deserve better. We put so much pressure on them to deliver. Nothing can live up to those expectations. Ultimately, I think we are too hard on them and we pay the emotional price, cycle after cycle, year after year.

It may not sound like it, but I, too, am excited it’s January. It’s the first month of our new year, and it does feel fresh. With literal and figurative 2020 in sight, I see an opportunity to change the cycle and a new way to live this year. I see a year where we feel as excited about every month as we do about January. I see a cycle where our passion and initiative for starting anew is because of our excitement to step into the next moment, rather than because we’re “so over” the previous one.

I think this shift within ourselves will make whatever each year has in store for us a better experience. So, I’m resolved: I am not putting 2020 on a pedestal, nor will I trash it in December, either. I’ll celebrate, whatever and whenever possible, throughout. At least that’s my plan.

Eleven more months to go…