Leave January alone*

 Typically, January is most cited as the month everyone hates. It’s cold, grey and there’s no Christmas to look forward to. People stop drinking, stop eating dairy, stop eating all together. Start going to the gym, start running. Payday takes at least 12 weeks to arrive. Plus, our social feeds are filled with the empty, ridiculous platitude: ‘New year, new you!’.
 
As well as all this unmitigated crap (for crap it truly is, as I believe Jane Austen once wrote) January now has the weight of carrying 2021 on it’s world-weary back. For some reason, a decent amount of the population believed that saying goodbye to 2020 on the stroke of midnight meant that, magically, COVID would disappear and we could all start hugging with gay abandon in a matter of days. The thing is, COVID doesn’t care if it’s December 31st, 2020, 2021 or Tuesday afternoon. It’s still going to keep doing its thing.
 
I worry for January 2021. There’s so much pressure to be great. It’s not used to it. It’s like the office junior who’s given a big presentation to do because everyone else is off sick. With COVID, presumably.
 
I used to love January. New stationery, for one. All the leftover Christmas chocolate. A sense of opportunities to be taken, if you felt so inclined. And it’s also quite a fruitful time in publishing. But now everyone else is all over January, too. It feels like that time I did a presentation about Jamiroquai in Year Seven and all the boys said I was ‘weird’ (oh yes, well done Scott for the seventh presentation of the day on Tottenham Hotspur. I grew up in Northamptonshire, why did all the boys support Tottenham?)
 
I digress.
 
A few years later, JK went all mainstream and everyone was listening to Canned Heat on shared headphones in the corridors before double science. I was livid, naturally.  
 
This year, January feels more of a slog thanks to Lockdown 2.0. The sparkly distraction of Christmas has gone. Homeschooling is in full swing. More restrictions seem inevitable. But one thing I’m not going to do is blame the month. That would be like blaming your shoes for stepping in poo. Instead, I’m going to focus all that pent-up month-rage on June. June is the WORST. No family birthdays, no holidays (up-top, school-age parents!) and there’s always a random, horrible, heat wave.
 
Let’s all get behind January this year. It’s going to need all the help it can get.

*Not January Jones. Although, do leave her alone, too. She’s done nothing to you.