After Emmet and Henry left this past Sunday to head back home, I plopped down in a chair next to Mr. Smith.  I must have been wearing my melancholy face because he said, “What’s wrong?”  My response was “the party’s over.”  The shopping, gift giving, visiting, eating, and drinking frenzy was over for another year and I was left with January.  I thought I had escaped the clutches of my old nemesis this year, but before my visitors had made their way out of the state of Pennsylvania, I felt the inertia creeping in.

I have always had a difficult relationship with January.  The mornings are cold and dark, you have to take down your Christmas decorations and store them away, and there are way too many people at my gym.  A quick internet search of post-Christmas blues revealed I’m in good company.  A 2005 Gallup survey asked 1,000 Americans about their favorite month (the most recent year they asked this question).  No surprise to me, January ranked dead last, right behind February. 

The internet is also chock full of suggestions on how you can beat the winter blues.  Eat right, exercise, make something, do something for someone else, organize, get out of the house, plan a trip.  The list goes on and on.  These are all great suggestions, but some days I’m just not in the mood.  My bed is warm and cozy in the morning and Mr. Smith is always agreeable to bringing me a latte there before he’s off to work.  Then it’s so easy to linger there, pick up a book or waste an hour on my phone. With no job to define my schedule, it’s up to me to structure my day.

This January I decided to borrow a page from my sister Jeanne (and Sir Isaac Newton’s) book.  As a personal reminder, Jeanne has Newton’s First Law of Motion written and hanging on her wall: An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion…  Along with packing up the Christmas decorations, I’m going to pack up the inertia and send it on its way.  I will push myself out of bed in the morning and have my morning latte with Mr. Smith before he leaves for work. And I won’t wear my melancholy face.

C’est la vie.