How hard it is to get through January?
It is slow and unwieldy. All you want to do is get through it intact.
There’s no need to wait for a new year to make a change.
It’s also a month where there’s more month than money.
The aftermath of Christmas is the reminder that maybe buying those expensive gifts probably wasn’t such a good idea after all.
January arrives; you are tired and in desperate need of a break to recover from the one you’ve just had.
It’s hard work being a working mother (not to discredit the working father), but most women do Christmas.
We plan and deliver Christmas.
While many of us revile this poor hard done by month, it isn’t the only month with 31 days.
When the Christmas festivities are over; it’s back to work with a vengeance.
You pick up where you left off, hoping that this year will be a teenie weenie bit different.
We look toward springtime with great intentions and aspirations and plan vacations and getaways.
Of course, January is the month that everyone starts a new fad from diets to decluttering (mine started in December) and a promise to oneself that you will think good things of the next-door neighbour.
It also heralds this inherent need to set goals.
Why?
I plan my year from work to personal goals, but since becoming a quinquagenarian, I know that planning anything longer than my Italian nose is unrealistic.
There are times during the year when it is a new beginning – take the start of a new school year or school ending for the summer holidays, leaving home, leaving a job or moving house.
These moves herald a new beginning, the start of a new chapter in our lives. It doesn’t have to be a New Year to make a change.
A new start gives us renewed energy to ride the change, and while the future is unknown, we take strength from making that change.
We can choose to start anew at any time, and we don’t need to wait for a significant event to make a new start.
Whether it’s a bad day, a boss that’s decided he doesn’t like your presentation, there’s always tomorrow.
There’s something powerful about deciding to make a new start, and it helps to mentally shift our focus on what we want and why we are creating this fresh start.
The key is to listen to your inner voice, what is it telling you and then embrace that change.
After ten years with very long curly hair, I decided it was time to change, and I had my hair cut mid-length restyled and coloured.
I walked out of the salon a new woman. I felt that the time is right to make that change; it feels like the start of something different.
But it doesn’t have to be forever, I can grow my hair long if I choose, and that’s the thing with change; we can always go back but, would you want to?
If the new is better, why go back to the old?
In the words of C.S Lewis, “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”
Here’s to February, I made it, and I hope you did too.
