I don’t know whether I’m more susceptible to sadness than other people or whether I just don’t deal with sadness well when it happens. Either way, I always find this to be one of the saddest times of the year. It’s not just that I’m back at work after taking off the week of Christmas and New Year’s. It’s that the entire holiday season has ended. Most of November and December is filled with with Christmas lights, and holiday music, and holiday parties, and then suddenly… it’s January and it all disappears. I’ve always wondered why people have to take down their Christmas lights and decorations right when we’re entering the depths and darkness of winter. It makes it so much worse.
What made yesterday even harder was that I was tired all day. On Saturday night I had a little gathering to belatedly celebrate my birthday, which was nice and cozy — a small group of us sitting at a banquette in a bar. But for some reason I slept horribly when we got home. I tossed and turned all night. So yesterday I was not only depressed but also exhausted. We didn’t do much in the afternoon, and then I took a nap around 4:00, and when I woke up it was dark out. And it was about 19 degrees outside. I felt like I had wasted the last day of my vacation.
I salvaged the evening a bit. I took a shower and got dressed and went out for a quick walk up Broadway to try and shake off the melancholy and torpor, stopping briefly in a small bookstore and then picking up a few groceries on the way home. Then Matt and I ordered in dinner and watched some Sunday night TV together; Fox’s Sunday night animation lineup is always good for some laughs.
I’m still very sleepy today, which is bringing me down. But I’m trying to remember to focus on the present instead of mourning the past or worrying about the future, and to feel gratitude for good experiences. For instance, the five days we spent with Matt’s family in the Chattanooga exurbs last week were really lovely and relaxing, especially the day we visited Lookout Mountain and Signal Mountain and the Chattanooga Choo Choo hotel. I know that the future, too, contains good experiences that I can’t foresee, and I will try to appreciate them when they happen, and to be thankful for them.
When I was 18, my family visited Israel. At the Western Wall in Jerusalem, it’s customary to write a prayer on a piece of paper and stick it in the cracks of the wall. Before we went to the wall, I ripped a page out of my diary — which was my own special and sacred book — and wrote a short note to God. Instead of asking for something specific, I just asked for happiness. What I have always wanted more than anything in the world is just to be happy.
My New Year’s resolution for 2010 is to try to be happier, even in moments of sadness.
I definitely hear ya. But after the holidays I look forward to random little things that do lighten my mood: like new episodes of the TV shows I watch, precious three-day weekends (in Jan. and Feb.), and the fact that the days are getting longer.
I think it’s entirely natural to be depressed after the holidays. After all, we’ve been building up to them for perhaps three months (whether or not we want to or intend to). And come January 2nd or 3rd, it’s back to the routine daily grind with cold and darkness to make it all the more oppressive. Believe me, you’re not alone.
And remember that God will indeed answer the prayer you made at the Western Wall. But only after you’ve made sufficient effort toward making it happen.
January always seems like a blah time for me.
I think I was conditioned into in school. The fall semester always zoomed by: my birthday, Columbus Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years. Then the most you had to look forward to was MLK and Presidents Day. And the weather sucks.
I would like to be happier, too, but I’m not sure that’s attainable for me. So I made it my (Jewish) New Year’s resolution to be less negative. It’s hard, but I’ve noticed a change. I can’t guarantee to increase the positives because those are often beyond my control (I think I blogged about how the word for “happy” in many languages is based on luck or good fortune) but I can try to reduce the negatives :)