Post Christmas blues

I hate this time of year with an unquenchable vehemence. I always have. Its a strange limbo between Christmas and New Year, the old year lingers for too long and the New Year sounds so exciting until it arrives. Ultimately it disappoints. This is a nothing time. Although I am back at work, it doesn't feel like work. There is only a few people in, there is just a feeling of working for the sake of doing so, going through the motions to tidy the last few things up before year's end. Outside it will be busy. I've avoided the shops not wanting to venture into the maelstrom of the sales. I don't understand the frenzy that seems to enter people at this time of year. I really hate the crowds, I despair of the fact that the shops always seem so hot and claustrophobic and I refuse to be drawn into this idea that doing the sales is a must.

New Year always seems to be over-hyped, just another meaningless excuse for people to get drunk, be stupid, to bring out all the worst in their character. Only yesterday on the bus home I listened to a young girl talking loudly to her friend about how she was looking forward to New Year because she could get drunk. What kind of ambition or desire is that? How hollow and empty have we become that drink and the thought of losing all sense and control of ourselves is the only way we can really feel anymore? Is that what it takes to feel anything these days? What self-loathing must embrace the young these days? I've never wanted to be drunk; I've never liked drinking to excess. I don't enjoy losing control.

I am going to friends in Southend this weekend for New Year, which I am sure will lift my spirits. There have been New Years I have spent on my own, when I haven't even bothered to stay up to welcome in the new year. They've been miserable times because the expectation is that we must be happy at this time of year but I don't. I never do. I don't get excited about a change in the date on the calendar. One year is pretty much like the last or the next. Sometimes, I have good years other times, I have bad years. There are ups and downs, occasionally it feels like there is no end to the rain, other times it is happy and joyful. Whatever, it really doesn't matter in the context of whether that happened in 1996 or 2003. What is more important is what I will do tomorrow and the day after that. And the now. This moment, how I live for now. This is what I need to focus on.