January is a bitch. Trust me on this.

November and December have holidays to cushion them. You’ve got the excitement and/or exasperation of seeing your family and friends, planning menus, finding and opening gifts. It’s all likely to carry you through both months without a great deal of reflection about your lot. I’ll think about it after the holidays becomes a mantra, a way to avoid anything that might bring you down from your temporary, somewhat delicious high.

But that’s what January is. After the holidays. Taking down the holiday decorations on January 1 always seems symbolic to me. Good times are over. Austerity reigns. The bring-down begins.

These days, I usually avoid making resolutions. To me, they’re a little like Oscar Wilde’s definition of second marriages: “The triumph of hope over experience.” But if you’ve fallen into the resolution trap, January is when the bill comes due. Time to climb up onto that treadmill. Time to actually try to file those receipts in those cute folders you got at Office Depot. Time to crank out those three thousand words you promised you’d accomplish each and every day.

The month just got a lot more bleak, didn’t it?

I think the overarching problem with January, aside from the cold temperatures and occasional ghastly weather, is that it’s supposed to be the beginning of things. As long as the beginning is in the future, you can put off the actual execution of your plans. But once that beginning is truly knocking on your door, everything gets a lot more serious. Now you have those long twelve months staring you in the face. Are you up to it? Is the pain actually worth it? Will you have anything to show for it on the other side?

Of course, by February I’m usually over all of this angst. It’s no longer the beginning, and I’ve managed to moderate both my expectations and my recriminations. Life goes on and fifteen hundred words per day is nothing to sneeze at, after all.

But for now I’m stuck with January. And January, as I believe I mentioned above, is a bitch.