Behold! The psychological power of January

New year, new perspectives

The responsibility will always rest with me, whether it is a Monday in January or a Friday in August. Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

There is a new calendar hanging on the back of the kitchen door. January is there, in all its emptiness and expectance. The time to eat ‘properly’.

For added salt in my festive wounds, the first of January even fell on a Monday, like some neatly arranged, passive-aggressive imperative from Father Time to get one’s act together. I really do have no excuses now.

With the Christmas tree gone, I turned and looked out to the damp, green garden. The roses, geraniums and verbena were all memories of a warmer time. There is one constant, however, and that is the birds that flock here for the seeds, the lard, the mealworms.

Since I am now eating ‘properly’, I gave some leftover Christmas cake to the birds. A mince pie, too, because there are still too many of those hanging around the kitchen.

They came slowly at first, one by one. Sparrows, blue tits, coal tits, great tits. A robin, standing proudly over his feast of worms. With a furious flutter of red feathers, he defended his lunch from a hungry starling. Then came the familiar, noisy flap of wings: the woodpigeons had arrived to clear up the spilt seed. Collared doves watched from the apple tree. Squirrels, too, came scampering along the branches as the jackdaws and magpies dangled clumsily from the hanging feeders, underestimating their size once again. Soon the garden was alive with activity and song. Hurry now! They might have been saying to each other. There’s a January sale in this garden! While stocks last!

I know, really, that the birds do not care for January like us, unaware of the significance it brings. Instead, they know by instinct that it is only going to grow colder for a little longer yet, wetter and even snowier.

They will notice the slowly lengthening days and the shortening nights — not by clocks or calendars, but by their own sensory perception — and know that it will be time for them to fulfil their own resolutions for the year. After a few turns of the calendar, it will be time for the birds to scour for twigs and twine and build a nest. To pluck the apple blossom buds from the trees. To raise chicks. I do not know if those Christmas cake crumbs will have made a difference to whether they are strong enough for the spring, but it is, I hope, a good deed done.

The clock begins: I have no more than 365 days to achieve these goals, and I will face adversaries along the way: temptation, procrastination, the ruthless grip of ‘can’t be arsed’

I suppose I, too, have resolutions, as tentative as they are. Things I would like to do this year, places I might like to go. Willpower has never been my greatest strength, and so my blood runs a little cold when someone asks if I have any. Naming them in front of someone else only solidifies them, inflates them into a benchmark by which I will now either succeed or fail. The clock begins: I have no more than 365 days to achieve these goals (or 366 in this leap year), and it will not always be plain sailing. I will face adversaries along the way: temptation, procrastination, distraction, tragedy, illness, bad weather, the ruthless grip of ‘can’t be arsed’. It is only right we mark our accomplishments with pride if we get there; the road is fraught with failure.

And so, with a shiver, I politely tell them I do not have any resolutions — not really — and keep them to myself.

In the past I have all too often told myself — and others — that I will be ‘back to normal’ on the Monday, apparently unable to put down the Toblerone on a Sunday. In truth, who is counting but me? Timescales mean very little. This year, I should perhaps stop waiting for the blankness of a new page to start anything. The time could have been yesterday, it could be tomorrow. It is always now. Responsibility will always rest with me, whether on a Monday in January or a Friday in August.

This post is not an anticipatory apology for my perhaps-inevitable failure down the line. You are welcome to hold me accountable as the months roll by. But I will try and be like the birds this time — guided by the currents (and currants) of life around me, rather than some imposed timeline. Adapting and pivoting as those adversaries come, trying not to lose sight of what is important. Somebody might even leave me some cake along the way.