Writer's Block, Vol. III.

The month of January is really just one gigantic hangover.  I don’t mean that in that "Maxim magazine" party animal hangover kinda way like you might see in the movie of the same name (you know, The Hangover).  I’m not even trying to say that we all party so hardy on the 31st of December that the entire month that follows is just a horrible headache coupled with both diarrhea and constipation at the same time.  It’s just that the holiday season includes time off, running around visiting people, a lot of eating (in quantities that are serious health risks), and increasingly late bedtimes, which makes for a rude awakening when it is time to start setting that alarm once more for an entire new year of the grind and an imminent re-entry into the real world.  Also the entire month is just a horrible headache coupled with both diarrhea and constipation.

In the summer I run outside, almost every day.  In the winter, however, especially around mid January, I run… out of pants that fit.  Groan.  A combination of the sun being down all of the time (see: Seasonal Affective Disorder.), laziness to get my fat gut to the gym (see: What’s My Motivation?) and the overall lethargy that comes from several consecutive days of eating meat pie for breakfast makes waking up for an office job seem like an impossible feat.  It’s like a daily all you can eat buffet, all the time, every time (see: All You Can Eat.).  

To be honest, all of this makes doing anything relatively impossible.  It feels kind of like unemployment, without all of the fun and excitement of job hunting and creating new and improved sandwiches every day (Tuna fish and Doritos? Why that’s Kev’s Mexican Fish ‘n Chips Panini!).  Oh and also, you have to go to your job.  Maybe it’s not that much like unemployment, but, you know what I mean.

Jotting down a list of resolutions seems like a positive activity, but really, all you’re doing is admitting all the areas in which you failed miserably in recent memory.  The more resolutions that you come up with, the more you are declaring how hard you suck.  Hard.  But hey, admitting you suck is the first step towards recovery.

The second step is doing something about it.  And since most resolutions are mirror images of the previous year’s resolutions, I guess we’re not very good at step two.  Let’s move immediately to step three where we’re like, man, fuck resolutions, I can’t be held down by some list.  Nothing can hold me down.  Nothing! The holidays are over!

No more policemen directing traffic in the mall parking lot.  No more navigating through what seemed to be an endless array of drivers following pedestrians carrying shopping bags, in some sort of insane ritual of replacing one shopper’s car with another immediately (even though, there upon yonder horizon I see a whole row of empty spots, a whole vacant area of parking fun… presumably the extra steps were just too much distance to handle at this festive, fat, lazy and bloated time of year, for the average holly jolly consumer, that is). No more hearing that particularly grating rendition of jingle bells that plays as I make my way through a blinding fragrance section in Macy’s and get sprayed by some clown lady.  

No more eating too much. 

No more running around trying to see and please everyone. 

NO MORE!

I may have gotten a little lost in my tracks there, but I’m pretty sure that I understand most of what I think I am trying to say.  Could it really be that the end of the holiday season brings more relief than sadness?  Is the magic really gone?  In short, Chris Murphy (of the awesome band Sloan) said it best when he said that “The scariest part about my Halloween, is that November rent is due.  I’m not a kid anymore.”

Oh shit, my boss walked by the cubicle thrice, I really should stop now.

That’s it.  Time to go sit on the toilet and not poo for a little while.