January is a hard month for many people. It’s a sharp fall from the festivities of December and people are often left feeling the financial and emotional fallout from the Christmas period. I’m not usually one to suffer from January Blues, but this year I feel like I have been hit quite hard.
Positivity & Goal Setting
I’ve spoken at length in the past about my love for goal setting and positive vibes. I often use these tools to push myself to achieve things I never thought possible. I’m of the opinion that you can achieve anything if you tackle it in the right way. Break it down into steps and manageable chunks. I find the new year is a great time to really utilise this and set new goals and targets for the year ahead. I use this as a way to reflect on the previous year and set my future objectives. This creates momentum, flow and energy which usually helps me sail through January on a bit of a high. This year things feel different.
Feeling Flat
For the past couple of weeks despite my desire to work hard towards all I want to achieve, I have been left feeling rather flat and uninspired. I love my job and all of the opportunities that blogging has brought me over the years, but I was so close to quitting it all. Sometimes it feels like I am struggling with motherhood and spinning all of the plates. I get the overall impression that I’m not really achieving anything well and ninety percent of the time I am falling short on at least one or two things. Right now it feels impossible to achieve everything and I feel a bit of a failure. On Friday night I just felt overwhelmed with it all and burst into tears. There isn’t anything specific, and I wouldn’t say life today is any harder than it was in November or December and if anything work is thinner on the ground, so there is less pressure there.
January Blues
After much evaluation, it is conclusive that I am struggling a bit with the January Blues. This last Christmas is the first year ever where both my husband and I have taken off a solid three weeks. Usually at least one of us is still doing some work on the side, but this year was different. We switched off entirely and fully immersed into family life, and I think that coming out of that has left me grieving a little for that good quality time together. The reality of life is that you can’t take big chunks of time off work and school regularly and the weekends don’t quite seem long enough.
In combination with this, I feel a little like I am floating with no real purpose. When I shared my weight journey, many people messaged to say how inspired and encouraged they were to relate to someone who was going through the same. Still, there was a minority of non-readers who jumped on this and shamed me for wanting to lose weight. I was told I shouldn’t be sharing content like this and I should be encouraging women to be more body confident. This really got to me to be honest because the idea that my content could be damaging to other people is hard to process. Although after speaking with my genuine readers I don’t believe this is the case at all I am still left feeling judged, and it makes me now question everything I put out there through fear of it being twisted and taken the wrong way.
Moving Forward
Looking back over January I realise that I haven’t been all that kind to myself. I wanted to look after myself more this year, and I understand that I need to lean on this when I am finding myself wavering. January really is a hard month and I need to give myself a break for feeling those January Blues. This is just a moment and it too shall pass. I’ve gone through my calendar and motivated myself with plans for the future, and this has helped me get out of my own way a little.
Do you struggle with January? Have the January Blues got you down?
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Love as always!
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