January 2025: Another Dry January, An Unexciting Month. "If I had my way, I would remove January from the calendar altogether and have an extra July instead.” -Roald Dahl

To be fair, I didn’t set out for this. No, I was perfectly happy in my former life going into the new year. With the baby, my intake was substantially less than previous holiday seasons. But I didn’t see a need to change anything. I figured I would just take the first weekend off and go for 10 days. That’s impressive and should suffice right? But then the 10-day pinnacle fooled me yet again and lured me into seeing what was possible if I kept going. For those considering next year, let me spare you the time. The 10-day mark is as good as it gets..

 The Journey

“It’s fine. I’m fine without wine. Everything is fine..”

 It’s the same every year. The first week is a cake walk and you don’t even notice much of a change. Laying low that first weekend and drinking sparkling water instead of wine is a nice change of pace and even fun at first. The second weekend or day 10, that’s always the best part of the experience. The real REM sleep starts to kick in and you wake up feeling amazing because you’ve gotten such solid rest for the first time since you can remember. Mondays start to become exciting and all of a sudden you find yourself vacuuming and organizing your house, constantly looking for another task to accomplish. You’re annoyingly chipper and can’t help but share with anyone who will listen that they should admire you because you’ve gone an entire week without drinking alcohol. They pretend to be impressed but in reality, they couldn’t care less. Week 3 comes with a long holiday weekend ahead, MLK, and now the novelty is starting to wear off. You’ve gone 2 weeks with good clean fun but now the thought of some slightly mischievous behavior starts to seem like sitting front row at a comedy show. Old fashioned good times! The mere thought of an iced cold beer in a frozen glass or a dirty martini with extra olives hits you with a warm and fuzzy thought, even better than the way you feel in the morning after the miraculous sleep you’ve been getting. But no you can’t, because it’s January and you’ve committed to not having any fun this month. When you wake up Saturday, you’re thankful you resisted but also a little resentful that you didn’t have as much fun as you could have.

So you survive MLK weekend, 4 day work week ahead, this should be a walk in the park. WRONG. It’s even longer than the previous week and with nothing to look forward to at the end of the road, aside from maybe organizing your basement and doing your taxes, the 15-degree days and zero sunshine really makes the realness set in for just how much longer you have to go.

The Finish Line

“Time moves fast, except during the month of January.”

I got a lot done this month and am proud to have stayed strong. January is hard enough; do we really need to make it harder? I weigh the productive achievements vs the good times that might have been and wonder, was it worth it? I don’t know. But something tells me February is going to be a lot more fun!