January. Disgusting January.

I regret to inform everybody that this entry is written from a dark, dark place. You see, there is nothing on earth that grips the tender spleen of the greeting-cardier as does the passing of the holiday season. Where once a cardsmith had to scramble for reasons to sell shit to people to make a thoughtless gift seem thoughtful, the holidays have never failed to bring with them inspiration and compensation unending. A card for every holiday (even the dumb ones) and a card for every gift. This is the maxim upon which many a greeting-monger has constructed an empire. However, as surely as the clock hands spin and the page-a-day George W. Bush joke calendars thin, the holiday season draws to an anti-climactic resolution. Greeting card profits stall and plummet, and the 'Cardies' are tossed from their Mac stations to the gutter. This half of winter is so terrible that many card hawkers can't even feed their children (or step-children) their daily bowls of lunch cereal between this horrid month and Mother's Day. January is truly the cruelest month.

January.

On a more personal note, I cannot think of a name of a month (or a month itself) that I loathe more than I loathe January. January has always been significant to me, and not just to the part of me that has a greeting card lodged inside of it. I hate January, and I feel the best way to illustrate this hatred would be to describe this part of winter in a linear and narrative sense.

The pain of January's arrival begins two months before it occurs. I spend all of November looking forward to Christmas. I know for a fact that I'm not the only one. Many of the other children I grew up around would constantly affirm that they couldn't wait for Christmas to come. However, as a child, I could wait for Christmas. I felt that Christmas was more than enough reason to wait in sweet anticipation for that beautiful morning. All of the time that led up to the 25th was just as magical as the date itself. As a Christmas loving adult, that sentiment has not faded. Christmas, however, leaves. There lies the first blow of January's imminence. I dedicate two months out of every year clutching desperately to the congealed snow that is Yuletide merriment only to have the dream pounded forcibly out of my brain by none other than January. As rude awakenings go, this one is pretty nasty. Suddenly Christmas is gone. The happiest time of the year is lost to the past and cannot be dug out again until the ten other months (or, Les Dix Diarrhées,) have passed. This, however, is not the worst attack.

New Year's Eve arrives on the 31st of December (most of the time.) I celebrate the coming of the new year (or 'NYE' as illiterate jackasses call it) probably the same way you do. I work myself into a gleeful fervor by feeding my body a constant flow of moderately priced sparkling wine and spend my annual five minutes a year of viewing live network television by watching balls drop. But New Year's Eve, to me anyways, has always had a resoundingly melancholic lustre. The night, in terms of personal strife, is unlike the Christmas vacuum in that the ennui that it stirs is not so easily bedded. To me, the new year signifies one more nail in the coffin of my way of life. The house that I sleep in and the car that I drive and the memories that I lived are suddenly mustier, squeakier, and dimmer respectively. More importantly, they are all distanced from me by another unnavigable tributary in the river of linear time. I can't help but watch helplessly as the streets that I walked on only a year ago are suddenly pummeled with the cracks of age, and episodes of 'Everybody Loves Raymond' are shown on TV Land.  The past is irretrievable, and since the 31st, it is even more irretrievable. The world sidles away from the observer using New Year's Eves as mile markers, and before too long, the surface of our planet is unrecognizable (in comparison to the reference year, which is to say the best year ever, which is to say 2007.)

All of this, and we haven't even gotten to January yet.

The first two days of January pass by unnoticed (because I'm usually curled up in a ball like an anxiety ridden existentialist Sonic the Hedgehog.) On the third day of January, with my wounds still fresh and shining from the emotional tempest of the Christmas vacuum and New Year's Eve, my birthday comes. Simply put, my birthday is the day that reminds me that, as surely as I was born, I will die. I realize that's how everybody feels, but mine is in January.

January.

January has so much horrible crap inside it. The worst weather of the year is usually around January time. This is the kind of weather where it might snow, but more likely than not you'll simply be held hostage in your own home by an unmelting city-sized sheet of five inch thick ice. For kids, school starts again. I'm glad I'm not in public school anymore, because my birthday was usually the night before I had to go back to whatever god-awful hovel I was forced to learn in. January also hosts the most embarassing spectacle that normal, uncaring people are unable to escape from. I speak, of course, about the slimy, fluid-soaked circle jerk that is the Super Bowl. This is the yearly celebration where "real men" get together to talk about guns and pussy while spending money, watching advertisements, and hiding mysterious, yet firm, erections.

January.

Here's some fun things you can do at home to be depressed during January!

1. Wait for a nice, cloudy day and stare for hours at a time at a tangible relic of a wasted childhood! (Basketball hoops with no nets, rusty playground equipment, and closed-for-the-season carnivals are great for staring at!)

2. Take the concept of survivalist cannibalism into serious consideration and decide that the value of a human's life is subjective! (For extra fun, maintain this viewpoint when you observe other human beings and establish how much they and their lives are worth!)

3. Desperately and with little recommendation create greeting cards that nobody likes for a blog that nobody visits and write essays that nobody reads about things that nobody cares about and somehow expect affirmation that never arrives! (Try putting fun, inspirational decorations around your computer to inspire you to stop!)

4. Wander into a forest with the intent of being able to find your way home again while maintaining the frame of mind that you really wouldn't care if you never made it out!

5. Festively scented candles are a great way to turn any drab room into a winter wonderland! Use them to start fires on the carpet! Before they get too big, extinguish them using the bare palms of your hands and laugh heartily at the fact that doing that no longer hurts!

Oh boy. It's gonna be a long rest of the winter. Here's an owl related greeting card.