Our Ex-centric World
Friday, 31 January
I don’t know about you, but I for one am delighted it's the last day of January 2025.
Once upon a time January was a quiet month during which gentle resolutions for the new year (work half an hour more each day, reduce chocolate consumption, do fewer crossword puzzles) were made, then put off until a later date because just getting through this dark winter month was challenge enough.
These days – and it seems to get worse every year – one is pummelled with personal improvement and wellness plans, formulas for living better. There's Dry January – meaning don’t touch a drop of alcohol all month – and/or Veganuary (not to be confused with meatless Mondays) – meaning out, out all animal products.
The media, social and otherwise, is deluged with tips and recipes to help you increase your gut health (drink pro-biotic kombucha! eat anti-inflammatory kale!) and decrease your girth (two-minutes of planks and three sets of wall squats each day, plus a strenuous gym or yoga routine five times a week). One of the many advice columns in the The Guardian this month listed “100 Tiny Changes to Transform Your Life”; an email this morning from one of their reporters urged me to sign up for a seven-week course to "Detox Your Kitchen". Yesterday the New York Times had a full-page spread of "Simple Health Tips That Experts Swear By". It’s exhausting.
And stressful, for people like me anyway, who can’t help poring over these austere directives but can't stop putting jam in my morning yoghurt (sugar in the morning - fatal!) or enjoying a glass of wine most evenings. Midway through the article or Instagram reel, I already feel hopelessly inadequate. Reading/watching further, I then stress about the stress that can also significantly shorten my life.
Staying relaxed in January 2025 is in any case impossible, regardless of lifestyle. This year the health mania is counterpointed by political frenzy. The new-old American president has set the entire world on edge with his scorch and burn tactics of freezing government funding, firing bureaucrats and blaming everything from wildfires to plane crashes on the on the Democrats and DEI, of repeating threats for crippling tariffs and land grabs. At the same time, he follows a 'flood the zone' strategy devised by his erstwhile guru Steve Bannon, whereby he issues so many executive orders, proposes so many initiatives that opponents can't keep up and therefore put up minimal resistance.
Polarising political stratagems have been strangely echoed by the past month's meteorological extremes. Los Angeles burns while we here in France drown. “Heavy rain likely to impact human activities is expected,” said the English translation of Météo France this morning. And so it has been for weeks.
Often when preparing to write these essays, I look back over recent photos. They help me find the thread. This past month there have been many snaps of flooding and fog...
...roads and rails that disappear into a grey, hazy horizon...
Basic psychology would indicate I'm looking for a way forward, a path through murky times.
Perhaps the best modus vivendi for January is to keep trying, despite the circumstances, to stay positive and centred. But as I finish writing this Saturday morning, I'll borrow from another tenet for better living: TGIF (Thank God it's February).
