A Bleak Road

The excitement is over, the holiday season fading back into the far off distance where it lies dormant for nine months of the year. The Christmas presents have all been put away or put into use, the lights come off of the bushes, the trees, and the gutters, and the champagne and party poppers have all been disposed of. New Year's resolutions are forgotten about, and the wheel starts turning again, bringing back into full motion the grind of the work week. Before us lies the cold, dark months of January and February, unforgiving in their lack of excitement and crushing dullness.

There is nothing to look forward to save the one or two holidays that manage to close school, banks, and businesses and the unending hope that a blizzard will grace the world overnight, effectively cancelling any and all responsibility, at least for the next twenty four hours. Students spend their time dwelling in fatalistic humor, wishing for anything and everything to get them out of these two months of endless responsibility, be it a tragic accident or a simple flu. Anything exciting enough to create bumps in the road, to briefly take the eyes off the very straight, uneventful path ahead and off to the side where something more interesting may be occurring.

A veil of depression covers everything and anything as the days are shorter, the sky is rarely blue, and harsh cold berates those who trek out in the early morning and the late evening, unforgiving even towards the prepared ones with coats, hats, mittens, and gloves. It seems endless, this empty abyss of the start of the year. Productivity dwindles below the highest efficiency, repetition kills happiness as each day passes, one after the other, until they all muddle together in a mass of average boredom.

The days are numbered, though, and it's the only thing keeping us all going, determined to work through til the end.125 days until graduation. Two months til spring break.  Four days until the weekend. The countdowns make the dullness tolerable, providing a semblance of a purpose for a time that seems absolutely purposeless. Soon, the days will be long enough to battle the exhaustion that has kept us all in its unrelenting grasp for the dark winter months and the rejuvenation of spring will attempt to strike life into the dreariness.

Despite these dwindles of hope, until the next large event appears on the horizon and the excitement builds for next chapters and extra down time, we all are doomed to continue the monotonous grind, waking every bleak morning and returning home every colorless evening, repeating over and over, seemingly consumed by a desolate winter.