Now that it’s February, it’s time to review the January experience, to discover just why this month feels like the longest of the year, every year.
Let me set the scene. You’ve spent the last few weeks on winter break. You’ve spent time celebrating the holidays, maybe enjoying presents and warm meals with your families to stave off the bite of the cold weather outside. As the clock strikes midnight on Dec. 31st, you’re full of nothing but optimism for the year ahead.
A week later you’re on your sixth coffee at 2:00 PM, looking obsessively at the clock, waiting for eventual release from your torment. You look out the window and see bleak, grey skies. This moody weather that will persist for the rest of the month—if you’re lucky, there may be a few uninspiring drizzles of rain sprinkled in.
You await MLK Day anxiously, hoping the three-day weekend will reinvigorate you, but even that short break is overshadowed by the post holiday glooms. Your optimism for the new year is gone. Your resolutions are already forgotten.
Why does this happen, year after year?
January seems to constantly be the let-down month after December, crushing everyone’s aspirational dreams for the new year with the realities of monotonous work and schooling. Collectively, as a society we seem to simply suffer through January, and personally I often don’t feel like the year has really begun until February.
It feels like January drags on metaphorically partially because it is a longer month of 31 days—and unfortunately, those winter days are often very dark and dreary. Sunlight, and people’s moods, are both at an all-time low.
As we near the end of January 2026, most Americans will agree that one of the most interesting things to happen all month has been the unprecedented snowstorm of last weekend. Even this development, though, leaves people snowed into their homes and bored out of their minds. It also reminds everyone that January weather is sometimes colder and even more miserable than in December, but without the holiday celebrations to look forward to.
So is January doomed to be forever boring? Or is there something we can do about it?
It’s normal to feel dejected in January, but if we want to transform it from the worst month of the year, societal behavior will need to shift.
People will need to make a point to create plans for January with family and friends, giving themselves fun activities or events to look forward to throughout the month, lifting their mood.
Furthermore, we need to let go of the obsession with New Years’ Resolutions, which are more often than not abandoned midway through January and only foster feelings of regret and inadequacy.
With a deliberate shift that allows people to focus their positive expectations on real, guaranteed upcoming events rather than lofty, ephemeral ideals for the new year, we can avoid the dry disappointment of January and reset quickly after the winter holidays, allowing us to actually enjoy the beginning of the year.
